Despite its cool Green parties and ambitious wind and solar agendas, Europe remains by far the world’s largest importer of oil and natural gas. Oil output in the North Sea and off the coast of Norway is declining, and the European Union is quietly looking for fossil fuel energy anywhere it can find it. Europe itself is naturally rich in fossil fuels. It likely has more reserves of shale gas than the United States, currently the world’s largest producer of both oil and natural gas. Yet in most European countries, horizontal drilling and fracking to extract gas and oil are either illegal or face so many court challenges and popular protests that they are neither culturally nor economically feasible. The result is that Europe is almost entirely dependent on Russian, Middle Eastern and African sources of energy. The American-Iranian standoff in the Middle East, coupled with radical drop-offs in Iranian and Venezuelan oil production, has terrified Europe ? and for understandable reasons. The European Union has almost no ability to guarantee the delivery of critical oil and gas supplies from the Middle East should Iran close the Strait of Hormuz or harass ships in the Persian Gulf. Europe’s only maritime security is the NATO fleet ? a synonym for the U.S. Navy. Vladimir Putin’s Russia supplies an estimated 30 percent of Europe’s oil needs. In times of crisis, Mr. Putin could exercise de facto control over the European economy. In other words, Europe refuses to develop its own gas and oil reserves, and won’t fund the necessary military power to ensure that it can safely import energy from problematic or even hostile sources.

It is strange that many people, conservatives and liberals alike have managed to convince themselves that the Communist dictatorship is evolving into America’s partner. President Trump has sung Mr. Xi’s praises. To be fair, buttering up dictators is part of Mr. Trump’s negotiating strategy. To be fairer, I don’t think that strategy has worked. The Trump administration is, however, the first to identify China as an adversary. It did so in the National Defense Strategy written and released in 2017 when H.R. McMaster was serving as national security adviser. Perhaps the current global health and economic crisis will prompt wider recognition of this one-party state’s oppressive policies at home and hegemonic ambitions abroad, the threat it poses to the security of America and what we used to call the Free World. I was encouraged on April 17th to see the editor of Bild, Germany’s largest and most important newspaper, publish an open letter to President Xi saying: “You are endangering the world. … You plan to strengthen China through a plague that you exported. You will not succeed.” There’s one more point I want to make today. Taiwanese officials have coped with the virus extraordinarily well. As early as Dec. 31, they began screening arrivals from Wuhan. They also warned the WHO about person-to-person transmissions. The WHO ignored them. That’s because China’s rulers insist Taiwan be treated as a rogue province rather than an independent nation-state ? which, for all intents and purposes, it has been for more than 70 years. That should matter to the peoples of what we used to call the Free World.

Perhaps you’ll say that China’s rulers were deceptive because they were embarrassed, concerned for their country’s image. That’s understandable - which is not a synonym for forgivable. But there’s a more disturbing possibility. President Xi knew the disease would seriously weaken China’s economy. He knew that if he helped other countries, those countries might suffer little or no damage. Ben Lowsen, a longtime China expert at the Pentagon, wrote in The Diplomat that Mr. Xi may have asked himself this question: “Why should China suffer the effects of a pandemic while others stayed safe - and increase their strength relative to China - based on China’s own costly experience?” We cannot assume, Mr. Lowsen added, that Mr. Xi would decide against withholding “support from the international community to ensure that China would not suffer alone.” That would be immoral and, one might argue, criminally negligent. But don’t expect the International Criminal Court to take up the case. The ICC is too busy accusing the United States and Israel of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Nor is it likely that the U.N. Human Rights Council will say or do anything. The UNHCR has long been dominated by egregious abusers of human rights. Over many years, a growing list of transnational organizations have been taking Americans’ money and spitting in Americans’ eyes, under the direction of regimes hostile to America. China’s rulers continue to lie. Not long ago, MEMRI (the Middle East Media Research Institute) reported that China’s Arabic language television network is still telling its 14 million viewers that U.S Army personnel visiting China last October probably brought the virus with them.

