Comment by observationist
Comment by observationist 4 hours ago
One of the reasons is that the US pays for a whole lot of those international institutions, creating policy and governance issues that end up beyond local accountability. The "force for good, or fairly harmless" rubric changes when it's your money. Then it becomes "why are they spending my money on that bullshit when we have fires to put out at home?"
Covid era politicization and the fallout from that has a lot to do with it as well.
Thank you that makes sense. I did a bit more research for context:
The US only left in 2020 and then rejoined in 2021, I suppose that’s why I didn’t remember it as a big thing.
The US was also just paying ~15%. It was the biggest governmental funder, with Germany at ~9% as the second. But the WHO is apparently mostly funded by charity donations, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was paying ~5% for instance.
(it’s awkward to list sources on the phone but should be easy to verify)
I do get the sentiment though from the perspective of the US, I don’t mean to argue your points.