When the United States joined the World Health Organization in 1948, then-President Harry Truman framed the move not in terms of idealism, but as a clear-eyed strategic interest. “In view of the long history of international cooperation in the field of health,” he said, being part of the WHO might “spare us the haunting fear of devastating epidemics.”
Now that logic has been all but abandoned as President Donald Trump’s administration announced last month that it had completed the process of withdrawing from the WHO. However, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has questioned the legality of this claim, arguing that the U.S. has not paid hundreds of millions in outstanding dues required before it can legally withdraw. This sets up a remarkable clash for May’s meeting of the World Health Assembly, the WHO’s main decision-making body.
Whatever legal ambiguities remain, however, the practical reality is now clear: The United States has disengaged. Federal agencies have been instructed to halt cooperation with the WHO. Information-sharing has largely stopped. The country that helped design the world’s central health institution is no longer part of it.
