WASHINGTON—After the Trump administration halted funding to the World Health Organization (WHO), U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, authored an op-ed in War on the Rocks blasting President Trump’s efforts to deflect blame onto the WHO following his negligent response to COVID-19 and his continued praise for China as the epidemic continued to spread across the globe earlier this year.

"Only after the spiking number of U.S. infections made the public health crisis impossible to ignore did President Trump leap into action—to find a scapegoat to blame for his negligence. China, of course, would have been an obvious target. But making China the stooge was difficult given Trump’s repeated praise for Xi’s handling of the crisis. So, Trump needed another patsy. And he quickly found one: the World Health Organization," Murphy wrote.

In the piece, Murphy argues we should be empowering the WHO as a way to strengthen our anti-pandemic response, rather than halting funding which weakens the organization and the global response to COVID-19 altogether.

Murphy specifically calls for (1) clarifying the WHO’s mandate to include coordinating pandemic response as one of its responsibilities; (2) developing new international enforcement tools to make sure no country can ever again get away with hiding information about a deadly virus; (3) leading an effort to increase the WHO's annual budget and compelling countries to contribute more flexible funding; (4) improving the WHO's coordination between headquarters and regional offices; and (5) pushing the WHO, in coordination with other organizations such as the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, to take a leading role in establishing protocols for vaccine production and distribution.

Murphy wrote: “A White House that was sufficiently motivated could push reforms at the World Health Organization that would make it a stronger and more impactful institution. Trump is doing the opposite—walking away and effectively begging China to fill the space left open by America’s departure. The president is missing a major opportunity to stay at the table and use this moment of international crisis as the leverage to create real reform at the World Health Organization."

Murphy concluded: "The truth is that transnational threats like pandemics are here to stay, and American security will increasingly depend on using our diplomatic heft to strengthen and improve international health organizations like the World Health Organization. It is disturbing that the president doesn’t recognize this fact, and instead sees institutions like the World Health Organization not as a tool to save lives, but to save face."

Read the full op-ed here.

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