No Obligation: Why the West Owes Nothing for the Health of the World’s “Poor,” By Chris Knight (Florida)
Andrea Widburg's June 3, 2025, American Thinker article poses a provocative question: Does America, or by extension, the West, have a moral obligation to fund healthcare for the world's poor? Leftists, exemplified by figures like Brooke Nichol and her "Impact Metrics Dashboard," claim that Western nations, particularly the U.S., are responsible for saving millions from diseases like malaria and tuberculosis, with USAID budget cuts allegedly causing 300,000 projected deaths, mostly children. This narrative frames the West as a global caretaker, bound by duty to bankroll the health of impoverished nations. From both a secular and Christian perspective, the answer is a resounding no! The West has no obligation, moral, legal, or practical, to maintain the health of the world's poor, and the case for this position is rooted in sovereignty, historical reality, personal responsibility, and the true nature of Christian charity.
From a secular standpoint, nations exist to serve their own citizens, not to act as global welfare states. The U.S., like any sovereign nation, has a primary duty to its taxpayers, who fund its government through coerced taxation. Diverting billions, USAID's 2024 budget was $41 billion, with significant portions for global health, to foreign populations with no reciprocal benefit undermines this duty. Widburg notes that the Pax Americana, like the Pax Romana, fostered global stability through trade and security, not by subsidising the survival of other nations' citizens. America's role in quashing communism and enabling trade since World War II has already cost immense blood and treasure, $1 trillion in foreign aid since 1945, per the Hudson Institute. Expecting more, especially for healthcare in dysfunctional states, is an overreach that ignores national self-interest.
The claim that Western aid is a moral necessity often overlooks the inefficacy of such programs. Widburg highlights evidence of graft and mismanagement in USAID projects, with studies like those from the Center for Global Development showing up to 30% of aid lost to corruption or administrative costs. For example, in 2023, only 60% of USAID's malaria funding reached actual bed nets or treatments, per their own reports. Nichol's dashboard, predicting millions of deaths without U.S. funds, assumes every dollar is perfectly spent, a fantasy contradicted by decades of aid inefficiencies. Sovereign nations like Nigeria or India, with GDPs of $477 billion and $3.4 trillion respectively in 2024, bear their own responsibility to address domestic health crises, not rely on Western handouts.
Moreover, the expectation that the West must save the world perpetuates a neocolonial mindset, treating poorer nations as helpless dependents. This undermines their agency and incentivises dependency over self-reliance. Countries like China, which lifted 800 million out of poverty since 1978 through internal reforms, demonstrate that national will, not foreign aid, drives progress. The West's obligation is to its own stability, facing $34 trillion in U.S. debt and crumbling infrastructure, before shouldering the burdens of nations that must value their own governance and resources.
From a Christian viewpoint, the argument for a national obligation to fund global healthcare is equally baseless. Christianity emphasises personal charity, not state-mandated redistribution at gunpoint. Jesus's call to "love your neighbor" (Mark 12:31) and the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) stress individual acts of compassion, not collective mandates enforced by taxation. Historically, Christian missionary programs, as Widburg notes, were funded voluntarily by believers, not through government fiat. Forcing taxpayers to subsidise foreign healthcare distorts this principle, turning charity into coercion and stripping it of moral weight.
Biblical teachings value local and personal responsibility. Paul instructs believers to "provide for their own" (1 Timothy 5:8), emphasising family and community before distant strangers. While Christians are called to generosity, this is a personal choice, guided by the Holy Spirit, not a state obligation. The early church supported widows and orphans within its communities (Acts 6:1-6), not entire foreign populations. Applying this to modern contexts, Christian duty lies in voluntary giving, through churches or NGOs, rather than expecting Western governments to act as global saviours.
Furthermore, the Leftist narrative often ignores the moral complexity of aid. Pouring money into corrupt regimes or mismanaged programs can exacerbate suffering, as seen in Haiti, where decades of aid have fuelled dependency and violence without resolving poverty. Christian stewardship demands discernment, ensuring aid aligns with God's justice and wisdom, not blind largesse. The West's taxpayers, many struggling themselves, are not biblically obligated to sacrifice their own well-being for an abstract global good, especially when local needs, veterans, the homeless, rural hospitals, go unmet.
The Leftist claim, exemplified by Nichol's dashboard, that the West must prevent millions of deaths from malaria, tuberculosis, or malnutrition rests on a flawed premise: that Western nations caused these problems or are uniquely capable of solving them. Most "Third World" dysfunction, as Widburg notes, stems from internal factors, corrupt governance, cultural practices, or economic mismanagement, not American or Western policies. For instance, sub-Saharan Africa's malaria burden, with 233 million cases in 2022 per the WHO, persists due to weak healthcare systems and environmental factors, not a lack of U.S. funding. Blaming the West for these issues is a guilt-trip tactic, ignoring the agency of sovereign nations to address their own challenges.
The "300,000 children" death toll tied to USAID cuts is a projection, not reality, and assumes a causal link that ignores local failures. For example, Nigeria's 2024 health budget of $2.2 billion is dwarfed by $5 billion in reported elite corruption, per Transparency International. Expecting Western taxpayers to fill this gap, while their own healthcare costs soar, U.S. per capita spending hit $12,555 in 2023, is unjust. The West's prosperity, built through innovation and sacrifice, does not confer a perpetual debt to the world. America isn't the world's ATM. Time for other nations to step up.
