Trump grows his multilateral exit list, reverses Unesco decision in just 2 years

President Donald Trump has withdrawn the United States from Unesco over the institution’s purported woke policies and support for Palestine.

While the Trump administration has pitched the withdrawal from Unesco and other such organisations as part of the ‘America First’ agenda, such exits have actually helped US adversaries like Russia and China to expand their global footprint by filling the vacuum created by the US withdrawal.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) is the latest organisation that Trump has withdrawn from. He h as previously withdrawn from the World Health Organization (WHO), the Paris climate agreement, and a host of bilateral and multinational treaties.

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These withdrawals are rooted in Trump’s disdain for multilateralism that has seen him even ditch alliances that have been central to US foreign and defence policies for generations.

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Trump’s long war on multilateralism

Trump began the war on multilateralism and has continued it in his second term.

In 2017, Trump withdrew from the Paris climate agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), and Unesco.

In 2018, Trump withdrew the United States from the Iran nuclear deal that the previous Barack Obama administration had negotiated with Iran along with the European Union (EU), United Kingdom, France, China, Russia, and Germany.

In his second term in 2025, Trump has also withdrawn from the WHO, the UN human rights body, and the UN Palestinian agency.

Trump has also withdrawn from the Paris climate agreement and Unesco that the United States had joined under the previous Joe Biden administration.

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Trump has also essentially withdrawn from the security commitment to Europe under the blanket of Nato. In the run-up to the 2024 election, he had said he would encourage Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to European Nato allies if they would not do his bidding.

In addition to putting into question the US commitment to Nato, Trump has also indicated he could abandon Aukus, a security partnership for the Indo-Pacific region with the UK and Australia that involved making nuclear submarines for Australia. Trump’s Department of Defence has initiated a review of the pact.

Trump goes after woke UN — and hands China a victory

The Trump administration has based the withdrawal from Unesco on two topics it has weaponised: purported wokeness and criticism of Israel.

White House Deputy Spokesperson Anna Kelly said that Trump withdrew from Unesco because the organisation “supports woke, divisive cultural and social causes that are totally out-of-step with the commonsense policies that Americans voted for in November”.

Separately, State Department Spokesperson Tammy Bruce said that Unesco’s agenda was to “advance divisive social and cultural causes” and that the organisation’s decision in 2011 “to admit the ‘State of Palestine’ as a Member State is highly problematic, contrary to US policy, and contributed to the proliferation of anti-Israel rhetoric within the organisation”.

Irrespective of whatever the Trump administration may say, the only beneficiaries of such withdrawals have been US adversaries like China and Russia.

Power does not remain in vacuum and if the United States would any place, either a strategic theatre like Europe or multinational organisation like the UN, China is going to increase the footprint there and increase its influence and dominance, according to Prof Tej Pratap Singh, a scholar of China at the Department of Political Science, Banaras Hindu University (BHU).

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Trump has nearly shut down foreign aid via USAID and paralysed a host of humanitarian programmes in Africa, erasing goodwill generated over decades of hard work across the administrations of both the parties. By killing American goodwill and giving China an opening to expand influence is a self-goal — the withdrawal from Unesco is the latest such self-goal.

“Developing countries need assistance. If the United States withdraws, China will reach out to these nations and they will be glad to have Chinese support. China has been making inroads in Africa for many years and the US withdrawal is set to increase that. India has been countering Chinese influence in the Global South but countering China needs joint efforts and, in the absence of US involvement, China is set to make good gains,” Singh previously told Firstpost.