America Exits 66 International Organizations
Retreat Has Consequences. What Happens Next?
Today, January 7, 2026, President Donald Trump signed a presidential memorandum directing the withdrawal of the United States from 66 international organizations—35 non-UN entities and 31 UN-affiliated bodies.
This unprecedented action represents the most comprehensive retreat from multilateral cooperation in American history, surpassing even the isolationist period preceding World War II. The State Department justified these withdrawals by characterizing the organizations as “redundant, mismanaged, unnecessary, wasteful, poorly run, captured by interests advancing agendas contrary to our own, or a threat to our nation’s sovereignty, freedoms, and general prosperity.”
The scale and scope of this withdrawal fundamentally reshapes America’s role in global governance, with profound implications across climate policy, democratic institutions, development assistance, and international security.
This analysis examines the likely short-term (0-2 years), medium-term (2-5 years), and long-term (5+ years) impacts of these withdrawals across their major categories. The scope is limited to today's executive action alone and does not account for the cumulative effects of the administration's broader policy agenda.
The volume of policy changes enacted in a single day necessitated significant AI assistance in this research.
Contents
I. Climate & Environment
II. Democracy, Rule of Law & Human Rights
III. Peace, Security & Counterterrorism
IV. Development & Economic Security
V. Governance & Administrative Bodies of the UN
VI. Cross-Cutting Strategic Impacts
China’s Ascendancy to Global Leadership
The “My Way or the Highway” Doctrine
Financial and Economic Consequences
Credibility Collapse and Alliance Erosion
The Paradox of Isolationism
Conclusion: The Reshaping of Global Order
I. Climate & Environment
Climate and environment withdrawals broadcast that climate cooperation is now framed as a sovereignty threat and economic burden, not a security or competitiveness imperative, even though some allies and private actors will still try to keep the U.S. loosely plugged into climate markets and tech flows.
By walking away from UNFCCC, IPCC, and major clean‑energy and conservation platforms, the administration signals it is comfortable trading away a significant share of scientific leadership and standard‑setting power in the green economy for short‑term fossil and extraction gains, accepting that others will partially fill gaps.
Affected Organizations
UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA)
International Solar Alliance
International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)
24/7 Carbon-Free Energy Compact
Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century
Commission for Environmental Cooperation
Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research
International Tropical Timber Organization
Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme
Short-Term Impact (0-2 years)
The withdrawal from UNFCCC, the 1992 foundational treaty ratified by the U.S. Senate, isolates America as the only nation outside this framework governing climate negotiations among 198 countries. This creates immediate diplomatic fallout and eliminates U.S. influence over trillions of dollars in global climate investments and policies. The exit from IPCC silences American climate scientists from the world’s authoritative climate assessment body, with federal researchers at NOAA, NASA, and the U.S. Global Change Research Program barred from participating in the 2029 assessment report.
Financial disruptions cascade immediately. The U.S. previously contributed substantial voluntary funding to climate mechanisms, and its sudden withdrawal leaves funding gaps for climate adaptation projects in vulnerable developing nations. Research collaborations halt abruptly: IUCN’s Red List assessments tracking over 45,000 threatened species lose American biodiversity data and expertise. The 24/7 Carbon-Free Energy Compact and renewable energy networks lose their largest technological and financial contributor.
Diplomatic credibility is suffering acutely. Former Biden climate adviser Gina McCarthy characterized these moves as “shortsighted, embarrassing, and foolish,” warning that the U.S. surrenders its ability to shape “trillions of dollars in investments and policies” while remaining exposed to worsening climate disasters. International allies express dismay, with Johan Rockström of Germany’s influential Potsdam Institute calling it “irresponsible self-destructive US behaviour that will damage US science and society.”
Medium-Term Impact (2-5 years)
China consolidates climate leadership during this vacuum. Already the dominant supplier of solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries (with solar power costs down 90% since 2010) China leverages U.S. absence to set global clean energy standards and secure critical mineral supply chains. The Belt and Road Initiative expands aggressively into climate infrastructure, binding developing nations to Chinese technical standards and financing models.
American clean energy industries face competitive disadvantages. Without participation in international renewable energy agencies and standards bodies, U.S. companies lose influence over emerging technology protocols and miss intelligence on global market trends. The $13 billion cancellation of U.S. clean energy funding compounds domestic technological stagnation.
