Following a year-long review of all U.S. participation in, and funding for, international organizations, President Donald Trump recently issued a presidential memorandum “withdrawing” the United States from more than 60 treaties, international organizations, and multilateral mechanisms, about half associated with the United Nations. These initiatives focus on a range of global issues. These include:
This move has been justified on the grounds these organizations are a waste of taxpayer money, inefficient, ineffective, and/or peddling what it views as objectionable “woke” ideologies or “hostile agendas.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio explained that the Trump administration
“has found these institutions to be redundant in their scope, mismanaged, unnecessary, wasteful, poorly run, captured by the interests of actors advancing their own agendas contrary to our own, or a threat to our nation’s sovereignty, freedoms, and general prosperity.”
It remains to be seen if the United States will now pressure other states to follow its lead and also withdraw from these mechanisms, as Israel did from UN Women and six other international organizations.
Is this outcome what the American electorate wanted when at least half voted for Trump’s “America First” agenda in returning him to office in 2024? Not if several years of recent polling are to be believed.
Escalating the Exits
This new round of institutional exits dramatically escalates an earlier pattern of multilateral disengagement by the first and second Trump administrations, marked by the U.S. withdrawal from:
Putting aside any potential legal impediments (including the contested constitutionality of unilateral treaty exits), policy-oriented criticism has been consistent from international relations experts, human rights advocates, civil society organizations, and former government officials: this course of conduct exhibits a narrow and myopic conception of U.S. interests. These organizations and arrangements enable states, including the United States, to coordinate their policies and activities on global challenges, advance their preferences for global solutions, develop and disseminate shared norms, protect vulnerable communities, and build global capacity to address myriad critical issues. The U.S. exodus cedes multilateral influence (as argued earlier on these pages) to other nations, including U.S. adversaries and other scofflaws, which will no doubt step up to fill the gap with policies that are ultimately antithetical to long-term U.S. interests and the globe.
One of the articulated rationales for the most recent memorandum is the claim that it will save U.S. taxpayer dollars. However, many of these organizations exact no out-of-pocket costs, because they’re funded out of the U.N.’s core budget. This includes:
Even if the United States did once fund these initiatives, the costs were negligible compared to other foreign policy and defense initiatives. For example, the Pentagon’s 2026 annual budget is $1 trillion, a number Trump wants to increase by 50% next year. The United States pays $800 million in annual dues to the U.N., although the government is $1.5 billion in arrears. Indeed, the amounts to be withheld remain a tiny percentage (4 % if you count WHO & UNESCO) in relation to the full amount the United States will pay towards other international organizations in which it will apparently remain involved, at least for now. So, this is not about saving money. Rather, the U.S. “withdrawal” from these mechanisms is simply a “gratuitous swipe at human rights” in the words of Harvard Kennedy School Professor Kathryn Sikkink.
Finally, the U.S. withdrawal reinforces the message that the United States is an unreliable partner, which will only make it harder to re-enter such arrangements and negotiate treaties in the future. It is already nearly impossible for the United States to ratify treaties, even ones with clear national security benefits, such as the Law of the Sea treaty. The U.S. propensity to quixotically join and then reject (and even attack) such arrangements will not only increase the difficulty of rejoining in future, but also make it less likely that negotiating states and other member countries in these various mechanisms will make concessions to U.S. interests to encourage participation. Absenting the United States from places where states gather to deal with common concerns also simply silences the U.S. voice on global stages and leaves it even more isolated diplomatically.
What the U.S. Public Wants
Indeed, the American people seem to understand many of these points. Polls suggest the U.S. populace wants the United States to participate in and to lead multilateral efforts to address global issues, including within the U.N. They also see the value of strong U.S. alliances and of human rights being a core component of U.S. foreign policy.
To gain a clear window into Americans’ attitudes toward the optimal U.S. role protecting and promoting human rights, we reviewed a number of current and historical foreign policy polls conducted by news organizations, nonpartisan survey groups, market research companies, academics, and think tanks over the years (mostly 2018-2025).
