Stewart Patrick
Carnegie’s Global Order and Institutions Program identifies promising new multilateral initiatives and frameworks to realize a more peaceful, prosperous, just, and sustainable world. That mission has never been more important, or more challenging. Geopolitical competition, populist nationalism, economic inequality, technological innovation, and a planetary ecological emergency are testing the rules-based international order and complicating collective responses to shared threats. Our mission is to design global solutions to global problems.Learn More
Since World War II, U.S. presidents have believed that the interests and welfare of the United States and its citizens are linked with those of other nations and people. The United States has an abiding interest, as well as a moral obligation, to support international institutions that can advance collective security, promote shared prosperity, address common challenges, and further human dignity worldwide.
President Donald Trump and his supporters dismiss such interdependence as unpatriotic “globalism.” Repudiating any concept of U.S. international leadership of—much less responsibility for—world order, his administration has adopted a nationalist, transactional, and hyper-sovereigntist orientation.
This mindset accounts for two provocative administrative initiatives. The first was a sweeping executive order on February 4 directing Secretary of State Marco Rubio to review all international treaties to which the United States is a party and international organizations of which it is a member and to report back within 180 days with recommendations for withdrawal. The second was the administration’s budget for the 2026 fiscal year, submitted to Congress on May 2. It would slash federal funding for international affairs by almost 84 percent—from $58.7 billion to just $9.6 billion. It does this through massive cuts to U.S. foreign aid and support for international organizations, the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the overhaul of the U.S. Department of State, and the recission of previously appropriated funds.
The thread weaving these twin initiatives together is a mistaken belief that what happens elsewhere is of little concern—and a misplaced confidence that the country has ample national tools and diplomatic leverage to address all transnational threats on its own, or bilaterally.
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