Globalization is designed so that each country contributes to the geopolitical agenda of the whole earth. Some policies can be seen as negative — for example, when a country sponsors an intervention and violates sovereign borders — while others can be seen as positive. The latter might include any act of humanitarian assistance to poor regions or the creation of any means, instruments, and trends that would have an unambiguously favorable effect on the whole world: this is called good for the country. According to Anholt (2014), the U.S. ranks 21st in the ranking of good countries, behind many European regions in the lead with Ireland.
This statistic can be interpreted somewhat differently. The U.S. is 21st in the ranking of countries that give more than they receive. By now the U.S. has fallen to 38th place, which may indicate a trend toward more closed domestic and foreign policies (The good country index, 2021). Most notably, in the health and well-being category, the U.S. makes one of the largest contributions, ranking ninth within that category.
In a substantive examination of good in this sense, we should look more closely at U.S. foreign policy. As one of the most advanced economies, America provides aid to countries experiencing food insecurity: a type of humanitarian aid that provides food, drinking water, and medicine to regions in need. On the other hand, in almost every country one can walk into a pharmacy and find drugs made in the United States.
Apart from other aspects of business, this can be seen as an act of virtue, since the U.S. is spreading its pharmacological advances to countries where the level of medicine is lower. At the same time, total donations to the WHO global organization were — before Trump’s suspension of this policy — about a fifth of all donations (Tatham, 2020). This shows the weighty contribution of the U.S. in improving globalization processes. As a result, U.S. goodness can be seen as systematic acts of assistance to regions in need.
References
Anholt, S. (2014). Which country does the most good for the world [Video]. TED.
The good country index. (2021). Web.
Tatham, C. (2020). How much does the U.S. give to WHO and what does it do? WTSP. Web.