Mint Quick Edit | Trump’s withdrawal of America from global institutions will return to haunt Uncle Sam

A variety of causes, from climate action to health and human rights, will be left bereft of US funding. Particularly damaging is the US withdrawal from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, although it’s consistent with Trump’s view of the crisis as a “hoax."

The burden of saving the world from the ill-effects of a disastrous warm-up will have to be borne by others, even as the US turns its military focus to the Arctic Ocean, where a fast-melting polar ice-cap is opening navigation routes and fuelling America’s threat perception from Russian and Chinese naval forces.

The White House seems to see no irony in that. If anything, it only underscores what a Trump-reshaped America is all about: itself.

It is a profoundly myopic approach for the simple reason that US leadership was based not just on Uncle Sam’s might, but also perceptions of it being a force for a better world. If that’s lost, others would have no stake in its survival as the world’s most powerful country.