By Ben Norton – Jul 27, 2025
Donald Trump is withdrawing the US from UN bodies, tearing up climate change treaties, and attacking multilateral orgs — just like the presidents before him. Imperialism is bipartisan in Washington.
The Donald Trump administration has launched many frontal attacks on multilateral organizations and international law.
However, these clear violations of international law are nothing new for US presidents. Opposition to multilateralism has been a bipartisan feature of US politics for many decades.
In February, Trump withdrew the United States from the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), repeating an action he had done back in 2018, during his first term.
The Trump administration also attacked the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), and announced that he had cut US funding for both UNRWA and the UNHRC.
Then, in July, Trump withdrew the United States from UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization.
The US State Department complained that “UNESCO’s decision to admit the ‘State of Palestine’ as a Member State is highly problematic, contrary to U.S. policy, and contributed to the proliferation of anti-Israel rhetoric within the organization”.
During his first term, back in 2017, Trump had also withdrawn the US from UNESCO.
In superficial contrast to Trump, the Joe Biden administration cynically employed rhetoric about multilateralism. But it was just marketing, because Washington still acted in an aggressive, unilateral manner.
In 2021, Biden had the US rejoin the UNHRC. His Secretary of State Antony Blinken insisted that Washington was upholding the so-called “rules-based international order”.
In 2023, the Biden administration even rejoined UNESCO — although this was the same year that the US government sponsored a genocide in Gaza, flooded Israel with $18 billion in military aid, and unilaterally vetoed numerous UN Security Council resolutions that called for a ceasefire.
In fact, Trump took credit in 2025 for suspending US funding for UNRWA, the UN Palestine refugees agency, but Reuters published a fact check noting that it had already been halted by the Biden administration in 2024.
Again, opposition to international law is bipartisan in Washington.
Democratic critics have depicted Trump as a unique threat over his flagrant opposition to international law.
The corporate media has often repeated this deceptive trope, spinning the narrative that the US government supported multilateralism and international law until Trump came along and blew it all up.
This is completely false, ahistorical, and absurd.
One does not need to go back far in history to see the myriad examples of Washington blatantly attacking international law.
George W. Bush signed the Hague Invasion Act in 2002, threatening military intervention if the Hague ever tried US officials or their allies. That same year, he also “unsigned” the treaty establishing the International Criminal Court (ICC).
When the Trump White House imposed sanctions on the ICC in February 2025, it cited the Bush-era Hague Invasion Act (officially called the American Servicemembers’ Protection Act) to justify the aggressive action.
Bush similarly withdrew from a major international treaty on climate change in 2001. Trump later did the same, pulling out of the Paris Agreement, which is a legally binding international treaty under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Then, of course, Bush invaded Iraq in a criminal war of aggression, which UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said clearly violated international law. A million Iraqis died due to this illegal imperial war.
It is not just Republicans who wage these political wars on international law; Democrats do as well.
You know who helped establish the precedent for attacking UNESCO? Barack Obama. He cut US funding for UNESCO in 2011, after the UN body voted to admit Palestine.
Obama then went on, in 2016, to sign the biggest deal for US military aid to the Israeli colonial regime in history, at a neat $38 billion.
Likewise, Obama waged wars on Syria, Libya, and Yemen, not to mention his drone wars in Pakistan and Somalia and his continuation of the US military occupation of Afghanistan.
Ronald Reagan had a lot of similarities with Donald Trump, too. In 1983-84, decades before Trump came to power, Reagan withdrew the US from UNESCO.
How the Israeli-US Alliance Destroyed International Law and the UN System
The Reagan administration complained that the UN body was “collectivist”, discussed disarmament (read: peace) proposals, and considered the New International Economic Order that was demanded by the formerly colonized countries of the Global South.
A US State Department official under Reagan also attacked the International Labor Organization (ILO), United Nations environmental program, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and International Telecommunications Union, the New York Times reported at the time.
In the 1980s, Reagan spat in the face of international law by waging numerous criminal wars of aggression.
In 1983, the US invaded the small Caribbean nation of Grenada, to violently overthrow its revolutionary anti-imperialist government.
The Reagan administration also launched a bloody war against Nicaragua, resorting to terrorist tactics and far-right death squads in a desperate attempt to overthrow its leftist Sandinista government.
Nicaragua filed a lawsuit against the United States in 1984 at the UN’s International Court of Justice (ICJ). The US regime lost this case, but Washington refused to pay reparations to Nicaragua, which are still legally owed to this day.
In short, what Donald Trump is doing today — withdrawing the US from UN bodies, tearing up climate change treaties, and attacking multilateral organizations — is exactly what the US empire has done for decades, regardless of who the president of the regime is.
Trump himself is not the sole problem; he is a symptom of the deep structural rot. The problem is US imperialism, and it is thoroughly bipartisan.
Ben Norton
Benjamin Norton is the founder and editor of the independent news website Multipolarista, where he does original reporting in both English and Spanish. Benjamin has reported from numerous countries, including Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Ecuador, Honduras, Colombia, and more. His journalistic work has been published in dozens of media outlets, and he has done interviews on Sky News, Al Jazeera, Democracy Now, El Financiero Bloomberg, Al Mayadeen teleSUR, RT, TRT World, CGTN, Press TV, HispanTV, Sin Censura, and various TV channels in Mexico, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia. Benjamin writes a regular column for Al Mayadeen (in English and Spanish). He was formerly a reporter with the investigative journalism website The Grayzone, and previously produced the political podcast and video show Moderate Rebels. His personal website is BenNorton.com, and he tweets at @BenjaminNorton.