Scientific capacity degrades. The exclusion of U.S. federal scientists from IPCC work diminishes America’s climate research reputation globally. As Northern Arizona University researcher Kevin Gurney warns, “I worry about what this says to young scientists who may feel underappreciated, or worse, that they are almost viewed as unwanted, that science is no longer a wanted endeavor.” Brain drain accelerates as leading climate scientists seek opportunities abroad or leave the field entirely.
The U.S. experiences increasing climate vulnerability without international coordination mechanisms. As extreme weather intensifies (droughts, wildfires, hurricanes, floods, etc.) America lacks access to international early warning systems, climate adaptation best practices, and coordinated disaster response that these organizations facilitate.
Long-Term Impact (5+ years)
The U.S. permanently cedes climate leadership to China, which by 2040 will have comprehensively reshaped the global clean energy economy in its image. Chinese technical standards, financing mechanisms, and diplomatic frameworks govern the multi-trillion-dollar energy transition, locking in advantages for decades. American influence in climate negotiations (critical for protecting U.S. economic and security interests!) becomes marginal.
Economic costs multiply. U.S. firms face discriminatory treatment in international clean energy markets, excluded from projects financed through mechanisms the U.S. no longer influences. Tariffs and non-tariff barriers target American clean tech exports as retaliation for climate isolationism. The International Energy Agency estimates the global clean energy market will exceed $2 trillion annually by 2035—American companies’ market share contracts sharply.
Climate change impacts intensify domestically while international cooperation mechanisms remain inaccessible. Without participation in global climate adaptation networks, American communities replicate expensive solutions already solved elsewhere. Agricultural disruptions, water scarcity, and climate-driven migration from Central America strain U.S. resources without the buffering capacity international cooperation provides.
Geopolitical realignment becomes permanent. The European Union, despite limited capacity, attempts to fill gaps alongside China, but lacks resources to prevent fragmentation of the global climate regime. A two-track system emerges: a China-led developing world bloc and a weakened Western coalition, with the U.S. as an outlier threatening the viability of both.
II. Democracy, Rule of Law & Human Rights
Democracy, rule of law, and human rights withdrawals announce that liberal norms have been visibly demoted from identity to convenience, even if some U.S. rhetoric and bilateral programs persist.
Exiting IDEA, the Venice Commission, UN Women, and related bodies tells the world that election integrity, independent courts, and gender equality are now negotiable chips rather than consistent red lines, raising the odds that authoritarian models and digital repression spread in borderline cases where external support once made a difference.
Affected Organizations
Venice Commission (Council of Europe)
International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA)
Freedom Online Coalition
International Institute for Justice and the Rule of Law
International Development Law Organization
UN Alliance of Civilizations
UN Democracy Fund
UN Entity for Gender Equality and Empowerment of Women (UN Women)
Office of Special Representatives (Children in Armed Conflict, Sexual Violence in Conflict, Violence Against Children)
Permanent Forum on People of African Descent
Short-Term Impact (0-2 years)
U.S. withdrawal devastates democracy assistance infrastructure globally. International IDEA, an intergovernmental organization with 35 member states supporting electoral processes and democratic institutions worldwide, loses its largest financial backer and most influential member. The organization’s capacity to monitor elections, provide technical assistance to emerging democracies, and develop democratic norms contracts immediately. The 2026 electoral calendar, which marks critical elections in multiple fragile democracies, proceeds with diminished international observation and support.
The Venice Commission, the Council of Europe’s constitutional advisory body that has guided democratic transitions across Eastern Europe and beyond, loses American expertise and resources. Countries seeking constitutional reform and rule of law strengthening, particularly in the Western Balkans, Eastern Europe, and former Soviet states, face weakened international support structures precisely when Russian and Chinese authoritarian influence expands.
The Freedom Online Coalition, comprising 40 democracies coordinating responses to internet censorship, surveillance, and digital authoritarianism, fractures without U.S. leadership. This coalition has issued joint statements condemning internet shutdowns, coordinated diplomatic responses to digital rights violations, and supported digital activists through the Digital Defenders Partnership. American withdrawal creates immediate operational confusion and signals to authoritarian regimes that the costs of internet repression have diminished.
UN Women loses substantial U.S. funding as part of the broader $400 million termination of gender-based violence programming. The immediate impact affects programs supporting women in conflict zones such as Ukraine, Sudan, Syria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, and Afghanistan, where gender-based violence surges amid humanitarian crises. Service delivery for survivors collapses in multiple countries as organizations lose 28% of all humanitarian gender equality funding from the single largest donor.
