Via The New York Times: Trump Gave W.H.O. a List of Demands. Hours Later, He Walked Away. Excerpt:
GENEVA — In late May, the American ambassador in Geneva, Andrew Bremberg, went on a rescue mission to the World Health Organization headquarters. He told its director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, that despite weeks of threats that President Trump would quit the health organization, the relationship could still be salvaged.
Mr. Bremberg hand-delivered a list of seven demands that American officials saw as the beginning of discreet discussions.
Hours later, Mr. Trump took the lectern outside the White House and blew it all up, announcing that the United States would leave the W.H.O. The announcement blindsided his own diplomats and Dr. Tedros alike.
If Mr. Trump thought Dr. Tedros would relent under the pressure of an American withdrawal, he was wrong. The W.H.O. leader has refused to make concessions or counteroffers, according to American and Western officials. And Mr. Trump ultimately made good on his promise to abandon a health agency that the United States helped form a half-century ago.
With Mr. Trump’s election defeat, President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. appears ready to rejoin the global health body. But he will inherit a fractured relationship, and must quickly make decisions about how to overhaul an organization that even staunch supporters say is in dire need of change.
While the Trump administration’s demands are now moot, they offer a glimpse into both the growing American frustration with the W.H.O. and Mr. Trump’s personal grievances. And as Mr. Biden signals a return to multinational diplomacy, the Trump administration’s demands offer a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the deal-making of a president who favored aggressive, unpredictable moves over more conventional negotiations.
As has often been the case during Mr. Trump’s presidency, his administration was divided, current and former officials said.
Diplomats and veteran health officials said the list contained reasonable requests that might have been easily negotiated through normal channels. (The W.H.O. has since made some changes anyway.) But it also contained politically sensitive, if not inappropriate demands. “It doesn’t seem to reveal a clear strategic vision,” said Gian Luca Burci, a former counsel to the health organization who reviewed the list for The Times.
The experts said it was easy to see why, in the face of Mr. Trump’s withdrawal and his efforts to deflect blame for the pandemic, Dr. Tedros chose not to negotiate.
“It was an enormous backfire, and it was bound to be,” added Lawrence Gostin, a Georgetown University law professor and longtime W.H.O. adviser who also reviewed the list. “It wasn’t a negotiation. It was blackmail.”
