When the Roman Empire stopped subsidising Egyptian grain, the people of Rome starved. When the British Empire withdrew from India, the subcontinent descended into chaos. And now, in a move that would make the Caesars blush, the United States has halted HIV funding for South Africa.
Decades of carefully cultivated health infrastructure, propped up by American taxpayer dollars and British moral suasion, are now threatened by a stroke of a pen. It is a decision so shortsighted, so redolent of imperial neglect, that one wonders if the ghosts of Victorian proconsuls are haunting Washington. The numbers tell a story of success: South Africa’s HIV infection rate fell by half between 2000 and 2018, thanks largely to US funding through PEPFAR.
The British, ever the responsible stewards of global health, have long backed these efforts with quiet diplomacy. Now, all that is undone. The argument for cutting funding is as predictable as it is fatuous: ‘We need to focus on our own.
’ But this is the logic of the decadent, the bleating of a people who have forgotten that empires survive not by hoarding but by investing. The US is not a simple state; it is a hegemon, and hegemons have responsibilities. To abandon a partner in the middle of a health crisis is to announce to the world that American commitments are worthless.
The South Africans will survive, but the damage to trust, to the very idea of Western benevolence, may be irreparable. And when the next pandemic comes, as it will, who will remember the promises made by nations that turned their backs? The Fall of Rome was not a single event; it was a series of small retreats from civilisation.
This is one of them.