Medium-Term Impact (2-5 years)
Democratic backsliding accelerates in vulnerable states without robust international support mechanisms. The “third wave of autocratization” identified by International IDEA intensifies as countries experience democratic erosion without the technical assistance, electoral monitoring, and rule of law strengthening these organizations provided. Disputed elections lacking credible international observation trigger instability—coups, civil conflict, refugee flows affecting U.S. security interests.
China and Russia aggressively promote authoritarian governance models to fill the democracy assistance void. China’s “whole-process people’s democracy” narrative gains traction in developing countries disillusioned by Western withdrawal. Russia’s influence operations in former Soviet states operate unchecked by the rule of law programs the U.S. previously supported. The ideological contest between democracy and authoritarianism tilts decisively toward autocracy.
Digital authoritarianism expands. Without the Freedom Online Coalition’s coordinated responses, autocratic governments implement invasive surveillance, internet shutdowns, and censorship with impunity. The coalition previously deterred such actions through diplomatic pressure and public statements; its weakening emboldens China’s cyber sovereignty model and Russia’s internet control framework to spread to dozens of additional countries.
Gender inequality worsens dramatically. The Women’s Refugee Commission projects that U.S. funding cuts reverse decades of progress, with women-led organizations bearing the brunt of impact. Gender expertise within the humanitarian sector erodes. Evidence, tools, and guidance for gender-transformative humanitarian action risk being lost entirely. By 2030, maternal mortality rates rise significantly, gender-based violence increases in conflict zones, and women’s political participation declines in countries that previously received U.S. support.
Long-Term Impact (5+ years)
A generation of democratic reversals becomes entrenched. Countries that democratized in the 1990s and 2000s with substantial American support from Eastern Europe to Latin America to Southeast Asia experience authoritarian consolidation. Constitutional courts weaken, independent media disappears, civil society faces repression, and electoral manipulation becomes normalized, all in environments where international democracy assistance has evaporated.
American moral authority collapses irreversibly. For seventy years, the U.S. positioned itself as democracy’s champion. Withdrawal from organizations supporting democratic governance, rule of law, and human rights reveals this commitment as transactional and unreliable. Even when future administrations attempt to re-engage, skepticism about American credibility prevents meaningful cooperation.
The authoritarian-democratic divide hardens into opposing blocs. China’s model of state-directed development without political liberalization, enabled by sophisticated digital surveillance, becomes the default for developing countries. Russia’s illiberal nationalism spreads across Eurasia. The post-Cold War assumption that democracy represents the inevitable future collapses, replaced by competing governance systems—and the U.S. lacks influence in this new landscape.
Gender equality setbacks prove difficult to reverse. An entire generation of girls and women in conflict-affected regions experiences violence, denial of education, and exclusion from economic opportunity that could have been prevented by the programs the U.S. abandoned. The compounding effects of reduced education, increased child marriage, and higher maternal mortality create structural disadvantages lasting decades.
III. Peace, Security & Counterterrorism
Peace, security, and counterterrorism withdrawals declare a tilt from shared security toward more go‑it‑alone hard power, while still leaving intact some legacy alliances and intelligence channels.
Leaving GCTF, the Science and Technology Center in Ukraine, ReCAAP, and UN peacebuilding tools signals that preventing terrorism, piracy, proliferation, and conflict relapse through broad‑based cooperation is being downgraded relative to preserving unilateral freedom of action, accepting higher long‑term risk even if not everywhere and not all at once.
Affected Organizations
Global Counterterrorism Forum (GCTF)
European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats
Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund
Global Forum on Cyber Expertise
International Institute for Justice and the Rule of Law
Science and Technology Center in Ukraine (STCU)
Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery (ReCAAP)
UN Peacebuilding Commission
UN Peacebuilding Fund
International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals
Regional Cooperation Council
Partnership for Atlantic Cooperation
Short-Term Impact (0-2 years)
The Global Counterterrorism Forum, founded in 2011 with the U.S. as a founding member, loses its primary driver and largest financial contributor. This informal network of 30 countries plus the EU provides a venue for counterterrorism officials to share best practices on countering violent extremism, rule of law approaches, detention and reintegration, and foreign terrorist fighters. American withdrawal immediately diminishes the forum’s effectiveness and signals reduced U.S. commitment to multilateral counterterrorism cooperation.
The Science and Technology Center in Ukraine, established in 1993 to redirect former Soviet WMD scientists toward civilian research and prevent proliferation, faces funding collapse amid the Ukraine war. The U.S., Canada, and the EU fund STCU to employ Ukrainian scientists on peaceful projects, preventing brain drain to hostile actors. With $109 million invested since inception and recent projects on small modular reactor licensing, the U.S. withdrawal during Ukraine’s existential conflict represents both a strategic and humanitarian abandonment.
