Richard Gowan
How has the multilateral system fared in the Trump era? At first glance, the answer must be “poorly.” Donald Trump has attacked and boycotted numerous international agreements and arrangements as U.S. president, ranging from the Paris Agreement on climate change to the World Health Organization. America’s relations with China have worsened dramatically at the United Nations and other forums, culminating in the two powers’ furious disputes over COVID-19. In New York and Geneva, diplomats fret about a growing “crisis of multilateralism.”
Much of this sorry story was entirely predictable. In September 2016, when a Trump presidency still seemed improbable even as Hillary Clinton’s lead in the polls was narrowing, I wrote in World Politics Review that the Republican candidate, if elected, was liable to pull out of U.N. forums he didn’t like and cut funds to multilateral initiatives. I also noted that China would become an “essential player” at the U.N., offering “alternative leadership” to the U.S.
Yet while these predictions have proven close to the mark, the last four years have not been entirely bad for international cooperation. Washington has failed to persuade many other countries to join its attacks on multilateral mechanisms. Instead, worried by both Trump’s bullying tactics and China’s rising assertiveness, many states have invested political capital in defending the international system.
When Trump announced that the U.S. would quit the Paris Agreement in 2017, no other country followed its lead. When the U.S. left the Human Rights Council in 2018, arguing that it showed bias against Israel, America’s European allies chose to persevere with the forum, using it to highlight abuses in Myanmar and the Philippines, among others. While the Trump administration has tried hard to kill off the Obama-era nuclear agreement with Iran, the other powers involved in the deal—Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia—have stuck together to keep it alive.
The U.S. under Trump has succeeded in dragooning a few socially conservative and politically illiberal states, such as Hungary, to support its efforts to undermine the U.N. on issues like migration and reproductive rights. But it has rarely succeeded in mustering coalitions to back its positions. The Trump administration recently announced that 32 other countries had joined it to support a new “Geneva Consensus Declaration” opposing the right to abortion, but they included some unsavory partners such as Belarus.
Foreign diplomats say that the U.S. has struggled to gain more backing not only because other countries find its stances inherently unpalatable, but also because American diplomacy has often been incoherent.
In contrast to the Obama administration, which invested personnel and resources in the grinding work of multilateral outreach, Trump’s foreign policy officials tend to be uncoordinated and often strident in their statements. As the International Crisis Group noted last year, other diplomats at the Security Council have often been frustrated to find that their U.S. counterparts lack clear instructions on how to handle crises like the war in Yemen. And as one anonymous diplomat told The Guardian this summer, U.S. officials trying to increase pressure on Iran via the U.N. “isolated themselves from people not on policy, but just on being unpleasant.”
Trump’s scattershot attacks on multilateral cooperation have ultimately highlighted—and reinforced—other countries’ attachment to the institutions and bargains that he rejects.
Representatives of U.S. allies lament that Washington’s incoherent diplomacy has also made it harder to address China’s expanding influence at the U.N. Since President Trump took office, Chinese officials have redoubled their efforts, ongoing since the mid-2010s, to gain more influence and fill senior positions in U.N. agencies. The Trump administration has loudly condemned Beijing’s efforts, warning that it is a “bad actor” in multilateral institutions. Yet in practical terms, Washington’s response has often been messy. In 2019, for example, China managed to place one of its own officials at the head of the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization, in part because the U.S. failed to throw its weight behind the most credible alternative candidate, a French civil servant.
Since then, the U.S. has appointed a special envoy, Mark Lambert, to coordinate with allies in such races. It successfully blocked a Chinese candidate to head the World Intellectual Property Organization in March.
But Trump ratcheted up tensions with China over COVID-19, and once again unsettled American allies by announcing in May that the U.S. would quit the WHO over its apparent deference to Beijing during the pandemic. Trump also devoted much of his most recent annual address to the U.N. General Assembly to berating Beijing, not only blaming it for the pandemic but also attacking it for its environmental record.
It is important to note that talk of a “new Cold War” at the U.N. is overstated. China and the U.S. continue to cooperate on certain issues, such as enforcing Security Council sanctions on North Korea. But the two powers are clearly entering into a new phase of bipolar competition in U.N. forums. While this may have been a byproduct of China’s rise, the Trump administration has hastened and exacerbated the process.
While U.S. analysts may be inclined to focus on China’s position at the U.N., other forces are at play in the multilateral arena worthy of their attention. For example, a significant number of states have tried to find a middle way between the two great powers. In 2018, France and Germany launched an “Alliance for Multilateralism” as an umbrella for cooperation on emerging issues like cybersecurity. Over 60 states have signed on to this loose framework. This summer, European governments and middle powers such as Canada threw their weight behind COVAX, a WHO-backed mechanism to get a COVID-19 vaccine to poorer countries, despite neither the U.S. nor China initially backing the initiative. (China signed up later on, but Washington continues to ignore it.)
The Trump administration’s distaste for much of the multilateral system—and the prospect of a Sino-American struggle for influence over international institutions—has thus had the positive effect of inspiring others to take more responsibility for advancing international cooperation. This process is partial and incomplete, to be sure. It is not clear that the states that have advocated multilateralism over the past four years could maintain the effort for another four if Trump wins a second term.
But for now, Trump’s scattershot attacks on multilateral cooperation have ultimately highlighted—and reinforced—other countries’ attachment to the institutions and bargains that he rejects. The president may have done multilateralism an unintended favor by attacking it.
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