Historically, no civilisation has borne the burden of sustaining another's population indefinitely. The Roman Empire's Pax Romana, as Widburg notes, enabled trade and stability, not direct welfare for conquered territories. Similarly, the Pax Americana's $1 trillion in post-WWII aid has stabilised regions, fought communism, and fostered trade, benefiting the global poor indirectly. Expecting more, direct healthcare funding for billions, exceeds any historical precedent and ignores practical limits. The U.S.'s 2024 deficit of $1.8 trillion and Europe's aging populations (EU fertility rate 1.5) mean resources are finite, and domestic needs, roads, schools, veterans, must take precedence.
The Great Replacement narrative, discussed in prior blog posts, amplifies this. Leftists who demand open borders and global healthcare often frame Western nations as morally culpable for global poverty, pushing for demographic and cultural dissolution. This agenda, seen in policies like unchecked Channel crossings (14,812 in 2025), burdens Western systems while diverting resources from citizens. Nationalists argue this is no accident but a deliberate erosion of sovereignty, making the rejection of global healthcare obligations a stand for self-preservation.
Critics might argue that Christian compassion or secular humanism demands aiding the world's poor, citing the universal value of human life. Yet, compassion does not equate to obligation, especially when coerced through taxation. Voluntary charity, whether Christian or secular, allows individuals to prioritise based on proximity and need, not abstract global mandates. Critics may also claim that Western wealth, built partly on historical exploitation, creates a debt to poorer nations. However, this ignores the West's own sacrifices, wars, innovation, and internal reforms, that generated its prosperity, as well as the fact that modern dysfunction in many nations stems from post-colonial corruption, not ongoing Western actions.
Another counterargument is that global health aid benefits the West by preventing pandemics or stabilising regions. While true in part, USAID's $3 billion in 2023 helped curb Ebola, this assumes efficient use of funds, contradicted by widespread graft. Moreover, national self-interest prioritises border security and domestic health over speculative global benefits. The 2020 Covid-19 plandemic showed that local preparedness, not foreign aid, was key to resilience.
The West, particularly America, has no obligation, secular or Christian, to fund the healthcare of the world's poor. Sovereignty demands making citizens first, whose taxes are not a global charity fund. Christianity calls for personal, voluntary giving, not state-enforced redistribution. The Leftist push to guilt the West into this role, as seen in Nichol's exaggerated death tolls, is a manipulative tactic to erode national autonomy and cultural identity. With finite resources and mounting domestic challenges, $34 trillion in U.S. debt, crumbling infrastructure, and social fractures, the West must say no. Charity is a choice, not a duty, and survival demands putting our own house in order before saving the world.
As my mother always said to me, charity starts at home. Today I would add, and given the crisis of Western society, it ends there as well!
What is America's obligation to keep the rest of the world alive?
The Pax Romana was a two-hundred-year period during which Rome's influence led to a time of relative peace and prosperity as BC transitioned to AD. It wasn't a Roman welfare program that did it. It was that Rome, by creating a stable empire, quashed most regional conflict and enabled enriching trade.
I had the same understanding of the Pax Americana that has existed since the end of World War II. Although America did not create a geographic and political empire in the way the Romans did, we took it upon ourselves to keep the peace around as much of the world as possible, allowing trade to flourish. The trade certainly benefited us, but it also came at a price, for we funded the free world's wars against communism, both with blood and treasure.
One would think that enabling large swaths of the world to remain free, and fighting and/or funding their wars, would be enough. However, according to leftists, it's not enough.
As we've long heard, America also has a moral obligation to accept the illegal entry of every person in the world who finds him or herself living in a dysfunctional Third World country—dysfunctional, I might add, through no fault of the American people.
Now, though, leftists are claiming another item for the endlessly long checklist of things America is responsible for around the world: We are responsible for keeping people alive.
Just the other day, Monica Showalter wrote about the latest anti-Elon Musk narrative: DOGE, by finding wasteful spending, has killed 300,000 people. No, not just people. He's killed 300,000 children!
As it turned out, there were no instant deaths; only projected ones. And we know this because Brooke Nichol, who holds the title of associate professor of global health at Boston University, set up an "Impact Metrics Dashboard," which purports to show all the people who will die, thanks to USAID's closed checkbook.
I'm impressed that Nichols knows with so much certainty that every USAID dollar was and will be well-spent on the claimed health projects. The reality is that most evidence, both hard and anecdotal, says otherwise, with graft and wokism siphoning off huge sums of money, but that's a subject for another post.
In any event, solely for the sake of this essay, I'm going to accept as true the claims that Nichols's little dashboard makes. Without our money, she says, tens of millions of people of all ages around the world will die in the next five years from malaria, tuberculosis, diarrhea, malnutrition, pneumonia, neglected tropical diseases, etc.
My question for you, and it's a serious one, is how great is our obligation to provide healthcare to the world's poor? Once, I know that this was considered to be something of a moral personal obligation, especially amongst Christians, who donated money for various health-related missionary programs. But do we as a nation bear this obligation that taxpayers must be forced to fund at the point of a gun?
I value human life, I really do. And as a parent, I recognize how vulnerable children are, and don't even want to think about the horror of losing a child. I am grateful every day that I was able to raise my children in America rather than in an impoverished country.
But still, do we have an obligation to maintain the health of the world's poor? I don't have an answer, but I don't see anyone even asking the question."
Well, the question is answered here!
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