Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at the United States withdrawing from dozens of international entities, a split among Senate Republicans over U.S. military action in Venezuela, and farmers protesting the European Union-Mercosur trade deal.
No More U.S. Membership
The United States plans to withdraw from 66 international entities for operating “contrary to U.S. national interests,” the White House announced on Wednesday. Many of the targets are United Nations-related agencies that focus on climate, gender, health, and labor issues—all areas that President Donald Trump has characterized as being part of the liberal “woke” agenda.
Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at the United States withdrawing from dozens of international entities, a split among Senate Republicans over U.S. military action in Venezuela, and farmers protesting the European Union-Mercosur trade deal.
No More U.S. Membership
The United States plans to withdraw from 66 international entities for operating “contrary to U.S. national interests,” the White House announced on Wednesday. Many of the targets are United Nations-related agencies that focus on climate, gender, health, and labor issues—all areas that President Donald Trump has characterized as being part of the liberal “woke” agenda.
According to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, these institutions are “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.”
However, experts argue that a lack of U.S. involvement could hinder these institutions’ effectiveness, reduce Washington’s influence on the world stage, and hurt millions of people who depend on these entities for lifesaving support.
Among the entities targeted is the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is considered the bedrock climate treaty to the 2015 Paris Agreement. Trump has called climate change a “hoax” and touted the need for more fossil fuels, which are the primary source of greenhouse gas emissions. In November, the United States skipped the annual U.N. Climate Change Conference, held in Brazil in 2025, for the first time in 30 years.
Leaving the climate framework “would be a gift to China and a ‘get out of jail free’ card to polluters who want to avoid responsibility,” said John Kerry, the U.S. climate envoy under the Biden administration. The United States would be the first country in history to withdraw from the treaty.
The Trump administration also seeks to leave U.N. Women, which advocates for gender equality and women’s empowerment; the U.N. Population Fund, which promotes family planning and aims to improve maternal and child health; the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which issues reports on how the rate of global warming could irreversibly damage the planet; and the U.N. Democracy Fund, which supports democratization initiatives around the world.
Trump has repeatedly questioned the effectiveness of the United Nations, arguing that the body is biased against the United States and does not prioritize Washington’s interests. “What is the purpose of the United Nations?” Trump asked during his speech at the U.N. General Assembly in September. “All they seem to do is write a really strongly worded letter and then never follow that letter up. It’s empty words, and empty words don’t solve war.”
Since taking office, Trump has also stopped engagement with the U.N. Human Rights Council; quit the U.N. cultural agency, UNESCO; halted funding for the Palestinian refugee agency, UNRWA; and announced plans to leave the World Health Organization and the Paris Agreement.
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres expressed regret on Thursday over the United States’ decision. Washington is usually the top contributor to the U.N. regular budget, but under Trump 2.0, the United States made no such payments last year, leaving the country owing around $1.5 billion.
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What We’re Following
Rare congressional rebuke. The U.S. Senate on Thursday voted to advance a resolution blocking Trump from taking further military action in Venezuela without congressional approval. The rare rebuke signals a significant fissure in Trump’s Republican Party, as several lawmakers broke ranks with the president to vote in favor of advancing the measure. The resolution must still pass the full Senate as well as the House and faces a veto threat by Trump.
The vote comes after Trump told the New York Times on Wednesday that he expects U.S. involvement in Venezuela to last for years. That same day, the U.S. president proposed increasing military spending to $1.5 trillion in 2027, citing “troubled and dangerous times.” The 2026 military budget is set at $901 billion.
The Senate’s actions also highlight fears that Trump may pursue military intervention elsewhere—namely, Greenland and Colombia. Next week, Rubio is expected to meet with Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen to discuss Greenland’s future. And on Wednesday, Trump invited Colombian President Gustavo Petro to the White House for talks on U.S. relations with Bogotá.
EU-Mercosur pushback. French farmers blockaded roads into Paris on Thursday to protest a sweeping trade deal that the European Union is expected to sign with South America’s Mercosur bloc on Friday. Demonstrations stretched from the Champs-Élysées to the Arc de Triomphe as protesters gathered outside the National Assembly; French President Emmanuel Macron has since announced that he will vote against the signing. Farmers in Greece took similar action on Thursday, lining highways with their tractors to halt all commuter traffic.
After 26 years of negotiations, the EU-Mercosur trade deal is expected to create an integrated market of some 780 million consumers. Although the EU has framed the agreement as necessary to counter steep U.S. tariffs and compete with China in Latin America, several European countries have argued that the deal will flood the EU with cheap food imports, raise prices, and require excessive local regulation.
In a last-minute effort to win over the EU’s more hesitant members, the European Commission this week proposed allocating roughly $52 billion to farmers in the bloc’s next seven-year budget. This would largely offset a planned 20 percent cut in agricultural funding.
Freezing into submission. Overnight Russian airstrikes hit key energy infrastructure in Ukraine’s Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia regions on Thursday, leaving more than half a million households without heat. Although Ukraine’s grid operator said power in Zaporizhzhia has been largely restored, local authorities were unable to specify when similar services will be up and running in Dnipro as power companies work to repair the area’s critical infrastructure.
Over the past four winters, Russian forces have repeatedly targeted Ukraine’s power grid in an effort to freeze Kyiv into submission. “There is absolutely no military rationale in such strikes on the energy sector and infrastructure that leave people without electricity and heating in wintertime,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on X. Local temperatures were expected to plummet to minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit Thursday night.
Kyiv has accused Moscow of stalling U.S.-led peace talks by continuing its lethal advance into Ukraine and bolstering its military procurement, and on Thursday, Zelensky appealed for more air defenses from Kyiv’s Western allies.
Odds and Ends
In a time of rising costs, even animals are desperate for discount prices. On Monday, around 50 sheep flooded a supermarket in Germany’s Bavaria region, knocking over foodstuffs in their rush through the doors. After spending several minutes huddled in the aisles, during which at least one human customer took refuge on a checkout conveyor belt, the ewes trotted out in an orderly line. According to Andreas Krämer, a spokesperson for the Penny supermarket chain, the herd’s shepherd was not made to cover the cost of cleanup; still, FP’s World Brief writer suspects he may feel a bit sheepish about the incident.
Great Job Alexandra Sharp & the Team @ World Brief – Foreign Policy Source link for sharing this story.
