> the US has “abdicated its longstanding role as a leader in global health and humanitarian response.”

It’s interesting to note that in the end, there was no one else coming: we were it. A large amount of disease containment and control was just fronted by the United States. As the US declines, it’s not that a new leader will come in. It’s not that the Chinese century will have their massive industrial engine put to the tasks that America put hers to. It’s just that things won’t get done.

Sobering, really, that despite all the ascendance of new powers (who do not yet share the norms) and the noble aims of the old (who are too weak), one year after the US left no one has filled the gap.

I think you are reading the situation incorrectly. The US was previously the center of international collaboration for science and technology, and that took decades to establish.

The organization has been burnt down in 12 months, but the expertise still exists. There are signs that the international community will finally start working on climate change now that the US has pulled out of the treaties. The Chinese are a decade ahead of the west when it comes to building cars.

The WHO admits they screwed this outbreak handling up badly, but, by my understanding, they screwed up less than the US did in Wuhan in 2019, and they’re exhibiting the will to improve instead of shifting blame (remember all the “investigations” of the Chinese biological weapons research programs that were co-funded and co-operated by the US with federal funds?)

I think we’re going to see some more dark years before a one-two punch that improves things dramatically:

1) international organizations step up to fill the vacuum the US left

2) After the 2026-2028 new Dust Bowl / Great Depression the US is heading into, voters (state and federal) in the US are going to demand progressive and populist candidates that will actually attempt to put the US back on competitive economic footing.

Yet it isn't fair to people that rely on such assistance to drop it without a plan to substitute the assistance provider. It was all done overnight. One day you had outposts serving people in need, the other they had their doors closed.

So don't act like the world should be thankful for all the US has done when it pulls the plug in such a way that is maybe more devastating than having done nothing, because at least nothing would have left the spot for someone else to have risen to the occasion. Maybe this time though without using people's basic needs to create a political tool to be used opportunitistically.

You are discounting the notion that other powers have something to gain by letting the US own this fuckup a bit more before reacting

> Sobering, really, that despite all the ascendance of new powers (who do not yet share the norms) and the noble aims of the old (who are too weak), one year after the US left no one has filled the gap.

One year isn't a lot of time to fill a gap that was previously filled by decades of hard work.

Maybe if the US had had a transition plan, other competent and capable countries could have better filled the gap.

The US was a force for good in the world. There may be a million counterpoints but contemporary American was and still barely is a massive win for the world.

China is there when there is money to make or resources to grab, but in the last decades never helped any one else than themselves.

I can't get my roof replaced in less than a year. These things take time .