Opinion | US faces costly isolation as ‘world minus one’ cooperation grows
World

Opinion | US faces costly isolation as ‘world minus one’ cooperation grows

Economy World



US President Donald Trump’s “flood the zone” strategy – intended to keep the world’s media so busy with his narratives they have no capacity to generate their own – is set to change this weekend.

After three months focused largely on tariffs and coercive trade deals (with unwelcome distractions from Ukraine, Gaza and Jeffrey Epstein), his administration is due to deliver the fruits of a 180-day State Department review of all multilateral organisations, conventions and treaties, and “provide recommendations as to whether the United States should withdraw” from them.

Given Trump’s allergy to multilateralism, there is little expectation of a balanced overview with nuanced recommendations.

The California-based Carnegie Foundation, for instance, expects the review to be “a wrecking ball exercise with a predetermined outcome”, bluntly pointing out its “potential to upend decades of American global engagement” and “lead to a US abrogation of thousands of treaties and a departure from hundreds of multilateral organisations”.

Most of these will have been of America’s making – the product of eight decades of diplomatic investment.

The Trump administration has given the world a taste of what is likely to come. He has already withdrawn the US from the Paris climate accord, UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), Gaza relief agency UNRWA and the World Health Organization, which he accused of being a “corrupt globalist scam, paid for by the United States but owned and controlled by China”. He has abolished USAID, reportedly culling its staff from 14,000 to 294 and abruptly cut US-funded aid programmes across the world.

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