ReCAAP, the first regional government-to-government agreement against piracy in Asia with 21 contracting parties, loses American participation in information-sharing on maritime security threats. The ReCAAP Information Sharing Centre in Singapore coordinates responses to piracy incidents in critical shipping lanes (Straits of Malacca, South China Sea) where over $3 trillion in annual trade transits. U.S. withdrawal reduces intelligence quality and response coordination.
The UN Peacebuilding Commission and Fund, which has invested $1.9 billion in over 60 conflict-affected countries since 2006, loses substantial U.S. financial and diplomatic support. These mechanisms provide rapid-response funding for post-conflict stabilization such as support for peace agreements, local governance, economic recovery, and reconciliation. Ongoing peacebuilding efforts in Burkina Faso, Colombia, Somalia, Papua New Guinea, and the Great Lakes region face funding shortfalls at critical junctures.
Medium-Term Impact (2-5 years)
Counterterrorism coordination fragments. Without U.S. participation, the Global Counterterrorism Forum’s capacity to develop and promulgate international good practices erodes. Regional counterterrorism efforts in the Sahel, Horn of Africa, and Southeast Asia (areas under acute terrorist threat) lose the convening power and technical expertise the U.S. provided. Information sharing on foreign terrorist fighters, terrorist financing, and cross-border operations deteriorates, creating gaps that terrorist networks exploit.
Ukraine loses critical nonproliferation and scientific support infrastructure at the worst possible time. The STCU has kept Ukrainian nuclear scientists employed on civilian projects throughout the war, preventing recruitment by adversaries. Without U.S. funding, scientists face unemployment or worse: potential recruitment by Russia, China, Iran, or North Korea seeking WMD expertise. The proliferation risk multiplies significantly.
Maritime security in Asia weakens. ReCAAP’s diminished capacity allows piracy and armed robbery to increase in Southeast Asian waters. China leverages this security vacuum to position itself as the maritime security provider, expanding its naval presence and influence in the South China Sea under the guise of anti-piracy operations. Regional states grow more dependent on Chinese security architecture.
Conflict recurrence increases as peacebuilding efforts collapse. The UN Peacebuilding Fund’s rapid-response capacity, which is critical for consolidating fragile peace, degrades without adequate resources. Countries like South Sudan, Central African Republic, and Somalia, where peacebuilding funding prevents conflict relapse, experience renewed violence. This triggers humanitarian crises, refugee flows, and regional instability that costs far more to address later than the peacebuilding investments would have.
Long-Term Impact (5+ years)
Global counterterrorism architecture deteriorates into competing national efforts, lacking coordination and shared intelligence. Terrorist organizations adapt to fragmented responses, exploiting gaps between national approaches. The international consensus on counterterrorism norms, especially around human rights protections, rule of law, and preventing violent extremism, fractures as countries pursue unilateral strategies.
WMD proliferation risks materialize. The collapse of programs like STCU that redirect weapons scientists toward peaceful research increases the likelihood that expertise reaches hostile state and non-state actors. By 2030, the international nonproliferation regime faces unprecedented stress as more actors possess advanced weapons knowledge without the safety net of programs that once mitigated these risks.
China dominates Asian maritime security. With the U.S. withdrawn from regional cooperation mechanisms like ReCAAP, Beijing constructs a China-centric maritime security order across Southeast Asia. Regional states, dependent on Chinese anti-piracy and maritime domain awareness capabilities, acquiesce to Chinese interpretations of maritime law and territorial claims. The U.S. loses naval access and basing rights as its security partnerships atrophy.
Chronic instability in post-conflict regions becomes normalized. Without effective peacebuilding mechanisms, countries cycle between periods of fragile peace and renewed violence. The Sahel, Central Africa, and parts of Asia become permanent conflict zones, generating continuous humanitarian emergencies, mass displacement, and terrorist safe havens. The costs of military intervention and humanitarian response which the U.S. inevitably bears in a disproportionate manner far exceed the peacebuilding investments that could have prevented these outcomes.
IV. Development & Economic Security
Development and economic security withdrawals recast development from core strategic investment into something closer to disposable charity, though a patchwork of EU, Gulf, Chinese, and private funding will blunt some immediate shocks.
Abandoning UNCTAD, the International Trade Centre, UNFPA, regional economic commissions, and education and humanitarian funds signals that stabilizing poor countries, reducing migration pressure, and advancing the SDGs have slipped behind tariffs, leverage, and short‑term fiscal optics, making comprehensive goal achievement far less likely even if pockets of progress remain.