Favoring International Engagement
Many surveys show that Americans (both Democrats and Republicans) reject isolationism and think the United States should play an active role in world affairs, which they see as enhancing security. That said, more Democrats than Republicans (77% v. 45%) supported democracy promotion in one survey. (Other polls report lower levels of support for such an agenda, particularly among young people, which may reflect views that the United States is no longer a good example for other countries to follow). Similar views in favor of active involvement in solving global challenges were apparent in a 2025 Chicago Council on Global Affairs Survey (with a bump to 60% from 56% in 2024). Likewise, a March 2025 Gallup survey found that 65% of Americans want the United States to take a leading (20%) or a major (45%) role in world affairs; similar results were obtained in the 2025 Reagan National Defense Survey.
That said, when faced with a forced (and artificial) choice between active global engagement versus concentrating on problems at home, more Republicans advocated the latter. A 2022 Ipsos poll found similar results: when presented with the prompt, “Given the difficult economic issues in the U.S. today, the U.S. needs to focus less on the world and more at home,” 77% of Americans agreed. Interestingly, independents were less likely to favor deep investment in global engagement, as were individuals who report they are struggling economically.
Alliances Crucial to U.S. Foreign Policy
Very large majorities see maintaining alliances to be an effective way to achieve critical foreign policy goals. Indeed, in one survey, alliances edged out military power as a “very” effective tool in this regard. In a flash poll conducted by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and Ipsos shortly before the June 2025 NATO summit, a majority of Americans expressed the belief that U.S. alliances are beneficial to the United States and its allies (61%) or mostly benefit the United States alone (11%). The same poll found that 74% of respondents favor maintaining or increasing the U.S. commitment to NATO, and 57% agreed that NATO makes the United States safer. These views enjoy strong bipartisan support among Americans surveyed in the Chicago Council-Ipsos poll: “Eight in 10 Democrats (83%, up from 74% in 2024), seven in 10 Independents (69%, up from 62%) and six in 10 Republicans (63%, up from 55%) believe alliances provide mutual benefits or mostly benefit the United States.” Furthermore, three quarters of respondents in the March 2025 Gallup poll viewed working with multinational organizations such as NATO to protect the security of the United States and its allies as an important foreign policy goal.
Benefits of Working With the U.N.
Generally favorable opinions of multilateral organizations and cooperation extend to the U.N. specifically. According to a recent Pew Research Center poll, a majority (63%) of Americans think the United States benefits (34% “a fair amount” and 29% “a great deal”) from working with the U.N., although this view is much more pronounced among Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents. Pew also found that Americans tended to have more favorable (57%) than unfavorable (41%) opinions of the U.N., with this view higher among Democrats and younger Republicans. Americans’ support for the U.N. is not limited to membership alone but includes preferences for cooperative engagement within the institution. University of Maryland School of Public Policy polling in June 2025 found that 84% of respondents believe the United States should work with the United Nations and its agencies either more (52%) or about the same as it has in the past (32%). As recently as 2022, 69% of Americans affirmed that the U.N. would have a somewhat or strongly positive “influence on world affairs” in the next decade.
The Chicago Council on Global Affairs measures attitudes toward the U.N. within a comparative foreign policy framework, asking respondents to evaluate a broad list of possible U.S. foreign policy goals that span domestic economic concerns, security interests, and global challenges. The survey has consistently found public support for the U.N. over the past five decades at levels comparable to those reported in 2025, when 39% of Americans identified strengthening the U.N. as a “very important” U.S. foreign policy goal (with other options being “somewhat important” or “not important”). The survey report noted that the only significant departures from these levels occurred in 2002, following the September 11th terrorist attacks (when expressed support increased), and in 2004, during debates over the Iraq War (when support dropped). Although support for strengthening the U.N. has also consistently ranked below some other enumerated priorities throughout the survey’s duration – such as protecting American jobs or preventing nuclear proliferation – this may reflect the nature of the forced-choice survey design rather than declining confidence in the institution. The consistency of support over time suggests a stable baseline of approval rather than episodic enthusiasm driven by specific events. However, partisan divisions are more apparent since earlier surveys were administered.
