US Election: Is America Drifting Away From International Geneva?

(MENAFN- Swissinfo) As US president, Donald trump gave Geneva's international organisations a rough time, withdrawing from several of them. His successor, Joe Biden, promised that the United States would return to multilateral affairs, but his actions have not always borne this out.

Dorian covers the work of international organisations based in Geneva.

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International Geneva has bitter memories of Trump's first term in office. During his four years in the White House, from 2017 to 2021, the former president launched a string of attacks on the multilateral system. Deeming them“biased”,“inadequate” and generally contrary to American interests, his administration left the Human Rights Council, withdrew from the World Health Organization in the midst of a pandemic, and caused deadlocks within the World Trade Organization.

His successor, Joe Biden, was quick to promise that the United States would return to multilateralism. Not only did the Democrat president rejoin several of the treaties and bodies abandoned during the Trump era, but his administration also embarked on several campaigns in Geneva, succeeding in getting Americans elected to key positions. For example, at the head of the International Telecommunication Union.

And in 2021, Geneva got to shine again on the world stage by hosting a summit between Biden and Russian president Vladimir Putin meant to ease tensions between the two countries.

But these big moves have not convinced observers in Geneva that the US is fully recommitted to multilateralism. Because beyond grand statements, Biden has not always supported the multilateral bodies that were created in the aftermath of the Second World War.

“It's been years since an American president has shown any real enthusiasm for the multilateral system,” says Geneva-based Swiss-American political scientist Daniel Warner.“And even though we know that Donald Trump is diametrically opposed to it, we haven't seen a big push for the United Nations from Joe Biden's administration.”

+ Listen to our Inside Geneva podcast: does it matter to the UN who's in the White House?

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