Affected Organizations
UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)
International Trade Centre (ITC)
UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs
UN ECOSOC Regional Commissions (Economic Commission for Africa, Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia)
UN Population Fund (UNFPA)
UN Human Settlements Programme
International Development Law Organization
International Cotton Advisory Committee
International Lead and Zinc Study Group
Intergovernmental Forum on Mining, Minerals, Metals, and Sustainable Development
Global Forum on Migration and Development
Education Cannot Wait
Short-Term Impact (0-2 years)
UNCTAD, the UN’s principal development economics body supporting 195 member states, loses its largest contributor. The organization provides crucial trade analysis, technical assistance on tariff negotiations, and economic policy guidance to developing countries navigating global markets. The U.S. withdrawal coincides with America’s own “reciprocal tariff” policy imposing 25%+ tariffs on dozens of developing countries, including 28 countries that each represent less than 0.1% of the U.S. trade deficit, among them several least developed countries. This double blow of withdrawal of development support plus punitive trade barriers devastates vulnerable economies.
The International Trade Centre, the joint UN/WTO agency exclusively dedicated to micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises in developing countries, faces funding collapse. ITC provides the practical trade capacity that allows developing country SMEs to access global markets—from quality standards to market intelligence to export financing. ITC’s programs on women’s entrepreneurship, youth employment, and critical mineral value chains halt abruptly.
The UN Population Fund loses $377 million in U.S. funding, with 48 grants terminated immediately. This affects life-saving maternal healthcare, rape treatment, and protection from violence in humanitarian crises—Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan, Haiti, DRC, Chad, Mali, Yemen. In Yemen alone, 1.5 million women lose reproductive health services and 300,000 lose gender-based violence prevention programs. In Bangladesh, obstetric care facilities for Rohingya refugees face closure.
Regional UN Economic Commissions covering Africa, Latin America/Caribbean, Asia/Pacific, and Western Asia lose critical U.S. technical support and funding. These commissions coordinate regional economic development, infrastructure planning, and SDG implementation. Their capacity to assist member countries with economic recovery from COVID-19, climate adaptation, and digital transformation degrades significantly.
Medium-Term Impact (2-5 years)
Developing countries face a catastrophic combination of reduced development assistance, increased trade barriers, and lost technical support. Countries that each represent less than 0.1% of the U.S. trade deficit now face reciprocal tariffs that generate negligible U.S. revenue but devastate their export sectors. Simultaneously, they lose the UNCTAD and ITC technical assistance that helped them navigate trade negotiations and build export capacity. The compound effect pushes vulnerable economies toward financial crises.
China’s development finance model fills the void, but with fundamentally different approaches. Where USAID and UN development agencies emphasized health, education, governance, and emergency response through grants, China’s Belt and Road Initiative focuses on large-scale infrastructure and natural resource extraction through loans. While Gulf states and the EU increase aid commitments, they cannot match the scale of U.S. withdrawals and operate with shorter-term, less comprehensive frameworks.
The lack of development alternatives accelerates migration pressures toward the U.S. and Europe. Economic desperation in Central America, sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia exacerbated by loss of U.S. development support and punitive tariffs drives increased irregular migration. This creates the very border security challenges the Trump administration claims to prioritize.
Maternal and child health crises intensify. The UNFPA funding cuts result in millions of additional unwanted pregnancies and preventable maternal deaths annually, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Maternal mortality rates reverse decades of progress. In conflict zones where UNFPA provided the only reproductive healthcare, preventable deaths from childbirth complications surge.
Long-Term Impact (5+ years)
A development architecture centered on China replaces the Western-led post-World War II system. Developing countries, lacking alternatives, accept Chinese financing terms, technical standards, and governance expectations. This debt-dependency creates long-term political leverage for Beijing across Africa, Latin America, and Asia. American influence in these regions built over decades evaporates.
Economic divergence between developed and developing worlds accelerates. Without institutions like UNCTAD and ITC facilitating developing country integration into global value chains, poor countries remain trapped in commodity exports and low-value manufacturing. The gap between rich and poor nations widens dramatically, creating geopolitical instability, mass migration, and humanitarian crises that ultimately cost the U.S. far more than the development assistance would have.
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2030 fail comprehensively. The SDG framework: ending poverty, achieving gender equality, ensuring quality education, promoting decent work, etc. depended substantially on U.S. support through UN agencies and multilateral development banks. American withdrawal guarantees that most SDGs remain unmet, with cascading consequences for global stability.