Other International Organizations Are Equally As Important
Americans generally support working with and within international organizations, finding this either very (32%) or somewhat (44%) effective in achieving U.S. foreign policy goals. Pew Research Center polling in early 2025 showed that more Americans disapproved than approved of the new administration’s disengagements, such as leaving the World Health Organization, withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement, and ending most programs of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) – even before the entire agency was dismantled.
There are stark partisan differences, particularly among older Republicans. For instance, the decision to withdraw from the WHO ran counter to the views of more than half of Americans, who said they believed the United States benefits a lot or a fair amount from membership (compared to 38% who thought the U.S. doesn’t benefit much or at all). This latter percentage was lower than during the pandemic years.
A Willingness to Pursue Cooperation and Compromise
Surveys demonstrate a willingness for the United States to pursue international cooperation to achieve its goals, with 64% of respondents in a Pew poll stating that the United States should take into account the interests of other countries when addressing major international issues, even if it means making compromises. (This statistic flips among self-identifying MAGA Republicans in another poll). Similar numbers (66% and 60% in two different polls) are obtained when it comes to U.S. decision-making through the U.N., although again, partisan differences emerge, with Democrats exhibiting stronger opinions in favor of cooperation. Ipsos generated similar results with respect to Americans’ willingness to compromise when dealing with global challenges: 79% of its sample favored cooperation with other countries on global goals, even at the risk of having to settle for a compromise.
According to an Institute for Global Affairs survey, most Americans (54%) also endorse following the rules set by international organizations, like the U.N., a number that is higher among young people (64%). Likewise, polls show Americans think the United States should consider international law (87%) and U.N. resolutions (77%) when making foreign policy decisions, although other factors remain important.
U.S. Influence and Standing Are Valued
Americans care about U.S. standing in the world. A full 91% of Americans in one poll expressed the belief that it is important that the United States be respected around the world, but fewer respondents thought that it is respected, and many believe the standing of the United States has dropped since Trump’s inauguration, according to a different poll. Interestingly, in 2024, 67% of Republicans surveyed by Pew (compared with 44% of Democrats) said U.S. influence has been declining; these percentages flipped in 2025.
Global polls reveal strong support for international agreements and institutions. And many respondents agree that these should be led by democratic countries, with 77% of Americans polled in late 2022 espousing this view. The support held up (79%) even if it meant the United States “does not always get exactly what [it] want[s].” Indeed, 83% of American respondents agreed with the statement, “The United States has a responsibility to be a moral leader in the world and set an example for other countries to follow.” In an NPR-IPSOS poll conducted just this past December, 61% of the respondents wanted the United States to be a moral leader in the world, though only 39% felt it was living up to this ideal.
The Value of Humanitarian and Development Assistance
In a 2025 Pew Research Center Poll, conducted after USAID was shuttered, 80% of those surveyed (averaged across party lines) agreed that the United States should contribute medicine and medical supplies, food, and clothing, to support the basic needs of people in crisis and in developing countries. Although more Democrats than Republicans reported that they think the United States should contribute to development (80% v. 46%) or to strengthening democracy (77% v. 45%), democracy promotion received more support among Republicans around the 2003 invasion of Iraq, according to one contemporaneous poll. A 2025 poll of registered voters performed by Change Research also found that an overwhelming 82% of their sample agreed that the United States should contribute to humanitarian causes. Despite some variations in attitude, this holds true across party lines: Democratic support was nearly unanimous at 95%, while Republicans and independents sat at 70% and 75% respectively. This strong cross-party support may reflect the fact that every U.S. president until now has generally supported foreign aid as a moral imperative but also a feature of soft power. Another poll, however, shows that today’s youth are unsure or more skeptical.
Oxfam America polling in February and May 2025 found that 2 out of 3 Americans did not support the Trump administration’s 85% cut to U.S. foreign aid programs and the dismantling of USAID. When asked to specify an appropriate level of U.S. foreign aid spending, more than 95% of respondents selected an amount exceeding the administration’s current budget. Similarly, a University of Maryland poll conducted in February 2025 found that 89% of Americans believed that the United States “should invest at least 1% of its federal budget in foreign assistance,” which is about what most administrations have spent over the years. This amounts to less than 1% of the U.S gross domestic product and a smaller proportion than most wealthy nations spend. Other polls place this at “at least 10%” of the federal budget (with Republicans coming in at 5%). These views extend across the political spectrum.
