US withdrawal from 66 international organisations reasserts America First policy
US President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order withdrawing the US from 66 multilateral organisations, about half of which are United Nations initiatives.
They deal with everything from the climate crisis to democratic nation-building and even counterterrorism strategy.
"The Trump Administration has found these institutions to be redundant in their scope, mismanaged, unnecessary, wasteful, poorly run, captured by the interests of actors advancing their own agendas contrary to our own, or a threat to our nation’s sovereignty, freedoms, and general prosperity," US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement.
"President Trump is clear: it is no longer acceptable to be sending these institutions the blood, sweat, and treasure of the American people, with little to nothing to show for it," he added. "The days of billions of dollars in taxpayer money flowing to foreign interests at the expense of our people are over."
Some of the departments listed are part of the UN Secretariat, which may have caught some by surprise. But many of the organisations the US is exiting are unsurprising, given the Trump administration's policy priorities that include a return to traditional sources of energy, including coal: UN Water, UN Oceans, the 24/7 Carbon-Free Energy Compact, and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
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But others listed include the UN register of conventional arms; the office of the special representative of the secretary general for children in armed conflict; and the Global Counterterrorism Forum - issues that have generally been important across all US administrations, regardless of political leaning.
'The approach of this administration is bilateral relations. You want to talk to us, you come here and talk to me'
- Paolo Von Schirach, Global Policy Institute
"The approach of this administration is bilateral relations. You want to talk to us, you come here and talk to me, the president of the United States and/or the administration," Paolo Von Schirach, president of the Global Policy Institute, told Middle East Eye.
"But to do all this stuff in the context of multilateral entities is a waste of time and money," to the White House, he said, noting that many of the institutions named in the executive order may not have had an impactful function to begin with.
"To tell you the truth, if one looks at these entities one by one, I am not sure that all of them are that great and that useful. They tend to be a way for international bureaucracies to do 'makework' - to do stuff and pretend that they're doing something important when they get nice salaries and benefits and go around the world having conferences."
But ultimately, Von Schirach said, "This administration is not a believer in multilateral organisations."
Telegraphed
This is not the first time the Trump administration has walked away from some of the U' most well-known agencies.
During his first term in office, Trump withdrew from the UN cultural agency, Unesco.
During this second term, he withdrew from the UN human rights council and ended all US funding to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa. Washington was its biggest donor.
The Trump administration cited a bias against Israel as well as the inclusion of the State of Palestine in these agencies, which it does not recognise.
To entities in the Global South, these US moves are far more than symbolic.
Civicus, the Johannesburg-based alliance of civil society organisations, told MEE in a written statement that this latest executive order "poses severe implications for people of the US and the world. It stalled progress on human rights and sustainable development action, and we ask citizen leaders to defend multilateralism and uphold global solidarity".
Daniel Forti, the head of UN affairs at The Crisis Group, said he was particularly surprised that the Trump administration abandoned the Peace Building Commission - a small intergovernmental body designed to support countries in preventing conflicts and recovering from crises.
"The US has a permanent seat there as a member, in its role as a veto power," Forti told MEE.
"So this wasn't an issue where we expected them to sort of put up a sign saying we no longer want to engage with you financially."
For the past year, the White House has largely been going it alone when it comes to resolving longstanding international conflicts.
Trump often boasts he has "ended eight wars", though many of these deals appear to offer a temporary reprieve from large-scale violence.
His administration did actively choose to take one issue to the UN Security Council, but that was largely designed to appease Arab and Muslim leaders, who the US hopes will fund the peacekeeping and reconstruction of Gaza.
Forti said the US hasn't paid several of its UN bills since the Trump administration took over nearly one year ago.
"They've already been operating with a reduced funding envelope because Washington hasn't paid," he told MEE. "The US has refused to give its regular budget contributions, and so most of the entities on that list, though not all, have already been suffering by sort of depreciating."
Does that create a vacuum for other world powers to swoop in, or does it set the precedent that it's acceptable to walk away from the very institution you helped build?
"There's truth in both of the directions," Forti said.
"The US more or less boycotting those parts [of the UN] does present China with an opportunity to take an even stronger sort of approach to shaping the trajectory of how those parts of the UN work... for China specifically, it's clear in its foreign policy that it believes in multilateralism and wants to work through the UN," he explained.
But because it's Washington that led the post-World World Two order that established the UN, "the symbolism of [the withdrawal] is quite striking... and does send another warning signal about the health of multilateral cooperation", Forti said, given that governments have for decades now been encouraged to buy into collective action that may not offer immediate, material gain to their own countries.
"There are a lot of countries from all parts of the world that don't agree with every single thing the UN does from a normative or political perspective, but still pay into all of it," he added.
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