On January 7, the United States announced it would withdraw from 66 international bodies, including 31 in the United Nations (UN) system. The scale is unprecedented. The message is sharper: Multilateralism, once a pillar of American strategy, is now a menu.This shift marks the formal embrace of multilateralism à la carte. Washington now selects the institutions that serve its interests, bypasses or disables those that do not, and exits those that impose constraints. What Richard Haass identified in 2001 as a US tendency is now doctrine. For India, it marks a shift from rules to leverage.AdvertisementThe decision follows a broader pattern. In December 2025, the National Security Strategy outlined the Donald Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, which defines a geographic narrowing of American responsibility to the Western Hemisphere. The January 7 memorandum draws a second perimeter, this time institutional.The announcement completes a trajectory visible since the first Trump presidency. The United States exited UNESCO in 2018, rejoined under President Joe Biden in 2023, and intends to exit again by December 2026. Trump announced the US intent to leave the Paris Agreement in 2017 and formally exited in 2020. Biden rejoined in 2021. In Trump’s second term, it is again moving toward withdrawal. Multilateral commitments are now reversible political choices.The decision to withdraw from the UN’s regional commissions is instructive. Washington long valued the inclusion of non-regional members to influence decision-making from within. Even memberships the US helped design for leverage are no longer seen as worth the discipline.AdvertisementThe list also includes the International Solar Alliance, headquartered in Gurugram. New Delhi will not miss the message.Washington approaches the multilateral system with four instruments in its toolkit: Exit, obstruction, bypass, and conditionality. Applied selectively, they turn multilateralism into revocable transactions.Withdrawal is the headline instrument, but not the only one. Exiting the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is the clearest example. It is the treaty framework that anchors climate negotiations from finance and differentiation to the legitimacy of the energy transition itself. Leaving it tells partners that even long-horizon collective action can be turned on and off like a switch.Where exiting is too costly or awkward, the US stays but obstructs outcomes. At the World Trade Organisation, it prevents the appointment of appellate judges, keeping appellate review inoperative since 2019. At the International Maritime Organisation, US opposition pushed member states to postpone the planned 2025 adoption of the net-zero framework for shipping. This is not reform. Washington keeps its seat, but weakens the machinery until constraints ease.Elsewhere, Washington routes cooperation through manageable coalitions. The Pax Silica initiative, focused on semiconductor supply chains and standards, offers a case in point. Instead of working through the WTO or UN bodies, the United States convenes a small coalition of key partners. There is no treaty, no formal multilateral process, only coordination among critical actors in a key sector. Governance shifts from universal frameworks to selective groupings.Continued participation in multilateral institutions is now conditional. In February 2025, the United States exited the UN Human Rights Council and cut funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. The January 7 memorandum states that engagement will continue only when institutions align with US sovereignty and interests. Membership can no longer be presumed. It must be justified.Legally, these moves are permitted. Politically, they are destabilising. Multilateral institutions rely on reciprocity and trust. They function because states believe that today’s constraints will produce tomorrow’s benefits. When the system’s chief architect treats its obligations as optional, it signals that reliability is negotiable.The consequences appear in behaviour. Allies hedge. Smaller states turn to patrons. International agencies plan for American absence. The system fragments. Standards multiply. Inequality deepens in who gets to shape them.For India, the implications are paradoxical. A world where Washington treats commitments as reversible raises the price of predictability. It weakens the very things India needs for a steady rise: Enforceable trade rules, credible climate-finance expectations, global health coordination, and stable standards in frontier technologies.US withdrawal opens space for leadership and coalition-building, but vacuums are not neutral. In areas such as climate finance, global health, and cyber governance, universality is not a preference. It is an operating requirement. Fragmentation raises costs for all, including those who opt out.Washington says it is pruning and reallocating attention to arenas where competition with China matters most. Some of that critique is valid, and the US is not quitting the institutions it sees as core to security and crisis response. But selective withdrawal still raises uncertainty without fully severing ties. And the contradiction remains: You cannot shape standards from the corridor when they are written in the room. Power can compel. Legitimacy must be earned.most readThe post-World War II American insight was not that institutions restrain power. It was that they make power durable by converting strength into consent. Multilateralism à la carte promises flexibility. What it delivers is thinner legitimacy, higher transaction costs, and a world governed by short contracts instead of shared systems.The Trump administration is redrawing the blueprint of the global system. The architect is leaving the site. Whether the building stops rising or is taken over by new hands remains to be seen. What is certain is this: The next structure will not bear the same signature.The writer is former permanent representative of India to the United Nations, and dean, Kautilya School of Public Policy, Hyderabad