And yet, many Americans erroneously think that the United States spends in excess of 20% of the federal budget on foreign aid. By way of explanation, Steven Kull of the University of Maryland, who fielded the poll, has noted: “[e]xtreme overestimations of the amount of U.S. foreign aid have led some Americans in some polls to favor reductions from this assumed amount. But large majorities support the actual amount of US aid.” As such, negative results that do not clarify actual aid levels may reflect misperceptions rather than genuine opposition to foreign assistance, helping to explain variation across surveys on public support for foreign aid and related international commitments.
Protecting and Promoting Human Rights Are Foreign Policy Priorities
Many polls ask separately about humanitarian assistance, democracy promotion, and human rights, or even pit these objectives against each other. A plurality of Americans – according to one poll (41%) – see a “rise in populist and authoritarian governments that threaten democracy, human rights, and the rule of law” as “the greatest threat to the United States” and “promoting democracy and human rights through diplomacy and international cooperation” as “the best way for the United States to achieve peace.”
When considering U.S. involvement in human rights specifically, polling reveals consistently strong bipartisan support. A University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll with Ipsos performed in 2024 found that 65% of respondents (60% of Republicans and 78% of Democrats) believed that defending human rights globally should be a goal of American foreign policy. They report that the best way to do this is through international organizations (38%), setting a good example (24%), and using incentives such as foreign aid (10%). Comparably, the March 2025 Gallup poll found that at least 81% of respondents viewed promoting and defending human rights in other countries as a foreign policy goal of importance (with 48% designating this as a “very important” goal and the rest considering it “somewhat important”).
Likewise, a June 2025 Reagan Institute survey found that 83% of respondents believed that “the United States has a moral obligation to stand up for human rights and democracy whenever possible in international affairs.” These results were consistent across parties, with 87% of Democrats and 81% of Republicans in agreement. Notably, when respondents are given the option to select their top three foreign policy priorities, rather than forced to choose between competing objectives, human rights emerge as a leading concern. In a YouGov poll conducted ahead of the 2024 election, 39% of respondents identified human rights as one of their top three foreign policy issues, second only to terrorism (40%).
Interestingly, the gap between Republicans and Democrats on prioritizing the promotion of human rights has widened since 2008. At that time, half of all respondents rated human rights a “very important” priority; since then, the numbers have declined among Republicans and grown among Democrats. Independents remain largely unchanged. Partisan variation appears among young people as well, with 64% of Democratic youth in a March 2025 poll supporting getting “involved in another country’s affairs” to “prevent human rights violations” compared with 34% of Republican youth and 41% of independents. These results are consistent with other polling related to human rights. In 2018, 73% of Americans surveyed by IPSOS agreed it is important for the United States to participate in international organizations that support human rights and that hold individuals accountable for mass atrocities. This position has always enjoyed a strong consensus among survey participants, but the 2018 IPSOS report said this percentage has increased consistently since February 2014, when 60% approved of this proposition. Academic studies also show support for prosecutions of foreign human rights abusers.
When forced to identify different foreign policy objectives (including national security and economic prosperity) on a scale of “very important” to “not important,” promoting human rights and nation-building garnered less-full-throated support in the March 2025 Gallup poll, but respondents continued to approve of humanitarian goals and international cooperation within multinational organizations (including the U.N. and NATO).
Polls also frequently juxtapose promoting human rights abroad with domestic priorities. Americans tend to favor domestic concerns when forced to choose. The December NPR/Ipsos poll found that 46% of respondents preferred U.S. foreign policy to focus on “enriching America and Americans,” compared with 32% who favored “promoting democracy and human rights in other countries,” while 23% selected “don’t know” or skipped the question. As with broader questions of global engagement, this substantial share of non-responses underscores how this framing creates a false dichotomy that perhaps does not reflect how many people understand or pursue these goals in practice.
