The U.S. formally ended its membership in the World Health Organization last month, a move President Trump set in motion immediately on taking office. This is by far the largest international organization Washington has quit. The administration recently announced plans to withdraw from 66 other international entities.
Mr. Trump has begun an overdue re-evaluation of America’s relationship with an expanding, opaque web of international organizations, but the recent round of cuts was broader than it was deep. Still, in a sign of real realignment in State Department attitudes, even organizations with noble-sounding names weren’t spared. Previous presidents wouldn’t consider quitting the Global Counterterrorism Forum or the International Institute for Justice and the Rule of Law, because they sound nice—even though they accomplish little.
More than a dozen of the exited international organizations dealt with environmental issues, a symptom of significant overlap in their missions. Others, like the Global Forum on Migration and Development and the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe, promote policy agendas largely aligned with European left-wing political values. The United Nations Program for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women became notorious for its slow response to Hamas’s sexual violence on Oct. 7, 2023, though it didn’t miss Amal Clooney’s birthday.
International organizations are where accountability goes to die. They are even further removed from voters than national governments are. Because all states participate on equal terms, there is a classic agency problem in monitoring, with no individual member having adequate incentive to make the necessary efforts. Meaningful reform is impossible for institutions governed by international agreements in which every member state would need to agree to changes.
International organizations are run by a bureaucratic class with a relatively common worldview. Although many have leftist agendas, historically Republicans and Democrats have both promoted U.S. participation, expanding the disconnect between American democracy and the entities’ agendas. Mr. Trump has broken the cycle of growing entanglements.
At the same time, the administration’s exit from 66 organizations exaggerates the scale of the move. Many of the listed entities weren’t treaty organizations of which the U.S. was formally a member but rather funds, conferences or informal consortia that a country could participate in or not, carrying no obligations. Many received no U.S. financial support, and some weren’t even listed in the State Department’s annual inventory of roughly 160 international organizations in which the U.S. participates.
This wasn’t a major housecleaning but more like a culling of online subscriptions. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth doing. Participation in many of these organizations is inherently symbolic—a ritual of internationalism—so quitting them is inherently performative as well.
The most important exits in this batch are withdrawals from treaties, most saliently the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. The U.S. joined the convention through a treaty ratified in 1992. It is unlikely 67 senators would approve this greenhouse-gas boondoggle again. Future exits should focus on other legacy treaty organizations in the U.N. system like the International Organization for Migration. Another, the Food and Agriculture Organization, was designed to eradicate hunger but is now a bloated, Chinese-dominated anachronism.
One underappreciated consequence of the U.S. exit from international organizations is the potential of litigation in U.S. courts. Part of what insulates international organizations from the consequences of their bad decisions is the broad legal immunity they enjoy. But under the International Organizations Immunities Act, this applies only as long as the U.S. “participates” in the organization.
The WHO may be a prime target for plaintiffs lawyers for its role in the Covid pandemic. According to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., “the WHO obstructed the timely and accurate sharing of critical information that could have saved American lives and then concealed those failures under the pretext of acting ‘in the interest of public health.’ ” Lawsuits to hold the WHO liable for alleged Covid-related negligence or coverups were tossed because of immunity. Now, pretty much everyone is a potential plaintiff. And the Supreme Court has held in the context of sovereign immunity that deimmunization applies retroactively.
The administration’s withdrawal from many other international organizations won’t be meaningful in the long run unless coupled by legislative actions to reinforce them. Congress should, where possible, repeal any laws that authorize membership. Given that the State Department sees some of these organizations as “a threat to our nation’s sovereignty, freedoms, and general prosperity,” the administration should make clear to America’s friends and allies that their departure from these organizations will be looked upon favorably. Israel has been a model in this regard, announcing its exit from seven of the same organizations; it is also considering a departure from the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. Other countries may need some prodding.
Mr. Kontorovich is a professor at George Mason University’s Scalia Law School, and a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation.