There is a way to read foreign policy that does not run through solemn speeches or spectacular crises, but through the spaces that are left empty. In recent weeks, the United States has announced its withdrawal from an impressive number of international bodies: technical forums, UN agencies, scientific platforms, cooperation programs. Taken one by one, many of these announcements mean little to the public. Considered together, however, they tell a coherent story—a quiet but far-reaching redesign of U.S. engagement with the rest of the world.
This is not merely a matter of geopolitics, nor simply a change of style from one administration to another. It signals a deeper mutation in how multilateralism is conceived. For decades, Washington regarded international institutions as imperfect but necessary tools for governing an interdependent world. Today, by contrast, it increasingly regards such institutions as unnecessary constraints, and as sites where its own sovereignty leaks away. The retreat is not random. It systematically targets the domains where cooperation requires time, trust, shared expertise, and—above all—a vision of the good that does not coincide with immediate self-interest.
Especially telling is the pullback from arenas that generate shared knowledge about the state of the planet: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, international networks on renewable energy and biodiversity. This is not a technical quarrel over energy models or emissions percentages. What is at stake is the very idea that there exist goods—climate, ecosystems, air quality, oceans—that no state can govern alone. To withdraw from these spaces is to weaken the possibility of a collective response to crises that are unmistakably global.
The same logic applies to the abandonment of programs devoted to education in emergencies, the protection of children in conflict, and the fight against sexual violence and exploitation. The issue here is not one of administrative efficiency but of priorities. International relations are being reoriented toward the immediately strategic and narrowly self-interested, while concern for the most vulnerable is now being treated as secondary. The shift is not only political but ethical—it is fundamentally about who truly counts when politicians make their decisions about where to invest public resources.
The shift is not only political but ethical—it is fundamentally about who truly counts when politicians make their decisions about where to invest public resources.
One useful way to view the recent American disengagement is through the lens of Catholic social teaching. I don’t mean adopting a rigidly confessional posture, but rather drawing on a well-tested critical framework for assessing global policy. Catholic social teaching offers concepts—the common good, solidarity, shared responsibility, the limits of sovereignty—that help interpret decisions affecting climate, war and peace, economic development, and human rights.
Seen through this lens, America’s withdrawal from international organizations and programs is worrying. From John XXIII onward, the Church’s teaching has insisted that the international order is not an ornament but a necessary dimension of justice. Paul VI considered the United Nations a fragile yet indispensable laboratory of peace. John Paul II defended multilateralism as a bulwark against the law of the strongest. Benedict XVI underscored the need for an international authority oriented toward the common good. With Pope Francis, integral ecology and global fraternity became explicit criteria of political judgment: no serious international problem—whether it be climate change or a pandemic—can be faced in isolation.
Note that Catholic social teaching is not reflexively in favor of more and more bureaucracy. It acknowledges that international institutions can be slow and ineffective, and that they are sometimes captured by special interests. The principle of subsidiarity warns against governmental or nongovernmental agencies that are distant from ordinary people and incapable of listening to them. In this sense, criticism of multilateral structures is not foreign to Catholic thought; it is part of it. But here lies the decisive difference: the tradition calls for reforming these structures, not abandoning them; for conversion rather desertion.
Turning away from international cooperation on cybersecurity and antiterrorism may appear to strengthen state sovereignty. In fact, it risks weakening the capacity of one’s own government to respond to phenomena that recognize no borders. A national-security program that closes in on itself eventually becomes more fragile. Catholic social teaching does not deny the importance of national security, of course, but it consistently binds that right to the protection of personal rights and to international cooperation.
What, then, can be inferred about the future of America’s engagement with the world from the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from so many international organizations and initiatives? Not that the United States is withdrawing from the world stage, but that it is changing how it occupies it. Temporary bilateral relationships are favored over stable multilateral institutions; immediate convenience is favored at the expense of shared long-term goals. The new approach is more defensive than generative, more concerned with cutting costs than with building trust.
Catholic social teaching proposes a different vision: leadership as service, sovereignty as responsibility, cooperation as an investment in the future. The contrast is not ideological but practical. In a world marked by intertwined crises, emptying the spaces that had been reserved for cooperation means creating a void that will be filled by competition, force, and fragmentation. The long list of organizations the United States has recently abandoned tells us a lot about the time we are living through—and poses a question about the kind of global order we wish to inhabit. The first American pope has been pondering that question since the day of his election.
Reproduced with permission by Commonweal.