Public health crises recur without the reproductive health infrastructure UNFPA built. Higher maternal mortality, inadequate family planning, and poor reproductive health outcomes create demographic pressures (read: population growth exceeding economic capacity) that drive instability and migration for generations.
V. Governance & Administrative Bodies of the UN
UN governance and administrative withdrawals telegraph an intent to weaken the UN’s role as the world’s coordination backbone, while recognizing that certain humanitarian and security functions will continue by inertia and with other sponsors.
Stepping away from DESA, system‑wide coordination forums, training institutes, UN Energy/Water/Oceans, the UN University, and legal and arms registers signals that shared rules, data, and expertise are treated as expendable at the margins, inviting other powers, especially China, to gain outsized influence over how global governance evolves even if they may not succeed in fully dominating it.
Affected Organizations
UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs
UN System Chief Executives Board for Coordination
UN System Staff College
UN Institute for Training and Research
Office of the Special Adviser on Africa
International Law Commission
UN Register of Conventional Arms
UN Energy
UN Water
UN Oceans
UN University
UN Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation
Short-Term Impact (0-2 years)
The U.S. withdrawal from core UN administrative and coordination bodies creates immediate operational chaos within the UN system. The UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, which coordinates the UN’s work on the SDGs and provides analytical support to ECOSOC and the General Assembly, loses critical resources and expertise. The UN System Chief Executives Board, which coordinates policies and management across 31 UN entities, fractures as its largest contributor withdraws.
Knowledge generation and training capacity collapses. The UN Institute for Training and Research, which builds capacity of diplomats and officials globally, and the UN Staff College, which trains UN personnel, face funding crises. This degradation of institutional knowledge and professional development creates long-term competency gaps across the UN system.
Critical environmental coordination mechanisms (UN Energy, UN Water, UN Oceans) lose their integrative capacity. These inter-agency platforms coordinate UN activities on shared challenges requiring multiple expertise areas. Their weakening means duplicative, uncoordinated UN responses to environmental crises, reducing effectiveness and wasting resources.
The UN University, a global network of research institutes providing evidence-based policy solutions to the UN, faces existential funding challenges. Its loss diminishes the UN’s capacity for independent, rigorous research on emerging global challenges from AI governance to sustainable development.
Medium-Term Impact (2-5 years)
UN system coordination deteriorates significantly. Without U.S. participation in coordination bodies, the UN’s already-fragmented agencies and programs operate in greater isolation. Duplication of efforts increases, resources are wasted, and comprehensive responses to complex challenges become impossible.
The quality of UN analysis and policy recommendations declines markedly. The Department of Economic and Social Affairs produces less rigorous research without U.S. data contributions and analytical expertise. The International Law Commission’s work on developing international legal frameworks proceeds without American legal scholarship and diplomatic engagement.
China and other powers exploit coordination gaps to advance parochial interests. Without the U.S. as a counterweight in coordination bodies, China shapes UN priorities, staffing, and operations to align with its strategic goals. The UN gradually transforms from a Western-led to a China-influenced organization, with profound implications for global governance norms.
Environmental coordination failures lead to ineffective responses to cascading crises. Climate-driven water scarcity, ocean acidification, and energy transitions require coordinated UN action across multiple agencies. Without functioning coordination platforms, the UN’s response becomes fragmented and inadequate, allowing crises to worsen.
Long-Term Impact (5+ years)
The UN as an effective multilateral institution declines into irrelevance. Coordination failures, funding shortfalls, and great power manipulation render the organization incapable of addressing major global challenges. Its legitimacy and effectiveness diminish to levels approaching the League of Nations before its collapse.
A bifurcated international system emerges: a Western bloc around NATO and the EU pursuing one set of policies, and a China-led bloc including the BRICS and developing countries pursuing alternative frameworks. The UN, unable to bridge these blocs effectively, ceases to function as a unifying global body.
Knowledge and training capacity losses create permanent institutional weakness across international organizations. A generation of diplomats, officials, and experts lacks proper training in multilateral cooperation, international law, and global governance. This human capital deficit makes eventual reconstruction of effective international institutions far more difficult.
The absence of coordinated environmental governance leads to unmanaged ecological crises (water wars, fisheries collapse, ecosystem destruction) that destabilize entire regions and create humanitarian disasters the international community cannot address coherently.
