World leaders committed to some efforts to fight the coronavirus pandemic, but the meeting illustrated the difficulty of carrying out an agenda when the United States is indifferent or hostile to many goals
U.S. President Donald Trump (R) golfs at Trump National Golf Club on November 22, 2020 in Sterling, Virginia. The previous day Preisdent Donald Trump left a G20 summit virtual event “Pandemic Preparedness” to visit one of his golf clubs as virus has now killed more than 250,000 Americans.
Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images
WASHINGTON — Officials at the Group of 20 summit meeting released a closing statement Sunday that served as perhaps the Trump administration’s final reminder of the wide gulf between the United States and its allies on handling global threats like the coronavirus pandemic and climate change.
In its statement, or communiqué, the group emphasized what it called the “important mandates of the United Nations’ systems and agencies, primarily the WHO,” referring to the World Health Organization, an agency President Donald Trump announced a withdrawal from in July, threatening to cut off one its largest sources of funding. The communiqué, released after a two-day virtual meeting hosted by Saudi Arabia, said the group supported strengthening the WHO’s “overall effectiveness in coordinating and supporting the global response to the pandemic and the central efforts of member states.”
Overall, the communiqué offered little in terms of any breakthrough announcements beyond general appeals for more global cooperation and “affordable and equitable access” to therapeutics and vaccines. The lack of more significant initiatives underscored how difficult it is for the G-20 to carry out an agenda when the United States is indifferent — Trump skipped part of the summit to play golf — or even hostile to many of its positions, even during a pandemic that has killed more than 1.3 million people globally.
The statement came the same day as another reminder of Trump’s rejection of international agreements: The United States formally withdrew from the Open Skies Treaty, negotiated three decades ago to allow nations to fly over one another’s territory with elaborate sensor equipment to assure that they are not preparing for military action. U.S. officials had long complained that Russia was violating the accord, and Trump had announced the action in May, starting a six-month clock on the withdrawal.
President-elect Joe Biden had favored remaining in the treaty. When he arrives in office in January, he will quickly have to confront the expiration of the last remaining major arms control agreement with Russia, New START, a clean extension of which Trump has refused to sign off on. Biden has said he will try to save that accord.
©2019 New York Times News Service