U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio toned down the Trump administration’s criticisms of its European allies at the recent Munich Security Conference where he proclaimed, “We do not seek to separate but to reinvigorate an old friendship.”
Yet, while Rubio didn’t mention NATO, the World Trade Organization (WTO) or the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), his statement that the U.S. and its allies have “increasingly outsourced our sovereignty to international institutions” made clear the current administration’s continued distrust, if not disdain, for multilateral organizations.
Nevertheless, U.S. allies — including in Europe and the Indo-Pacific — still rely on post-World War II multilateral economic and security arrangements to maintain global order not at the price of sovereignty, but in defense of it.