It now seems unlikely that the virus destroying lives and livelihoods around the world began in a wildlife-for-supper market in Wuhan. More plausible: That it began in a laboratory in that same Chinese city. The evidence that has come to light so far suggests the pathogen was neither genetically engineered nor released as a bioweapon, but that it got loose by accident or, more bluntly, due to incompetence. Chinese officials deny that. At least as early as January, China’s rulers must have been aware that they were dealing with a local epidemic that could become a global pandemic. At that point, if they’d shared what they knew, and prevented those infected from traveling abroad, less damage would have been done. According to a study, had interventions in China been conducted just three weeks earlier, transmission of COVID-19 could have been cut by 95 percent. Instead, China’s rulers lied. On Jan. 14, they claimed the disease was not being readily transmitted human to human. On Jan. 19, they declared the virus “controllable” and its spread “preventable.” They silenced those who knew better, including Chinese doctors, Chinese journalists and even Wuhan’s mayor. Some were arrested and charged with “fabricating, disseminating and spreading rumors.” Some have disappeared. The World Health Organization, a U.N. body funded largely by American taxpayers, echoed such statements and praised the Chinese government’s response, including the “very rare leadership” of President Xi Jinping. The WHO resisted recommending restrictions on trade with or travel to China. Not until March 11 did it declare the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic.

Such politicized decision-making is consistent with someone who for decades has been a highly ideological actor. Mr. Tedros was not only Ethiopia’s health minister, but also a member of the Politburo in a government whose roots were Marxist with close ties to China. Indeed, Mr, Tedros’ WHO tenure is marked by placing politics over health. A month after meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Mr. Tedros removed Dr. Mario Raviglione, the 25-year veteran and well-regarded head of WHO’s Tuberculosis Program and replaced him with a Russian official. If there is no accountability for such gross mismanagement, promoting public health by WHO becomes a secondary avocation to burnishing China’s global image. To that end, donors must apply pressure akin to that used to promote reform at the Global Fund. As the prime author of numerous global health and human rights laws, I recognize and respect the importance of WHO, but believe systemic reform is absolutely necessary. Moreover we, and other donor nations, can leverage funding to demand transparency and accountability, and check the rogue influence of China. When the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) cracked down on whistleblowers who uncovered corruption, the United States withheld 15 percent of its assessed contribution to insist that WIPO adopt state-of-the-art whistleblower protections and implement reforms. As the COVID-19 crisis underscores, China’s influence at WHO has cost lives. The world needs a better, totally transparent and accountable WHO ? and urgently needs it now.

China lied to WHO, while WHO pushed China’s false narrative about the disease - saying it was not very communicable and well under control in China, and therefore there was no need for travel bans. According to a recent study, however, China’s lack of transparency and WHO’s reliance on China’s disclosures likely caused a 20-fold increase in cases worldwide. If we want to restore the effectiveness of WHO, first we must promote transparency. The failure of WHO - especially Director-General Tedros - to demand that China permit access to all information in the early weeks of the coronavirus pandemic requires serious scrutiny. There is little likelihood that WHO or U.N. mechanisms such as the Office of Internal Oversight Services will conduct meaningful investigations without pressure. Donor countries must demand that WHO produce its files - including its correspondence with Chinese officials - to an independent auditing unit. Donor pressure on the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria following discovery of corruption in 2011 helped turn that agency around - including by replacing its head, thereby restoring trust in the Global Fund’s ability to combat disease effectively. Following WHO’s bungling of 2014 Ebola outbreak, there should have been a thorough commitment to reform. At the last election for director-general in 2016, however, the reform candidate that the U.K. proffered lost after lobbying by China on behalf of Mr. Tedros. At the time of the election, there were credible allegations that Mr. Tedros suppressed information about cholera outbreaks in Ethiopia for political reasons.

Seventy-two years ago, on April 7, 1948, the World Health Organization (WHO) was founded to organize global responses to infectious disease pandemics that respect no national boundaries. Its effectiveness depends heavily on the good will of its member states and the competence and trustworthiness of its leadership. The coronavirus pandemic revealed China’s malign influence on the leadership of WHO, and a glaring accountability and transparency deficit at WHO centered around Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Mr. Tedros dutifully echoed Chinese talking points on person-to-person transmission of the coronavirus while ignoring Taiwan’s contrary evidence, whom the WHO ostracized because of China. This isn’t the first time WHO has minimalized a major infectious disease emergency due to political pressure. In 2014, WHO dragged its feet for months before declaring the Ebola outbreak an emergency due to pressure from African governments fearing economic fallout. In March 2014, Doctors Without Borders described the international response to Ebola as “non-existent,” while WHO waited until August 2014, long after the epidemic was out of control, to take any action. When the bill came due for that blunder, more than 11,000 were dead. When the deadly coronavirus broke out in Wuhan, China’s first response was a campaign of human rights abuses suppressing truth-telling. China then leveraged its influence at WHO to minimize the damage to China’s image globally. WHO praised China for “openness to sharing information with WHO and other countries.”

