 Hello and welcome to People's Dispatch. Today we are joined by Newsweek's Prabhu Prakash and we want to talk about US President Donald Trump's announcement that he is going to cut funding for the World Health Organization pending a review process. Donald Trump has said that he is unhappy with the way the WHO responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. So what are the implications of this funding cut and what does it mean when countries just randomly withdraw? Prabhu, thank you so much for joining us. So this is not something out of the blue because Trump has earlier announced that he was, he had earlier announced that he was going to cut it, then he backtracked, said that we are going to study it and now they seem to have done some background work or preparation or whatever and made the announcement. So this seems the latest in a long series of steps to target the WHO and China for the crisis and hide their own mistakes. You know, there are two separate issues over here. One is that Trump wants somebody to be blamed for the fact that the US was left unprepared in spite of the warnings received. Now we know that number of internal warnings were given to the White House. The United States government was fully aware of what the nature of the COVID-19 epidemic was all about. The reports that in fact the China's CDC head when he was talking to the person in the US, he in fact was in tears. That's the report we have and this is right early January. So it's not something which the US didn't know and that's what the reports have been. The US has been aware of the severity of the problem, the nature of the human to human transmission possible with this novel coronavirus, which is what it was being called at that time. And the US did not prepare it for it for whatever the reasons. The belief that somehow since they had cut, snapped ties with China in terms of air travel and so on, that this will not affect the United States or in some sense, this was a third world disease. And this is somehow going to stay out of the United States. You know, you can also see the response of the European Union, which wasn't very different from that. You can see that Mr. Trump was coming for his jamboree to India. You can see Mr. Modi was focused more on Trump at that point than on the epidemic. So there seems to have been a failure of countries to think beyond China and to think that China has done it because quote unquote, it's authoritarian. It uses the lockdown, but there are many other ways of dealing with it and somehow we'll deal with it much better. It's not a virus problem. It's a China problem. That's the way they seem to have been looking at it. Only this explains the way that you can see the Western so-called democracies have been so taken aback by what has happened and the extent of the spread of the pandemic, both in the European Union and then in the United States. It's really a story of giving up particularly in the developed countries. The whole idea that infectious diseases and epidemics have to be fought with public health authorities measures. And this is the basic shift that has taken place regarding it. What I call is the ill health industry, which is raised on disease and not looking at really epidemics and other public health issues because they were thought to be third world problems. So I think that is one main issue that we now see. And the second crisis or the second failure is of course, the specific person who heads the White House today, but it is a much larger failure that the United States has been slowly getting away from what I call the multilateral organizations where the world is ruled not by the United States, but by a committee of nations and to some consensus. The U.S. has been withdrawing funds, cutting funds from that. It has been funds to what I call committed programs, which means a Ebola program, a polio program and so on, but not to the general strengthening of WHO, which then they would be able to help the other third world countries of what I call the global South countries who have much weaker infrastructure. WHO could really take the lead. The global wealthy countries believe that they could insulate themselves from the third world of the developing world countries, the poorer countries, and that will not percolate to them. So WHO was meant only for handling things like Ebola, polio and so on, which could somehow spill over to their countries as well. But this is the crisis, the larger crisis you have, which goes far beyond that Mr. Trump wanting to blame someone. You can also see the enormous failure of the United States, that at a time when you need global leadership and even foreign policy, which is not particularly shall be socialist or left-wing, even foreign policy, as it says, that however bad we may think of China, however we dislike it, both United States and China has to provide joint leadership to the world. At this point, there is no other course. So the US has to swallow its bind, so to say, and make good with the US, with China, and then work with the international organizations to be able to be seen as a global leader. It's very clear that the way that Trump is reacting, trying to find somebody to be at fault, blaming somebody else, first the governors, now WHO saying that China did not warn us in spite of the fact that such early warnings, all of this shows that the US is really no longer the leader of the world, doesn't see itself as a leader of the world, and United States, the leader that we have, President Trump wants all of this to be his re-election campaign. I don't think he's really bothered about the rest of the world. All that he bothers about, how does it look good in his coming electoral battle as presidential, in the presidential elections, and it seems therefore need to find scapegoats first China, now WHO. So another key question is that, suppose the fund cuts do continue, I mean, after the review the government concludes this, what is the likelihood of the impact on the WHO itself? Because we have seen that also and done in many parts of the global South, WHO is a very key factor in say tackling this disease, in engaging with governments and things like that. See, WHO straight away loses about 17-18% of its budget. A lot of it goes, as I said, to the committed programs, like Ebola, like for instance polio and so on. It also goes to a certain basic infrastructure cost the WHO has. So what is going to be the answer? Already a number of philanthropic organizations have become a major funder of WHO, as you know, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the second largest founder of the United States of WHO. So this also means corporate influence over WHO can grow and it is also then going to orient itself away from public health issues to what are set by not countries, not the health needs of the countries as worked out by them, but basically by a few corporate entities and maybe, you know, if the global South, as we call it, or the developing countries or emerging economies like China, India, all of them come together, say, okay, WHO is very important for us, we'll see how it can survive. That is the second part of it. I would say WHO probably needs to move from its headquarters in the where it is at the moment, because that's genuine, because that's also a very expensive place. Maybe it should move to some cheaper local where the cost of infrastructure can be knocked down significantly. So right now the key, the point will also be that it is basically a challenge before China also because there is this assault happening, it is now not only a public relations assault, but actually a financial assault and there are obviously a number of countries which would be keen on joining this bandwagon and continuing this discourse in terms of how China failed us. So for China too, there's a huge challenge in terms of how to counter this narrative as a whole. You know, I don't think that the assault of WHO is going to be joined by others. China failed us is a defensive major reaction. Now they may continue to say it because the global media at the moment is under the grip of the United States particularly and by the Western powers who will not buck the United States too much and they also need escape go. They also need to say, well, you know, China is playing politics with aid, Russia is playing politics with aid, this goes on. But I will say that's business as usual. That's not something which is out of the norm. What is out of the norm is US making this a US China issue when Chinese did give them quite early warnings. January 3rd is in fact 20 days before the lockdown Wuhan pretty early. And they also locking down of Wuhan, locking down Hubei and locking down of various parts of China was signal enough. So why the US failed and why the European countries, particularly the EU countries failed is a question they will have to answer. And yes, China could be used for that purpose. But I do not think that's going to lead to their separating out or their attacking WHO. I don't think that's really going to happen. Thank you so much for being here for talking to us. That's all we have time for today. Keep watching People's Dispatch.