Donald Trump

A threatened gap in global health funding because of a new ban on some U.S. aid prompted a hastily called international meeting of about 50 governments in Brussels Thursday. The major concern is continuing to support family planning services for poor countries. At an estimated $10 billion a year, the U.S. provides the lion’s share of funding for global health services.

Statue of Liberty at Night

As the Trump Administration marks the completion of its first 100 days, Mark Dillen's analysis of the crisis in America's place in the world remains as relevant as ever.

 

Mexico's nominee to be its next ambassador to the United States said Thursday that the two countries' relationship is at a “critical” juncture with the new administration of President Donald Trump. Ahead of high-level talks scheduled for next week in Mexico City, ambassador-in-waiting Geronimo Gutierrez Fernandez said Mexico must pursue a good relationship with Washington but that should not come “at all costs nor under just any conditions,” or in a way that is “to the detriment of national interest.”

Donald Trump was a master at branding in his business career, but he seems to have left those skills in New York. In just a month in Washington, the president has significantly damaged the American brand abroad, in ways that could harm U.S. interests for years. America is not perfect in the eyes of the world. But it is different — and it is seen to be different. Since President Woodrow Wilson framed our entry into World War I as necessary to make the world safe for democracy, American leadership in advancing democratic ideals and global prosperity has been second to none.

This week began with reports that President Donald Trump’s budget proposal will drastically slash the State Department’s funding, and last week ended with White House adviser and former Breitbart head Stephen Bannon telling the attendees of the annual Conservative Political Action Conference that what he and the new president were after was a “deconstruction of the administrative state.” At the State Department, which employs nearly 70,000 people around the world, that deconstruction is already well underway.

Museums across New York are waging a cultural war on prejudice in Donald Trump's America, flexing the soft power of art and photography to compound the city-wide climate of protest. From talks about Islamic art to a Muslim exhibition, swapping Picasso and Matisse for Iranian, Sudanese and Iraqi artists and extending a children's exhibition, museums have dreamt up multiple ways to promote art and education in the wake of Trump's short-lived travel ban.

US spending on overseas aid is expected to bear the brunt of dramatic cuts as part of Trump’s plan to increase defence spending by $54bn in his upcoming budget. The US operates the largest and most expensive overseas aid programme in the world, with a proposed federal spend of $50.1bn for 2017 alone. More than $18bn of that is made up of economic and development assistance, commonly referred to as humanitarian aid. 

Bad guys can possess soft power. I know—I wrote a book about it. But over most of the past century the U.S., as the soft power hyperpuissance, has largely set the standards of what constitutes effective national image projection. The United States has drawn its soft power, the “ability to shape the preferences of others,” as put by Joseph S. Nye, who devised the term. 

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