Washington: The United States on Saturday declared that the era of traditional multilateralism is over, days after announcing its withdrawal from 66 international organisations that the Trump administration says are wasteful, ineffective and contrary to American interests.
“What we term the ‘international system’ is now overrun with hundreds of opaque international organisations, many with overlapping mandates, duplicative actions, ineffective outputs, and poor financial and ethical governance,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said.
“The era of writing blank cheques to international bureaucracies is over,” the top American diplomat wrote in a Substack post.
President Donald Trump this week issued a Presidential Memorandum formalising the decision to withdraw from 66 international organisations identified during the administration’s ongoing review of what it described as “wasteful, ineffective, and harmful international organisations”.
The memorandum targets institutions deemed “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,” the department said.
Rubio said continued US investment in such bodies no longer serves American taxpayers or advances global problem-solving. “It is no longer acceptable to invest the American people’s hard-earned tax dollars in institutions that cannot demonstrate results, accountability or respect for our national interests,” he said.
He argued that ongoing US participation “only legitimises their existence and a model that has failed billions around the world”, particularly on issues such as “affordable energy, economic growth, and national sovereignty”.
The Secretary of State cited several United Nations-linked organisations as examples of what the administration views as deep-rooted dysfunction. He pointed to “the UN Population Fund’s long history of ethical violations including funding coerced abortions”, and criticised “UN Women’s failure to define what a woman even is”.
Rubio also accused the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change of “squandering millions of dollars on funding for climate-alarmist, anti-energy investment in the West Bank and Gaza”. He further criticised the UN Permanent Forum on People of African Descent, which he said was “espousing openly racist policies in support of global reparations”.
“These organisations boast a consistent record of dysfunction if not outright malice,” Rubio said. “The American people, our partners and the billions around the world who look to the United States for leadership deserve better.”
The State Department said the organisations selected for withdrawal were chosen after a “lengthy review of their purpose, actions, efficiency, effectiveness, necessity, and most importantly, their ability to help us achieve US national interests”.
Rubio stressed that the 66 organisations announced this week do not represent the full scope of the administration’s concerns. “Those we are withdrawing from are by no means the only offenders,” he said, adding that the review of US participation in international organisations “remains ongoing”.
At the same time, the administration rejected suggestions that the move signals US disengagement from global affairs. “This does not mean America is turning its back on the world,” Rubio said. “We are simply rejecting an outdated model of multilateralism — one that treats the American taxpayer as the world’s underwriter for a sprawling architecture of global governance.”
Rubio said the Trump administration is “demanding real results from the institutions we fund and participate in,” and is prepared to “lead a campaign for reform”. President Trump, he added, “will not allow international organisations to undermine the United States and limit our national sovereignty, our energy independence, our economic prosperity, our democracy, and our constitutional freedoms”.
“This week’s Presidential Memorandum demonstrated that America is no longer accepting the broken status quo,” Rubio said, adding that “sometimes true leadership means knowing when to walk away”.
The US has long been a financial pillar of the post-World War II international system, including the United Nations and other multilateral institutions created to promote global stability and cooperation.
While previous US administrations have withheld funding or withdrawn from individual international bodies, the scale of the current withdrawals marks one of the most sweeping reassessments of US engagement with multilateral institutions in decades.
(IANS)
