The US is steadily pulling back from multilateral diplomacy, a shift increasingly visible across key international forums. At the UN, this retreat is reflected on major issues such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and gender equality, but also in cyber diplomacy, where the US has further diluted its normative leadership – most recently by excluding Russia from lists of malign actors in cyberspace.
Under the Trump administration, the US is actively pursuing bilateral rather than multilateral diplomacy to address major foreign policy challenges such as the war on Ukraine and the risk of Iran’s nuclear proliferation.
But what the US says and does at the UN and other multilateral forums is important and US allies have long relied on the predictability of US positions and its leadership to help build consensus and advance shared goals.
US leadership was notably absent at the recently concluded preparatory committee meeting for the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference, which sought to build consensus for a successful outcome at next year’s review conference.
The NPT limits the number of states with nuclear weapons globally, while allowing all states access to peaceful nuclear technologies such as nuclear energy and nuclear medicine. The treaty is under increasing pressure as the last two review conferences ended without a consensus document, the main agreed measure of success of the conference.
States increasingly disagree over the slow pace at which the nuclear weapons states in the treaty are disarming, and the difficulty non-nuclear weapons states have in accessing peaceful nuclear technologies. It is therefore crucial that next year’s review conference is set up for success – and the role of the US in building consensus will be key.
However, several key political appointments in the US State Department that would normally help provide guidance on US positions in the NPT have not yet been made – and it is unclear whether the Trump administration intends to fill these positions. During the first Trump presidency, some positions were purposefully left open, either because those roles were not seen as a priority, or to allow for greater White House direction over the policy portfolio.
As a result, the US delegation at the recent preparatory committee meeting in New York likely had to base its positions on official statements, readouts from recent bilateral negotiations and historic positions. This is essentially a ‘caretaker’ function commonly used to ensure that the US is not entirely absent in an important multilateral format but makes it difficult to set new impulses or take on a leadership position.
Prioritizing bilateral over multilateral engagement may also lead to contradictions in treaty implementation. For example, under the NPT, Iran has the right to peaceful nuclear energy and in turn must comply with the IAEA safeguards regime. However, the current US position in US–Iran bilateral negotiations demands that Iran gives up its ability to enrich uranium entirely. This would require Iran to procure additional nuclear fuel for its nuclear energy plans from elsewhere and has been a major point of contention in the bilateral negotiations to date.
At the New York meeting, this topic led to tense exchanges between Iran and the US, with Iran insisting on its rights under the treaty. The US pointed to a recent nuclear energy agreement with El Salvador as an example of its willingness to uphold the treaty and to work with ‘responsible’ states.
Several states are working hard to develop areas of mutual agreement. Sweden and Germany are leading a coalition of states on advancing nuclear risk reduction as an area of common interest whereas Ireland, Thailand and France are working on transparency and accountability measures as areas of convergence. However, while these are the areas in which agreement could be reached next year, the additional tensions in the treaty make it difficult to predict whether states will be able to focus on substance, or whether procedural questions or external issues will get in the way of agreement.
