Early last month, US President Donald Trump announced that
the United States will be withdrawing from the 2015 Climate Change accord, which was
signed by 195 countries in December 2016 to help address global warming.
Trump cited that the climate deal imposed unfair environmental
standards on American businesses, calling it a “draconian” international pact. Although
many met this announcement as a surprise and an insult to international
cooperation, how Trump and the United States in general acted with arrogance
should not be a surprise.
To cite America’s involvement in the affairs of other
countries, for instance its unwelcome and illegal involvement in Syria, as the
only example of its braggadocio is an understatement. Many have forgotten that Washington
is non-signatory to other major international accords. In other cases it has
been hostile and has repealed landmark international deals for its aggrandizement,
immunity and benefit.
For one, the United States is not party to the United
Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) which governs the rights and
obligations of nations on the use of the world’s oceans. UNCLOS is signed by
162 countries, including the European Union, yet the US refuses to ratify the
treaty because it “infringes on its sovereignty as a state” and hence it should
remain “independent from any international interference on international maritime
matters.
Despite that, while the US is not party to UNCLOS, it is
using that jurisdiction in order to subvert the interests of other nations,
such as in the case of the South China Sea, when it actively lobbied for the
Philippines, its ally in the region, to use UNCLOS to claim the country’s stake
against China in the disputed waters.
Another noteworthy case is Washington’s hostility towards
the International Court of Justice (ICJ) treaty, which is the principal
judicial court of the United Nations (UN). The US government’s refusal to sign
the treaty stems from its avoidance of liability if and when US military
personnel and political leaders misbehaved overseas, thus giving them immunity from
persecution.
In addition to avoiding the jurisdiction of the
International Criminal Court (ICC), the United States has been actively
undermining the global standard of justice, including when it threatened to
withdraw from peacekeeping missions in Europe and South East Asia if US
personnel were not given complete immunity from persecution. This is under the auspices
of the relatively recent American Servicemember’s Protection Act (ASPA), which
was passed by the Congress and signed by former President George Bush in the
early 2000s. In addition, the US actively sought to sign bilateral agreements
with other nations which required countries not to surrender American nationals
to the jurisdiction of the ICC.
In the realm of nuclear arms control, the United States also
withdrew from the landmark Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty of 1972, which
imposed limits on the US and Russia (then the Soviet Union) regarding the
deployment of defensive weapons. The treaty was signed in order to reduce the
need to develop new anti-ballistic missile systems putting each country
vulnerable and denying them any advantage of a first-strike nuclear capability.
Despite Russia’s opposition, the United States withdrew from the treaty in June
2002.
As for the landmark Paris Climate accord, the US government’s
refusal to be part of the global efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions that
will lead the world to its human-induced destruction speaks volumes about
America’s behavior against being a responsible nation. President Trump’s
withdrawal from the Paris treaty also includes halting contributions to the UN
Green Climate Fund (to help poorer countries adapt to climate change policies)
as well as refusing to report on its carbon emissions.
The reaction across the world was expected, with major
powers in Europe expressing their “regret” about Washington’s decision, and
while Trump spoke of “renegotiating the treaty to benefit America”, leaders in
France, Germany, and the UK said the Paris Climate Treaty is non-negotiable.
