The United States’ multilateral retreat is pushing global development cooperation into an age of entropy, redefining how power, norms, and partnerships are negotiated
With the United States announcing its withdrawal from 66 global international organisations, conventions and treaties this month, international development cooperation has entered an age of entropy—a condition that has afflicted the geopolitical order for over a decade.
The memo from the White House identified 31 United Nations (UN) entities and 35 non-UN groups, working across climate, health, energy, migration, gender, labour, trade and development, and human rights. Groupings as diverse as the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC), the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), UN Women, the International Solar Alliance (ISA), the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), and the International Energy Forum (IEF), will now operate without participation and funding from the United States, the world’s largest provider of official development assistance (ODA) in 2023 and 2024, and among the principal architects of the rules-based international order.
The mandates of these entities are wide-ranging; many are specialised in providing technical assistance, training and capacity-building, coordinating standards, sharing data, and setting norms and agendas. The long-term impacts are not yet clear, beyond the immediate challenges of financing and sustaining operations. However, the UN has stated that it will continue to carry out its mandate “with determination”, as have other organisations, such as the International Solar Alliance, led by India and France, which has signalled that it will continue working with 125 countries to advance its objectives.
Writing in the early 1930s, Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci’s statement — “The old world is dying, the new world struggles to be born, and now is the time for monsters” — made at a time of profound transition, has become the prevailing refrain for making sense of the emerging international order.
The world has been preparing for Washington’s retreat from international development since early last year, when the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) was shut down and the US began withdrawing from key UN agencies and treaties, including the World Health Organization (WHO), the Paris Agreement, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and the UN Human Right Council (UNHRC). Even so, this is a moment of rupture, one that has been some time in the making, beginning with major donors scaling back foreign aid commitments in recent years. It also has coincided with a growing trust deficit in international governance frameworks on the part of developing countries and the recognition that those frameworks are based on inequality and non-representation, an assertion stridently taken up by the countries of the Global South. Moreover, current frameworks appear ill-prepared to address the scale and complexity of emerging global challenges as well as their escalating consequences.
What does this moment of rupture mean for the future of global development cooperation, arriving as it does at a time when the world is grappling with multiple transnational challenges, including climate change, technological disruption, pandemic prevention, escalating conflicts, economic fragility, and demographic bifurcation? If anything, the world needs enhanced cooperation to address challenges that are global and interconnected. The 2026 Global Risks Report by the World Economic Forum identifies inequality and economic risk as the most interconnected global risks over the next decade, fuelled by inflation, economic recession, and debt burdens. It makes the case for new forms of collaborative mechanisms and emphasises that “cooperation is indispensable for global risk management”.
Writing in the early 1930s, Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci’s statement — “The old world is dying, the new world struggles to be born, and now is the time for monsters” — made at a time of profound transition, has become the prevailing refrain for making sense of the emerging international order. This emerging international order is already having, and will continue to have, far-reaching consequences for the future of development cooperation. Even though there is meant to be a separation between development and geopolitics, development policy has always been a tool of power politics, supporting the mutual interests of both provider and recipient countries.
Under the Trump administration, development cooperation has been stripped bare of its lofty principles, with policy increasingly shaped by nationalism and transactionalism. Some analysts in the West have labelled this moment as the “New Washington Dissensus”,
The current development cooperation framework is usually traced back to the mid-1990s, at a time of economic optimism after the end of the Cold War, as developed countries increased aid budgets and developing countries adopted liberal economic policies. In the 25 years between 1990 and 2015, extreme poverty rates dropped by an average of one percentage point per year, from nearly 36 percent to 10 percent. Progress is evident in other areas, such as declining HIV/AIDS and malaria mortality rates, reductions in under-five and maternal deaths, and expanded access to primary school education, social protection, safe drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene. These gains were made possible through government- and society-led initiatives in developing countries; they were also partly enabled by development cooperation frameworks, which are now under strain from geopolitical realignments and growing fiscal pressures.
Development cooperation is distinct from broader forms of international cooperation and is defined by a set of commonly accepted principles: it seeks to support national and international development priorities, is not driven by profit, deliberately favours developing countries, and is based on cooperative relationships that emphasise developing country ownership.
Under the Trump administration, development cooperation has been stripped bare of its lofty principles, with policy increasingly shaped by nationalism and transactionalism. Some analysts in the West have labelled this moment as the “New Washington Dissensus”, the antithesis of the Washington Consensus, which marked a period of economic optimism and provided the scaffolding for development cooperation.
Countries such as China, India, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE have increasingly emphasised technical and technological cooperation, shared economic and strategic interests, and South-South cooperation models. This shift reflects not only an evolving global order but also a festering dissatisfaction with the prevalent hierarchical aid structures.
Long before this current crisis, traditional development cooperation, largely defined by aid relationships, was being reconfigured as shifts in global power and influence enabled new development actors from the Global South to emerge. Countries such as China, India, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE have increasingly emphasised technical and technological cooperation, shared economic and strategic interests, and South-South cooperation models. This shift reflects not only an evolving global order but also a festering dissatisfaction with the prevalent hierarchical aid structures.
Underlying these changes is the broader aspiration among developing countries to assert greater autonomy, take ownership over their development trajectories, and align international cooperation with national priorities. At a time of heightened geopolitical fragmentation, development cooperation has become a site of competition and negotiation over norms, standards, and spheres of influence.
In the coming decades, development cooperation will reflect these systemic transformations, as countries navigate a fragmented landscape by diversifying their alliances and partnerships through alternate solutions and mechanisms, from bilateral arrangements to regional platforms and like-minded coalitions. Global challenges such as climate change, technological disruption, and demographic transition, which carry long-term impacts, will require trust, coordination, and consensus — none of which any can deliver alone.
Sunaina Kumar is Director and Senior Fellow, Centre for New Economic Diplomacy, Observer Research Foundation.
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Sunaina Kumar is Director - CNED and Senior Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation. She previously served as Executive Director at Think20 India Secretariat under ...
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