Americans also demonstrate high levels of concern about human rights in specific countries. A 2021 Pew Research Center poll found that 70% of Americans believed the United States should “try to promote human rights in China, even if it harms economic relations with China,” rather than “prioritize strengthening economic relations with China, even if it means not addressing human rights issues.” In the same survey, a majority of respondents viewed China’s human rights policies as a serious problem for the United States, with 50% describing them as “very serious” and an additional 34% as “somewhat serious.” In the same vein, a 2022 poll conducted by HarrisX in partnership with the George W. Bush Institute and Freedom House found that registered voters expressed broad support for specific U.S. actions aimed at defending human rights abroad. This included 54% who supported backing activists in Iran and 61% who favored providing weapons and other assistance to Ukraine.
The U.S. and the International Criminal Court
I and others have written about the U.S. population’s perspective toward the International Criminal Court (ICC). In summary, most Americans believe the United States should become more involved in the ICC (and a large percentage think the United States has ratified the Rome Statute). The leaning toward more involvement remains the case even when faced with the prospect of investigations of U.S. personnel or of a national of a U.S. ally, such as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. A 2025 poll run by the University of Maryland found that 62% of Americans favored joining the ICC (including 57% of Republicans, 72% of Democrats, and 50% of Independents). These views potentially evince an upward trend from 34% in 2014 to 50% in 2018 observed in Ipsos polling on behalf of the American Bar Association (ABA). The Ipsos-ABA poll also found half of their respondents were in favor of accountability for suspected U.S. abuses in Afghanistan, a statistic mirrored in a 2025 study also finding 64% support accountability before a domestic or international court. Expressions of support for the ICC increase when respondents are presented with facts about the commission of atrocity crimes and temper when the Court is discussed in connection with “national interest frames,” so much depends upon survey design and how particular questions are asked.
Research also shows cross-party opposition to sanctioning the ICC when the U.S. government disagrees with a decision by one of its principals or organs, including the indictment of a national of a U.S. ally. A majority of respondents (71%) said the United States should “take no action” (46%) or “publicly criticize” the ICC (25%) in such circumstances rather than sanction individuals or their families. This position was remarkably consistent among both Republicans (68%) and Democrats (72%).
Conclusion
Obviously, many of these results over the years likely reflect which party controls the White House as well as what issues are in the headlines at the time the survey is administered, not to mention the design of the survey and its questions. And not all surveys are randomized in terms of their participant pool or premised on the same methodologies. For example, some polls were preceded by a briefing on the activities of various international organizations, the basis on which U.S. dues are calculated (a process that varies but can include consideration of gross national income, debt burden, and population), human rights conditions around the world, and the actual U.S. expenditures as compared to other governmental policies.
Accurate information in this regard tends to generate higher levels of support for U.S. engagement with international organizations, foreign assistance, and human rights. As such, the more respondents learn about these efforts, the more likely they are to be supportive. And many polls are premised on forced choices between objectives that are not mutually exclusive. As such, they fail to convey the reality that U.S. foreign policy decisions (such as advocating minimum labor standards that benefit U.S. workers, containing global pandemics to keep Americans healthy, and addressing the root causes of mass migration) can have major impacts at home.
Regardless, some real consistencies over the years emerge within the American electorate. In particular, public support for international cooperation and multilateral engagement remains durable, even if it is not always reflected in governmental foreign policy choices or the electorate’s voting patterns (which of course often are based more on domestic concerns). To be sure, increased polarization is apparent in many recent surveys. However, recent polls show a Republican willingness to “break with party lines” to disapprove of Trump’s foreign policy performance. All told, current data suggest a meaningful disconnect between the American public’s preferences and recent dramatic shifts in U.S. multilateral strategy and foreign policy under the Trump administration.
FEATURED IMAGE: A protestor holds a sign as people gather outside the Ronald Reagan Building during a “clap out” in support of United States Agency for International Development (USAID) fired staff who received word to retrieve their personal belongings from USAID headquarters in Washington, DC, on February 27, 2025. (Photo by TING SHEN/AFP via Getty Images)
Great Job Beth Van Schaack & the Team @ Just Security Source link for sharing this story.
