UNILATERAL WITHDRAWALHybrid Risks Rise as U.S. Withdraws from International Organizations
The United States’ decision to withdraw from many international organizations risks allowing Beijing and Moscow to further advance their undermining of global stability.
The United States’ 6 January decision to withdraw from many international organizations risks allowing Beijing and Moscow to further advance their undermining of global stability. To prevent that, Indo-Pacific partners, such as Australia, Japan, Singapore and South Korea, should do more to work with the European Union on international coordination, capacity-building and norm-setting.
Doing so would reinforce crucial institutions, such as those dealing with hybrid threats, and demonstrate their ongoing value and relevance. Greater regional responsibility may even help encourage US engagement in the most critical areas.
On the surface, President Donald Trump’s executive order on the withdrawals appears more symbolic than immediately disruptive. Many of the 66 affected entities address specific issues so are not necessarily widely known, meaning the US’s withdrawal may have little affect globally.
The danger, then, lies not in this single decision but in the cumulative effects of US disengagement over time. Indeed, Washington’s confidence in multilateral institutions had already plummeted in recent years as China and Russia expanded their grip on them. International partners, if they don’t want the US withdrawal to send the message to Beijing and Moscow that they can further expand their influence, should increase and refocus their engagement to demonstrate the value of the most crucial international bodies.
One such area is the global security architecture dealing with hybrid threats, as Russia and China are carrying out such activities at record levels.
Hybrid threats exploit ambiguity, cooperation gaps and the grey space between peace and war. Certain international organizations—particularly those focused on democratic resilience, cyber defense, counterterrorism, maritime threats and countering economic coercion—exist specifically to reduce those vulnerabilities by bolstering individual states’ capabilities, as well as enabling collective responses.
Bodies such as the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats, the Global Forum on Cyber Expertise, and the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance play critical roles in identifying risks before they escalate into crises.
The US withdrawal will not shut down these organizations—as it is only a minor financial contributor to the European center of excellence, for example—but the move does remove US expertise, intelligence reach and political weight, reducing the organizations’ influence.
And if the withdrawal signals a wider reduction of US engagement with its partners to counter such threats, it would make joint attribution harder, and deterrence increasingly difficult, leaving the world more susceptible to hybrid activity.
