by Stefano Vaccara
NEW YORK (UNITED STATES) (ITALPRESS) – Donald Trump’s United States takes a new and clamorous step back from multilateralism. With an executive order signed on Wednesday, the White House announced the withdrawal or suspension of American support to 66 international organizations, largely linked to the United Nations. An exceptional decision, intended to have profound consequences on the balance of global cooperation. At the Glass Palace, the spokesman of UN Secretary-General Stéphane Dujarric informed the correspondents that during the morning an official United Nations statement on Washington’s choice, a sign of the gravity attributed by the UN to a move that directly affects its operating system.
According to the State Department, the abandoned institutions would be “redundant, mismanaged, useless, wasteful or contrary to sovereignty and national prosperity.” In the viewpoint, there are mainly agencies and programs that deal with climate, migration, work and rights, areas marked by the Trump administration as an expression of a “woke” agenda.
Among the most significant retreats are the UN Population Agency (UNFPA) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the 1992 treaty that constitutes the architrave of global climate and Paris Agreement negotiations, already abandoned by the United States during the first Trump mandate. The choice confirms a selective and transational approach to multilateralism: Washington remains active only in the holes considered strategic for the geopolitical competition, in particular with China, such as those on telecommunications, work and marine transport, while it parades from the mechanisms of cooperation based on shared rules and collective responsibility.
This is a clear break from the American tradition of post-war times, which had seen in the UN an imperfect but central tool to exercise global leadership. Today, on the contrary, multilateral institutions are described as a bond to the freedom of action of the United States, not as a multiplier of influence. The withdrawal also comes at a critical time for the UN, already struggling with budget cuts, staff reductions and closure of programs, aggravated by the drastic reduction of US foreign aid through USAID. The American exit is likely to accelerate a structural crisis of the multilateral system, just as wars, climate crisis and inequalities would require greater international coordination.
As Anne Applebaum noted in a recent article on The Atlantic, Trump’s foreign policy seems increasingly inspired by a world-based vision of influence and regional rule, rather than on universal alliances and values. In this scheme, multilateralism does not strengthen American power: it limits it. The paradox, warns many analysts, is that this self-exclusion could end up weakening just the United States. Renouncing to shape global rules from within, Washington leaves spaces that other actors, from China to Russia, are ready to occupy. The decision to abandon 66 international bodies is not only a disruptive news, but the signal of a profound transformation of the American approach to the global order, whose effects will be felt far beyond the UN walls.
– Photo IPA Agency –
(ITALPRESS).
