The Trump administration’s antagonism to NATO and European powers stemming from the president’s fixation on Greenland may dominate headlines. But the tussle over that frozen island is only the most prominent in a series of policy shifts that, taken together, suggest a broad U.S. disengagement from world affairs, a self-imposed isolation that threatens its own interests and, in worst-case scenarios, world peace.

Raising tariff barriers and withdrawing from significant international collaborations like the World Health Organization and the Paris climate agreement are among the most notable of the administration’s retreats. The White House has ordered travel restrictions, visa bans and an “immigration pause” that now includes 75 nations across the world, and the administration has declined to make good on treaty obligations to help finance the United Nations and its peacekeeping efforts.

On Jan. 7, Mr. Trump issued an executive order that withdrew the United States from 66 international cooperative bodies and commissions, dismissing them as “wasteful, ineffective, and harmful.” The organizations, including many independent transnational efforts and U.N. organizations, served as forums addressing, among other issues, trade, sustainable energy production, counterterrorism and cybersecurity.

The State Department issued a statement explaining the decision: “[W]hat started as a pragmatic framework of international organizations for peace and cooperation has morphed into a sprawling architecture of global governance, often dominated by progressive ideology and detached from national interests.

“From DEI mandates to ‘gender equity’ campaigns to climate orthodoxy, many international organizations now serve a globalist project rooted in the discredited fantasy of the ‘End of History.’ These organizations actively seek to constrain American sovereignty. Their work is advanced by the same elite networks—the multilateral ‘NGO-plex’—that we have begun dismantling through the closure of USAID.”

Sarah Lockhart is an associate professor of political science and director of International Studies at Fordham University in the Bronx. “I struggle to see an upside or what the long-term strategy is here,” Ms. Lockhat said, “because, if anything, one of the crowning achievements of American foreign policy in the post-World War II period has been the use of multilateralism to achieve U.S. foreign policy goals.”

The U.S. withdrawal appears widespread, with its diplomats and decision makers pulling out of efforts as significant as the Global Forum on Cyber Expertise and the Global Counterterrorism Forum or as mundane as the International Cotton Advisory Committee and scores of other organizations and associations. Among the most damaging is perhaps the U.S. withdrawal from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“The biggest collective action problem that we face right now is climate change,” Ms. Lockhart said. “That’s an existential threat that the U.S. is backing away from, just as many other countries are really getting on board.”

The various steps away from multilateralism are especially striking, she said, because over decades the United States had proven to be an adept player within such policymaking bodies. The United States played a prominent role in the creation of the United Nations, NATO and other multilateral efforts now mocked or denigrated by Mr. Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The United States had been so successful in advancing its interests that a familiar, former criticism had been that such multilateral efforts were too willing to do the bidding of the U.S. superpower.

Now, under President Donald Trump, the United States seems to be “actively seeking to dismantle” such international bodies.

The nation’s broad withdrawal means the United States will, to steal a line from Lin-Manuel Miranda, cease being “in the room where it happens,” self-sabotaging a capacity to advance interests or resolve disputes through dialogue and in coordination with allied states.

“The challenge to NATO is one that I find especially alarming,” Ms. Lockhart said, describing the powerful alliance as a premier achievement of post-World War II U.S. strategists.

“The Trump administration has complained about Europe not pulling its weight in terms of military spending,” but at NATO’s inception, she pointed out, that had been a feature, not a bug of the alliance.

“We wanted to prevent another war in Europe, and we didn’t want countries to be arming themselves and perhaps finding themselves in another world war.”

She finds the persistent threats over Greenland “just shocking.”

The Catholic Church has been a consistent supporter of multilateral efforts directed at peacemaking and collaboration to protect what might be characterized as a global common good. Pope Francis, in particular, had been a believer in international cooperation and the kinds of global commissions that the Trump administration seems allergic to. Francis memorably urged international cooperation to address climate change and promote “integral ecology.”

His successor, Pope Leo XIV, seems poised to continue that support for international bodies. In a recent address to the diplomatic corps to the Holy See, he deplored the resurgence of a “zeal for war” and the weakening of esteem for multilateralism.

“In our times,” the pope told the assembled diplomats, “the weakness of multilateralism is a particular cause for concern at the international level. A diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all parties is being replaced by a diplomacy based on force, by either individuals or groups of allies.”

Global isolation can prove damaging in a number of ways. An isolated United States, having estranged allies and sympathetic nations, will have to tackle global challenges and address inevitable conflicts with other powers on its own. Ms. Lockhart is concerned that as the United States pulls back from multilateralism, other countries “will turn to a kind of self-help and then also begin looking to some of our rivals to fill that gap—particularly China.”

The professor spoke to America just days before a stunning economic and political pivot to China orchestrated by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and his searing criticism of the United States at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

A major contributing factor in outbreaks of conflict, according to Ms. Lockhart, is insufficient information about a global antagonist.

“One of the purposes that all these multilateral institutions serve is to build this dense network of communication, sharing best practices [and] intelligence, understanding each other and what different countries’ goals are.” This is critical data for making good international policy decisions, Ms. Lockhart said.

“Much of what multilateral institutions do, fostering lines of communication and finding points of coordination and cooperation” are cost-effective means of “getting the American message out there and influencing through soft power.”

Hard power, after all, does not come cheap. The Trump administration announced on Jan. 7 that it will seek a 50 percent increase in the annual defense budget next year, jumping from nearly $1 trillion in direct spending to $1.5 trillion for 2027.

Newly estranged allies, like Denmark, are also reassessing defense spending with an eye to shoring up NATO against not only Russia but now also against the threat created by Trump’s expansionist appetites. Other European powers are similarly increasing defense spending (while cutting humanitarian assistance), suggesting even higher levels of global arms spending, something regularly condemned as a moral scandal by the church.

In an odd break from its recent antipathy to multilateralism, the administration launched on Jan. 22 its “Board of Peace” to lead efforts at maintaining a ceasefire in Israel’s war with Hamas and rebuilding Gaza. Its managers will include Mr. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, special envoy Steve Witkoff and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Mr. Trump, who will serve as the board’s chair indefinitely, has already suggested it may one day rival the United Nations.

So far, no prominent U.S. allies have signed on, though the effort has been joined by a jumble of odd bedfellows, including Arabian monarchs and heads of former Soviet states. Russia and China have been invited to join the board, as has the Vatican, which has informed the White House that it is weighing its options.

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The Weekly Dispatch takes a deep dive into breaking events and issues of significance around our world and our nation today, providing the background readers need to make better sense of the headlines speeding past us each week. For more news and analysis from around the world, visit Dispatches. This week, three U.S. cardinals demand a reassessment of U.S. foreign policy and willingness to use force and Maduro’s ouster proves strongest in Latin America.

Kevin Clarke is America’s chief correspondent and the author of Oscar Romero: Love Must Win Out (Liturgical Press).