The aims of China’s disinformation campaign are at least twofold. First, the Chinese disinformation is principally for home consumption. Second, by victory claim, China seeks to change the media narrative from “China bungled the outbreak” to “China the leader” that deserves accolades and emulation. At this point, because China’s reports on the virus are taken at face value by most of the media, and because many Europeans insist on sneering at President Trump, China’s disinformation campaign is succeeding. Russia’s expertise in conducting disinformation campaigns goes back to the czarist era. Post-Soviet Russia takes great pride in its disinformation skills. Among Russian government apparatchiks, disinformation is probably the most popular indoor sport. According to a Reuters report on a nine-page document authored by the European Union’s European External Action Service, the EU found that Russia is engaging in a massive disinfor mation campaign. The report quotes the document as stating, “The overarching aim of Kremlin disinformation is to aggravate the public health crisis in Western countries … in line with the Kremlin’s broader strategy of attempting to subvert European societies.” The EU document recounted that, in almost 80 incidents, Russian disinformation attempted to magnify Iranian accusations that the virus was created in the United States. Russia’s disinformation campaign has been far less successful than the Chinese campaign. It hasn’t measurably exacerbated the spreading panic. That only means that Russia will try new and different disinformation strategies to achieve its goal.

China and Russia are not among the commonplace coronavirus panic-peddlers. They are also the principal sources of disinformation on the pandemic. From infection rates to fatalities, from the origins of the virus to casting blame for its global spread, China and Russia have spun webs of disinformation worthy of the Soviet Union. The Chinese regime claims fewer coronavirus infections than the United States, Spain or Italy. Because of China’s history of outright lies and well-spun propaganda, we can’t rely on those data. The government data is further challenged by the empirical evidence at hand. It appears, for example, that the number of deaths must be vastly higher, especially in Wuhan itself. Statements by Wuhan residents to Radio Free Asia have said that the death toll in their city alone is vastly higher than the national total reported by Xi Jinping’s regime. Mr. Xi’s regime’s propaganda has been picked up by most of the Western media as proof of China’s claims. That disinformation is the basis for media claims that the United States has the most coronavirus cases on Earth. China has also claimed that the virus was the product of the U.S. military and somehow spread in China by American athletes. Fortunately, the U.S. media haven’t swallowed that whopper, at least yet. Another bit of Chinese propaganda alleged that the virus originated in Italy. An Internet hashtag making that allegation has reportedly been viewed half a billion times. Meanwhile, China has expelled several U.S. news organizations in its attempt to block accurate reporting of coronavirus infections and deaths.

North Korea reported recently that despite testing, and amid quarantining, not one confirmed case of the coronavirus has been found. Not one. This, despite the fact that North Korea’s border countries, South Korea and China, have been hit hard by the virus. And the World Health Organization goes - yep, that’s right. That’s amazing. North Korea sits right at the door of the country responsible for bringing the world coronavirus in the first place, China. And North Korea has got nothing? Seems the vaccine makers might want to head North Korea’s way then, given the country’s natural shield. Perhaps something in the air? But it’s embarrassing that the WHO, absent any pushback at all, would buy this report. No wonder President Donald Trump wants to defund the global agency; it’s far from scientifically sound - even further from putting the world’s health first, above politics. “A U.N. human rights expert has called for lifting international sanctions against countries including North Korea - imposed for its nuclear and missile programs - to ensure that food supplies reach hungry populations during the pandemic,” Reuters wrote. But how curious: If North Korea isn’t being impacted by the coronavirus, why the worry about stalled food supply chains? Yet this, from Yahoo News: “North Korea continues to insist it has no cases of COVID-19.” That just defies logic. And that the WHO would seemingly defend the logically indefensible only underscores the politicization of the global body.