Politicians and the high-brow intelligentsia have long led Americans to play patsy to the world-government movement. President Trump has made a good start at ending this nonsense, but there is much more to do.
To be clear, Trump is not an isolationist. He understands that as the world’s pre-eminent superpower militarily and economically, the United States has a role to play. But that role has rules and limits which preclude support for hostile or deadwood international organizations.
Trump began upending the old-world order years ago by threatening NATO if perennial free-loaders like Germany didn’t pony up. Mostly, the deadbeats scoffed. Then Russia invaded Ukraine and European attitudes shifted, but far too slowly.
In his recent remarks at the World Economic Forum Trump called on all NATO members to increase their defense commitment to 5% of GDP from 2%. The deadbeats probably fainted, but if they don’t pony up then it’s time to consider replacing NATO with a new organization of nations eager and willing to share responsibility for joint security.
Trump recently took similarly dramatic steps. He pulled the United States out of the World Health Organization (WHO), a good example of an institution established with the best of intentions but that became a haven of corruption and anti-Americanism. Good riddance.
Trump took the United States out of what Trump called the “ridiculous” Paris Climate Agreement. Ostensibly intended to deal with climate change, the agreement in practice serves to shackle western economies while China builds more coal power plants, and to justify a wealth transfer to developing countries so they can replace their fleets of Mercedes-Benzes.
He also put the kibosh on a ridiculous OECD effort to get member nations to adopt a minimum corporate tax rate. Of course, the real motivation was to raise the U.S. effective corporate tax rate more toward European levels so Europeans could compete better with their hard-charging U.S.-based counterparts.
It’s a great start, but there is so much more to do. For example, the WTO was set up to govern the world trading system. How’s that working out?
In fact, the WTO lost its way and is now effectively dead, which is unfortunate as free trade is preferable to managed trade as long as misbehavior can be swiftly and fairly corrected. Imagine the shock if Trump proposed a new, effective organization to enforce the trade rules, accepting only good actors as members (i.e., forget it, China).
The U.S. is still a member of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Why, exactly?
Inertia. The IMF’s original purpose in 1944 expired a half century ago with the death of the gold standard, but like a zombie, the IMF stumbles on.
Now a mecca for over-educated internationalists, the IMF only rouses itself when an Argentina or Egypt runs into a sovereign debt crisis, turning to the IMF to orchestrate another largely U.S.-funded bailout.
The World Bank (WB) is another candidate for Trump’s boot. Set up in 1945 to finance developing world projects because global capital markets were often closed to poor countries, the WB today is just another duplicative bastion of waste posturing behind a do-gooders façade.
Which brings us to the United Nations (UN). Unlike the IMF and WB deadwood, the UN’s motivating ideal remains worthy. But it is an Olympic-class monument to waste, corruption and hypocrisy.
Fortunately, if her recent beat-down of Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut is any indication, in soon-to-be UN Ambassador Elise Stefanik Trump has just the agent we need to rock the UN to its foundations. With Stefanik’s drive and Trump’s support, the UN just might again become worthy of membership.
Isolationism festoons the road to oblivion, as North Korea reminds. The U.S. must stay engaged following Trump’s America First principles. International engagement would be substantially advanced by clearing out the corrupt, the useless, the deadwood whose very existence impedes all progress. Keep going, Mr. President.
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