VI. Cross-Cutting Strategic Impacts
The cross‑cutting strategic impacts of these policy changes underscore that these withdrawals amount less to isolated bureaucratic tweaks and more to a coordinated reordering of global power that measurably accelerates China’s rise, reduces the restraint of hostile states, erodes U.S. credibility, and carries substantial economic downside, even if American structural strengths and some alliances endure.
Taken together, they signal an “allergic reaction” to multilateral constraint that fractures the existing order, encourages alternative blocs to harden against Washington, and trades modest budget savings for a higher probability of future losses in market access, security, and long‑term influence.
China’s Ascendancy to Global Leadership
The single most consequential long-term impact of U.S. withdrawals is China’s emergence as the dominant shaper of international governance. As one analysis notes, “When America retreats, China leads.” Beijing has systematically increased its presence in international organizations: leading four of 15 specialized UN agencies, expanding its civil servant ranks, and boosting financial contributions. U.S. withdrawal eliminates the primary counterweight to Chinese influence.
China leverages this vacuum through its concept of “discourse power”: the use of narrative to gain global influence. Chinese Foreign Ministry statements characterize U.S. actions as putting “its own interests over the public good of the international community: and brushing “aside international law and international order in pursuit of its selfish interests,” actions “widely opposed by the international community.” This narrative positions China as the responsible stakeholder and the U.S. as an unreliable partner, winning support particularly from developing countries seeking solutions to global challenges.
In concrete terms:
Climate: China sets global clean energy standards and controls critical mineral supply chains
Technology: China establishes norms for AI governance, cyber sovereignty, and internet governance
Development: The BRI becomes the primary development financing mechanism for 150+ countries
Governance: Chinese nationals occupy senior positions across UN agencies, embedding Chinese priorities in institutional DNA
By 2040, China comprehensively replaces the U.S. as the architect of international order, not through military conquest but through patient institution-building while America withdraws. As Professor Michael McFaul warns, “Trump’s United States could easily emerge as a greater threat to liberal internationalism than Putin’s Russia or Xi’s China.”
The “My Way or the Highway” Doctrine
Daniel Forti of the International Crisis Group characterizes U.S. policy as: “What we’re witnessing is the solidification of the U.S. stance on multilateralism, which can be summarized as ‘my way or the highway.’ It reflects a clear desire for international cooperation strictly on Washington’s terms.”
This approach fundamentally misunderstands power in the 21st century. Unlike the unipolar post-Cold War era when the U.S. could dictate terms, today’s multipolar world requires coalition-building and sustained engagement. By demanding compliance rather than seeking partnership, the U.S. accelerates the formation of alternative blocs explicitly designed to counter American influence.
The paradox: Trump administration officials claim these withdrawals protect U.S. sovereignty and advance American interests. In practice, they achieve the opposite, reducing American influence over outcomes that directly affect U.S. security and prosperity while empowering rivals.
Financial and Economic Consequences
The immediate fiscal “savings” from these withdrawals are minuscule compared to potential economic losses. In FY2022, total U.S. contributions to international organizations were $21 billion, roughly 0.06% of U.S. GDP. Of this, the majority was voluntary funding directed toward specific programs the U.S. deemed beneficial.
The costs of withdrawal compound rapidly:
Lost market access: U.S. companies lose influence over international standards, regulations, and procurement worth trillions of dollars. Clean energy markets alone exceed $2 trillion annually by 2035. American firms’ market share contracts as they’re excluded from standard-setting bodies.
Increased security costs: Without peacebuilding and development assistance, conflict zones proliferate. Military interventions and humanitarian responses cost orders of magnitude more than preventive assistance. The Syria crisis alone has cost over €38 billion in EU humanitarian aid—far exceeding what conflict prevention would have cost.
Trade disruption: Developing countries losing U.S. development support while facing punitive tariffs default on debts, experience currency crises, and reduce imports of American goods. The compounding effect on global supply chains disrupts U.S. businesses dependent on international trade.
Migration surges: Economic collapse and instability in regions losing U.S. support drive massive migration toward U.S. borders. The costs of border enforcement, detention, and asylum processing exceed development assistance that could stabilize source countries.
Credibility Collapse and Alliance Erosion
America’s reliability as a partner has become the central question in global affairs. As one European leader stated, the rules-based international order is challenged “not by the usual suspects, but by its main architect and guarantor, the U.S.”
This credibility crisis manifests across domains:
NATO allies question U.S. commitment when America withdraws from European security coordination bodies like the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats and the Regional Cooperation Council. If the U.S. won’t participate in threat assessment and information sharing, will it honor Article 5 collective defense obligations?
