Fragmented Multilateralism: The Consequences of US Withdrawal from the UN System

On 7 January 2026, the White House issued a presidential memorandum directing the United States to withdraw from 66 international organisations, conventions, and treaties. The stated objectives were to exit bodies deemed redundant, mismanaged, wasteful, or contrary to US national interests. This decision constitutes the most sweeping disengagement from the postwar multilateral order that the United States itself helped to construct — and its consequences extend well beyond Washington.

The 66 entities targeted span six broad policy domains: climate and environment, human rights and governance, global health, security and counter-terrorism, economic development, and humanitarian aid. They include the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), the UN Human Rights Council, the World Health Organisation (WHO), the Arms Trade Treaty monitoring body, and UNRWA, which is the primary healthcare provider operating in Gaza. Notably, the US retains its Security Council veto and membership in agencies such as the World Food Programme and UNHCR, illustrating the selective rather than comprehensive nature of this disengagement.

The administration’s rationale rests on three core issues: sovereignty, ideology, and efficiency. Under the sovereignty argument, they have framed multilateral bodies as threats to national self-determination. On ideological grounds, these forums are perceived as promoting progressive agendas on gender equity, diversity, and climate policy, which are seen as ‘woke’ by the trump administration. On efficiency grounds, the memorandum cites “unfairly onerous payments” relative to the return on investment. Each argument warrants scrutiny. As of early 2025, the United States already owed approximately $1.5 billion in unpaid assessed contributions to the UN regular budget  which are obligations that are legally binding under the UN Charter. If the US continues this non-payment, it risks forfeiture of the US General Assembly vote. Furthermore, in 2024 alone, US$2.13 billion in UN-administered contracts was awarded to American businesses, a domestic economic benefit that withdrawal places directly at risk.

The humanitarian implications are severe and immediate. Defunding UNRWA eliminates the largest healthcare provider in Gaza at a moment of acute crisis. Cutting $380 million from UNFPA directly curtails maternal health and family planning services across some of the world’s most fragile states. Withdrawal from the UN offices monitoring Children in Armed Conflict and Sexual Violence in Conflict removes the evidentiary infrastructure that the Security Council relies upon to authorize and direct peace operations — operations that the US simultaneously wishes to influence through its veto. On climate, exiting the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement removes the United States from the foundational framework for global emissions negotiations, reducing both the diplomatic coherence and the financial scale of international climate action.

The strategic consequences may prove more durable than the immediate humanitarian ones. US withdrawal creates an institutional vacuum that rival powers are well-positioned to fill. China has deliberately expanded its multilateral footprint: it now serves as the second-largest contributor to both the UN regular budget and peacekeeping operations, and it is actively leveraging its growing influence to promote an alternative model of global governance, one anchored in transactional sovereignty rather than universal norms. The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation’s growing presence is one indicator of this deliberate repositioning. In short, the US is not downsizing the multilateral system; it is transferring norm-setting authority to actors whose values and interests differ sharply from those that shaped the postwar order.

This shift has particular significance for the Global South. Countries with deep stakes in the multilateral system (Bangladesh being a prominent example) face compounding risks. Bangladesh is among the world’s largest contributors of UN peacekeeping personnel; a funding crisis at the UN directly constrains the operational capacity of those missions. WHO programming in Bangladesh underpins outbreak surveillance and public health response infrastructure. UN-backed development initiatives in health, sanitation, and climate adaptation face delays or cancellation as funding commitments are withdrawn. And as a frontline climate-vulnerable state, Bangladesh stands to lose access to both the technical frameworks and financial mechanisms that US withdrawal from the UNFCCC and Green Climate Fund disbands.

The broader structural consequence is the emergence of what can be termed “fragmented multilateralism”: a transition away from universal rules-based institutions toward ad hoc, interest-driven coalitions of the willing. This model may serve narrow short-term objectives, but it is ill-suited to the coordination demands of transboundary challenges such as pandemics, climate change, and nuclear proliferation, which require sustained multilateral commitment across election cycles and administrations. The replacement of a rules-based order with a voluntary, transactional one does not eliminate the need for global governance; it simply makes it more fragile, more inequitable, and more susceptible to the priorities of the most powerful actors at any given moment.

The central question raised by the January 2026 memorandum is not whether multilateral institutions are without fault; they are most obviously not. It is whether the alternative being constructed by default serves the long-term interests of international stability, or indeed of the United States itself. Withdrawal from the institutions one helped design, without a credible alternative framework,  poses the whole liberal world order at risk.