The US Retreat from Multilateralism

The world's most powerful country is walking out of the institutions it helped build. In January 2026 the United States finished pulling out of the World Health Organization, its single largest donor; a notice served in July 2025 will take it out of UNESCO by the end of 2026, the third time it has quit that body. A National Security Strategy released in December 2025 supplies the doctrine — economic security is national security, and broad multilateral commitments are a cost to be trimmed. The bills left behind, and the holes in global health and education budgets, land hardest on the developing world that India seeks to represent.