Do Trump’s UN exits tear down image of US as defender of international law?

US President Donald Trump last week signed a presidential memorandum authorising the US pull-out from as many as 66 international organisations in one of the most stunning blows to the global humanitarian and institutional order.

According to the White House, the move was an exercise in defending national interests because the targeted bodies were “ineffective” and “unnecessary” to the US values, or part of a global bureaucracy that no longer deserved American funding.

Yet the scale of the decision makes it impossible to see as an everyday policy adjustment. Among the list are significant UN agencies, parts of the UN Secretariat, climate institutions, counterterrorism forums, and research bodies.

Trump has also been unusually clear about how he views that system. Asked whether anything limits his power, he replied: “My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me. I don’t need international law.”

Taken together with the mass withdrawals, that statement suggests a view of American power that no longer sees global rules or institutions as something to work through, or even to tolerate.

Professor Ugo Mattei, a prominent Italian jurist, is candid in his assessment that, by and large, international law is a thin layer laid over global power politics.

“International law has never been a completed project. It has always been a useful layer of hypocrisy on a system of international relations, trying to limit the notion that might is right,” says Mattei, professor of International and Comparative Law at the University of California and the University of Turin.

“President Trump has ripped away the veil of hypocrisy not just in international law but, more generally, in the mythology of the rule of law that has characterised liberal constitutionalism and the Anglo-American seizure of hegemony in the capitalist bloc after WWII,” he tells TRT World.

Power without multilateralism

Trump’s decision to leave dozens of international bodies follows a path he has been on for years, cutting the US loose from some of the UN’s best-known institutions.

During his first term, he pulled the US out of UNESCO, the UN’s cultural agency. In his second term, he withdrew from the UN Human Rights Council and cut all US funding to UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees. 

Trump also took the US out of the World Health Organization, accusing it of being too close to China, even as the world was facing a global pandemic that made cooperation more necessary than ever. 

He abandoned the Paris climate agreement, removing the US from the main forum where countries try to manage the climate crisis together. He tore up the Iran nuclear deal, even though international inspectors said Tehran was complying.

When international institutions tried to look at US or Israeli conduct, the response was even harsher. His administration imposed sanctions on officials at the ICC after it opened investigations into war crimes in Afghanistan and Palestine.

When an institution criticises Washington, includes Palestine, limits Israeli impunity or creates legal risk for the United States, Trump treats it as hostile and disposable per usual.

Trump’s team says these international bodies waste American money and get in the way of “sovereignty”, arguing that they want those dollars spent at home, on the military, on border walls and on protecting US companies. 

According to Mattei, the current technological transformations are more relevant to the global decline of legality than Trump’s own vision. 

“Liberal constitutionalism cannot survive the exorbitant growth of corporate power and the corruptive forces of unprecedented inequality,” says Mattei.

“The accumulation of private capital in such an inordinate way is the material reason for the demise of the rule of law, both internally and internationally,” he adds.

When law starts to thin out

The damage here goes deeper than a single policy shift. International law only really works because it is embedded in institutions where states show up, argue, accept rulings and, at least in theory, agree to be bound by them.

The ICJ and the ICC can issue binding rulings in contentious cases, but they depend on states choosing to take part. 

Without voluntary participation, there is no way to bring suspects before the court or to make rulings mean anything in practice. When a major power withdraws from them, the law still remains on paper but starts to fade.

Trump’s claim that he does not need international law carries weight in this regard because the US was once the system’s main architect. 

Then-US President Woodrow Wilson was the one to push for the League of Nations after the First World War, even though he failed in getting his country to join the League. 

After the Second World War, President Franklin D Roosevelt took that idea further and played a central role in creating the United Nations to replace the failed League of Nations, the International Court of Justice and the web of treaties that came to define the modern international order.

Therefore, when Washington treats legal obligations as optional, it is much easier for other states to do just the same.  

Governments accused of war crimes, illegal occupations or repression can simply point to the US and say the rules no longer bind anyone.

“Indeed, the UN system has not proved, after all, much better than the League of Nations in precluding wars,” Mattei says.

“The American presidency reflects the interests of capital, and capital no longer needs the law. And Trump’s bold statement simply reflects that truth.” 

“International law, as the weakest and most geopolitically exposed part of legal systems, is simply the first to collapse under the tremendous pressures created by the global challenges to US hegemony,” Mattei adds.

Trump insists that his own moral judgement is enough to fill that gap but his record suggests otherwise. In 2025 alone, the US has carried out military strikes in at least seven countries, including Venezuela and Yemen.

One of the most striking examples came towards the end of the year in Venezuela, where US forces hit a dock the White House said was being used by drug smuggling networks. 

That attack followed months of US naval operations in the Caribbean aimed at choking off Venezuelan oil exports and targeting small boats Washington claims were linked to trafficking, ultimately kidnapping President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, earlier in January.

Yemen was bombed for months as part of a campaign against the Houthis, destroying ports, airports and other infrastructure and killing civilians before a truce finally took hold. 

Then in June, US fighter jets and naval forces struck three of Iran’s key nuclear facilities during a brief but deadly war between Iran and Israel. 

Alongside all this, his administration has been the biggest supporter of Israel’s multiple wars and the genocide in Gaza while blocking accountability for Tel Aviv’s crimes.