Donald Trump has quit numerous international organizations. Many of his choices are good and long overdue. A few others, though, present real dangers to peace.
Considerable public and media attention has focused on reports that Trump’s administration now plans to pull the United States out of dozens of other international organizations. Some 66 multilateral bodies are on the target list, with missions ranging from climate issues to migration, reproductive controversies, and cotton policy. Such cuts and terminations would continue noticeable trends during the president’s first year in office when Washington withdrew from the World Health Organization and the UN Human Rights Council.
Reports about the additional looming changes have produced another flurry of accusations that Trump is guilty of being a dreaded “isolationist” who will endanger America’s security, prosperity, and “global leadership.” The accusation is hardly new; he faced similar charges during his first term.
Much of the criticism is overwrought. Washington’s departure from some of the entities, such as the International Cotton Advisory Committee, would be no big loss, since they are little more that lucrative sinecures for American and foreign bureaucrats. A U.S. withdrawal from some other organizations, especially the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, would be decidedly beneficial in terms of policy impact. Indeed, leaving the IPCC would be nearly as warranted as the administration’s earlier departure from the grotesquely misnamed UN Human Rights Council, a body that included as members some of the most repressive, murderous regimes on the planet.
The president’s supporters summarily dismiss allegations of isolationism, and their derisive response is understandable. Proponents of the global interventionist policy that Washington has pursued since World War II routinely use “isolationist” as a pejorative to discredit even the most thoughtful and prudent ideological opponents. Mild mavericks who advocate a slightly less activist U.S. military role in the world have been victims of the smear. It is a cynical approach that members of an intellectually lazy but thoroughly dominant foreign policy establishment use to stifle meaningful debate.
Isolationism evokes the image of the United States as a hermit republic, practicing economic and diplomatic autarchy and ignoring dire global security threats unless they pose a direct, immediate threat to the United States. Dedicated hawks routinely smeared opponents of Washington’s disastrous wars of choice in Vietnam, the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan, and several other countries with that term. The isolationist label presents a caricature of an America that chooses to cut itself off from the rest of the world. The vast majority of historical episodes confirm that the allegation has been utterly nonsensical. Even in Trump’s case, his behavior thus far more resembles the brazen, aggressive imperialism of Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk, or Theodore Roosevelt than it does the isolationist stereotype.
There is one area, though, in which the president’s track record does evoke legitimate concerns about his apparent hostility to a constructive U.S. role in world affairs. Trump has been too casual about having the United States withdraw from a wide array of international agreements and organizations. Although some of those maneuvers were appropriate or at least relatively harmless, others have done needless damage to international cooperation and even increased the risk of armed conflicts.
The United States decided to withdraw from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) in August 2019. Trashing the INF Treaty made Europe a decidedly more dangerous place. It was one of several U.S. actions during the Trump years that badly weakened the system of formal and informal restraints on strategic weapons. In the autumn of 2025, the Russian government announced that it would no longer be bound by a self-imposed moratorium on the deployment of medium-range missiles, even those that might be armed with nuclear warheads. Moscow had put the moratorium into effect as a stop-gap replacement for the deceased INF.
Trump also ended Washington’s adherence to the Open Skies agreement with Moscow in November 2020. The Open Skies measure had assured greater transparency regarding the movement and deployment of bombers and missiles. The Kremlin saw that agreement as a crucial reassurance against any buildup or threatening conduct featuring U.S. or NATO strategic weapons on Russia’s doorstep in Central and Eastern Europe. Not surprisingly, the agreement’s demise is exacerbating already worrisome East-West tensions.
Trump also has dragged his feet about extending the New Start treaty. Currently, New Start is the only bilateral nuclear weapons deal between Moscow and Washington still in effect. That crucial agreement caps the number of ICBMs at 1,550 for each side. Unfortunately, the treaty is scheduled to expire automatically in February 2026. Both Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin have expressed some willingness to extend New Start. However, only a possible one-year extension has been discussed, and even that brief continuation is not yet a sure thing. During a January 8, 2026, interview with the New York Times, Trump doused hopes for even such a limited achievement when he made the flippant comment: “If it expires, it expires.”
Trump’s attitude on other arms control issues has been unhelpful as well, and his behavior needs to change. Indeed, he has the opportunity to propose some new, beneficial U.S. and international initiatives. Although the United States signed the global Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 1996, the U.S. Senate has never ratified the document. That omission took on a much more troubling aspect in November, 2023, when the Russian parliament approved a law revoking Russia’s 2000 ratification of the treaty. In pushing through the de-ratification measure, Putin said that he merely sought to “mirror” the U.S. position.
Such maneuvers by Washington and Moscow significantly increase the risk that several countries might resume the underground testing of nuclear weapons. Trump could take the lead in reducing the likelihood of such a dangerous development. Instead, he is adopting the opposite course, threatening to approve a new round of U.S. nuclear tests.
Embracing the CTBT would be a huge opportunity for the administration to foster a more peaceful international environment. Taking that step also would be an effective rebuttal to the charges that the president is a retrograde isolationist. He could then make a compelling case that Washington remains eager to cooperate on sensible, important international initiatives while jettisoning corrupt or useless ones. He might even trigger a sober domestic and global debate on the overall substance of U.S. foreign policy instead of the inflammatory, often hysterical version that now dominates the news.
