SECOND TAKE: LOS ANGELES TIMES
‘America First’ is no winner in the global fight against Covid-19
Donald Trump’s insular stance undermines the US’s role in the crisis
US President Donald Trump has made good — or, rather, bad — on his campaign promise to put “America First”, (https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/28/us/politics/transcript-trump-foreign-policy.html) which in practice has often meant “America alone”. He has undermined US influence at the UN, questioned (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/18/world/europe/trump-nato-self-defense-montenegro.html) the foundations of Nato and made this country less secure and less influential by repudiating international agreements.
This is old news. What is new is that Trump’s insular approach to foreign policy — coupled with his early attempts to minimise (https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-03-22/trump-strange-coronavirus-show) the threat posed by Covid-19 — is undermining US leadership in rallying the world to deal co-operatively with the pandemic. Such global co-ordination is vitally necessary to replace the current patchwork of national and regional (https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/...
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