Asian partners face similar doubts as the U.S. withdraws from ReCAAP and other regional security mechanisms. Japan, South Korea, Philippines, and Australia, facing Chinese assertiveness, question whether U.S. security guarantees remain credible if America won’t participate in basic security coordination.
Developing country partners conclude U.S. commitments are worthless. After decades of American promises on development assistance, climate finance, and institution-building, wholesale withdrawal demonstrates that U.S. support is contingent on the views of a single leader and can be reversed instantly.
Future U.S. administrations will find it nearly impossible to rebuild trust.
The Paradox of Isolationism
The Trump administration frames these withdrawals as “America First” policy focused on U.S. interests. The historical record shows this approach consistently produces the opposite outcome:
Interwar isolationism (1920s-1930s): U.S. rejection of the League of Nations and withdrawal from international cooperation allowed Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan to expand unchecked, ultimately forcing American intervention in World War II at catastrophic cost.
Vietnam withdrawal without transition planning (1970s): Abrupt U.S. disengagement from Southeast Asia created power vacuums that China and the Soviet Union exploited, leading to regional instability and proxy conflicts that drew the U.S. back in.
Afghanistan withdrawal (2021): Hasty American exit without coordination with allies resulted in unnecessary casualties, emboldened Russia to invade Ukraine, encouraged China to accelerate pressure on Taiwan, and signaled to adversaries that U.S. commitments are ephemeral.
The current wave of withdrawals follows this pattern. Rather than “America Alone” as intended, the result is “America Isolated” and lacking influence over outcomes that directly affect U.S. interests while rivals readily fill the voids.
Conclusion: The Reshaping of Global Order
The withdrawal from 66 international organizations doesn’t represent a national policy adjustment. This is a civilizational retreat.
The liberal international order constructed after 1945 (admittedly imperfect and quite often serving narrow U.S. interests) nevertheless provided frameworks for cooperation that prevented major power war for eight decades, lifted billions from poverty, and facilitated unprecedented prosperity.
In the short term (0-2 years), these withdrawals create operational chaos, funding gaps, and diplomatic acrimony. Organizations struggle to maintain core functions. Beneficiaries of programs, from women in conflict zones to scientists working on climate solutions to officials building democratic institutions, lose critical support. Rival powers begin positioning themselves to exploit the emerging vacuum.
In the medium term (2-5 years), alternative power structures crystallize. China constructs a parallel international order through the BRI, expanded UN engagement, and new institutions like the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. Authoritarian governance models spread as democracy assistance evaporates. Regional conflicts intensify without effective peacebuilding mechanisms. Climate change accelerates unchecked by international cooperation. Migration, public health crises, and economic instability multiply.
In the long term (5+ years), the consequences become irreversible. American influence over global outcomes, from trade rules to security architecture to technological standards, diminishes to marginal status. China establishes itself as the architect of 21st-century international order, embedding its interests, values, and governance models in institutions that will shape global affairs for decades. The democratic-authoritarian divide hardens into separate, competing systems with the U.S. relegated to leadership of a declining Western bloc.
Future U.S. administrations will find reconstruction nearly impossible.
The trust deficit, China’s entrenched institutional advantages, and developing countries’ shift toward alternative partners create structural barriers to American re-engagement. Even if the U.S. attempts to rejoin these organizations, it will do so as a supplicant lacking the influence it once commanded.
The Trump administration justifies these withdrawals by claiming the organizations “advance globalist agendas over U.S. priorities.” The fundamental error in this flawed worldview is the assumption that U.S. interests can be secured through unilateral action. The challenges of the 21st century, including climate change, pandemics, terrorism, technological disruption, economic instability, and mass migration, are inherently transnational, and require coordinated responses. By withdrawing from the crucial mechanisms that enable coordination, the Trump administration guarantees our inability to shape outcomes on issues that directly affect American security and prosperity.
The world is not choosing between the United States and China. The world is moving on without the United States. This analysis has examined each withdrawal category systematically, and the verdict is unambiguous. Across every domain—climate, democracy, security, development, governance—these withdrawals damage U.S. interests in the short term, substantially degrade American influence in the medium term, and produce irreversible strategic disadvantage in the long term.
The beneficiaries are America’s rivals; the losers include the American people, whose security and prosperity depend on our stable, prosperous, cooperative international system. Donald J. Trump's policy actions since Inauguration Day are placing that system in mortal peril.
My second essay examines how these same choices are reshaping Americans’ psychology, media environment, and tolerance for coercion at home.
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