AS reported yesterday (Jan. 9), United States President Donald Trump has issued a sweeping executive order withdrawing the US from international organizations he deems as “contrary to the interests of the United States.” The move did not come as a complete surprise, given Trump’s virulent and jingoistic rhetoric, and his previous actions to remove the US from international bodies and pacts such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Paris Climate Agreement, but it was nonetheless shocking in its scope. The rest of the world must now carefully consider how to respond to the heretofore unthinkable possibility that the US is actively trying to become a pariah state.
In his Jan. 7 executive order, Trump explained that the withdrawal was the result of a review of US participation in international organizations that he ordered in February last year, and that he had determined that “it is contrary to the interests of the United States to remain a member of, participate in, or otherwise provide support to the organizations listed” in the memorandum. There are 66 of them, the majority being United Nations organizations, although the US is not withdrawing from UN membership or its seat on the UN Security Council, at least not yet.
The most prominent US withdrawals are from international climate and environmental organizations, including the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the fundamental agreement underpinning all international climate agreements. Trump, who has stridently pushed his ignorant opinion that climate change is a “hoax,” also pulled the US out of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN body responsible for assessing climate science, alongside other climate-related organizations, including the International Renewable Energy Agency, UN Oceans and UN Water. Other UN organizations named include the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the UN Population Fund, UN Women, and the UN Conference on Trade and Development.
The major practical consequence of the US leaving all of these organizations is the loss of funding, which is part of a larger Trump policy to eliminate almost all US nonmilitary foreign aid, and which has already badly affected institutions such as the WHO, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the World Food Program. Along with the funding, a great deal of scientific and institutional expertise has been lost as well, because US experts are no longer employed by or participating in these programs.
In that sense, the US retreat from international climate, economic and social organizations is intended to directly harm other, particularly developing countries supported by various forms of international aid. The US abolition of most of its foreign aid programs, including dissolving the US Agency for International Development at the beginning of last year, immediately resulted in the loss of approximately P4.7 billion in ongoing development programs here in the Philippines, primarily in the education and public health sectors.
There are other ways in which Trump’s executive order directly attacks development and even the overall well-being of the Philippines and the Southeast Asian region. Other organizations named in the executive order include the Global Counterterrorism Forum; Global Forum on Migration and Development; International Renewable Energy Agency; International Union for the Conservation of Nature; Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships in Asia; Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific; UN Collaborative Program on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries; Global Forum on Cyber Expertise; and the Colombo Plan Council, of which the US representative is currently the president. The Colombo Plan is a group of South and Southeast Asian countries, of which the Philippines is a member, founded in 1951 “operating on the partnership concept of self-help and mutual help to enhance human capital development and South-South cooperation.”
There is a strongly implied message in all of this. US aid and favor will only be given to those countries whose own policies do not “serve a globalist project,” as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement, and reject diversity, equity and inclusion, “climate orthodoxy,” and otherwise do not seek to “constrain American sovereignty.” This is unacceptable, particularly for our country that has long held to the principle of an independent foreign policy. Thus far, the Marcos administration has been tolerant to a fault of US excesses under Trump, but the Philippines’ intimate relationship with the US is now becoming a liability. It is time for that relationship to be carefully reassessed.
