Author: Maciej Dachowski

The January 8, 2026 Decision and the End of Institutional Automaticity

On 8 January 2026, the administration of Donald Trump announced the initiation of procedures to withdraw the United States from a range of international organisations, conventions, and treaties deemed contrary to U.S. national interests. While formally framed as an administrative and legal review of existing commitments, the decision carries significance far beyond its procedural form. In substance, it represents a doctrinal shift in how Washington understands the relationship between American power and the institutional architecture of the Western-led international order. [1]

For the first time since the end of the Second World War, a U.S. administration has explicitly stated that participation in international institutions is no longer a default instrument of national interest. Instead, institutional engagement is treated as conditional and reversible, dependent on short-term political, strategic, and economic calculations. The January 8 decision is therefore not a course correction nor an attempt to reform institutions from within. It is a challenge to the foundational logic of the post-1945 order itself.

This is not the first moment in U.S. history when the relationship between American authority and international institutions has been contested. After the First World War, Woodrow Wilson, the chief architect of the League of Nations, failed to secure Senate ratification for U.S. membership in the very system he helped design. American absence from that framework weakened its credibility and capacity, contributing to the erosion of the interwar order and its inability to prevent systemic collapse. [3]

The lesson drawn after 1945 was fundamentally different. The administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt rejected Wilsonian idealism in favour of pragmatic institutionalism. The postwar system was not intended to constrain American power but to embed it. The United Nations, the Bretton Woods institutions, and the broader network of political and economic frameworks were designed to institutionalise U.S. predominance, making it durable, predictable, and acceptable to others. [2]

This model never implied unconditional compliance with rules. Throughout the Cold War, the United States acted unilaterally, stretched legal norms, and bypassed procedures when core interests were at stake. Yet even administrations as different as those of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan treated international institutions as part of the architecture of power rather than as expendable constraints. Even when rules were violated, the United States maintained the narrative of systemic leadership [4]. That narrative, often hypocritical, yet functional, sustained a hierarchy of legitimacy within the international system. [5]

After the Cold War, this balance began to erode. The administration of George W. Bush, particularly after 2001, expanded the scope of action taken without clear institutional mandates. The 2003 invasion of Iraq demonstrated that rule violations by a hegemon did not necessarily produce lasting systemic costs. [7] Subsequent efforts to restore multilateralism under Barack Obama and Joe Biden unfolded in a system where institutions still existed formally but were increasingly unable to arbitrate the behaviour of major powers.

The January 2026 decision accelerates this trajectory. Earlier withdrawal, from the World Health Organization, the Paris Agreement, or UNESCO, were presented as exceptional responses to specific dysfunctions. [8] The current move transforms exception into principle. Institutional participation ceases to be automatic and becomes purely instrumental. [11]

Lost Logic of “One World”

At this point, it is worth recalling Wendell Willkie, a figure largely absent from contemporary debate yet crucial for understanding the intellectual logic of postwar American leadership. Willkie embodied a moment when U.S. power was consciously re-imagined not as autonomy from the international system, but as authority exercised through it. A New York businessman and Republican challenger to Roosevelt in 1940, he entered politics as an outsider precisely at a moment when the United States was being forced to decide whether its global role would be defined by distance or by institutional engagement.

Although he lost the election, Willkie did not become an opponent of the administration. On the contrary, Roosevelt recognised his capacity for strategic thinking beyond partisan lines and appointed him as a special presidential envoy. Between 1941 and 1942, Willkie undertook a global mission encompassing Europe, the Middle East, the Soviet Union, and Asia. He witnessed firsthand the effects of war, imperial decline, and the collapse of existing international structures. [10]

These experiences gave rise to One World, in which Willkie articulated a vision grounded not in idealism but in systemic realism. [9] His argument was clear: global interdependence was irreversible, and the absence of rules and institutions would not produce freedom but chaos, ultimately harming even the strongest actors. American power, he argued, could only be durable if embedded in structures that ordered competition and constrained arbitrariness.

The contrast with Donald Trump is striking precisely because both men emerged from New York’s business milieu and from political outsiderdom rather than the Washington establishment. Willkie, shaped by the experience of managing large corporate structures in a highly regulated environment, concluded that stable rules and institutions were a prerequisite for durable advantage in an interdependent world. Trump draws the opposite conclusion: that institutions primarily impose costs and that sovereignty is best expressed through maximum short-term flexibility and transactional leverage. This divergence reflects not a difference of temperament or rhetoric, but two competing diagnoses of global interdependence and of how power should be exercised within it.

Consequences for the European Union and Poland in a Precedent-Based Order

For the European Union, the American shift away from institutional automaticity presents a structural challenge. [12] The EU was built on the assumption that rules precede power and that procedures civilise force. In a system where the leading Western power signals readiness to act outside institutional frameworks, Europe does not lose its normative relevance but loses the environment in which normativity translates into influence.

Selective multilateralism rewards actors capable of rapid action, risk absorption, and strategic resilience. Institutions increasingly function as mechanisms for post hoc coordination rather than arenas of genuine arbitration. For the EU, this risks a drift into reactivity, managing the consequences of decisions taken elsewhere rather than shaping their premises.

Poland’s position within this transformation is more ambiguous than traditional metrics of power would suggest. While Poland cannot compete with major powers in terms of raw capability, it has operated in conditions of sustained systemic stress, military, energy, migration, and logistical, over recent years. This experience has translated into concrete capacities for shock absorption, rapid adaptation, and decision-making under uncertainty.

In an order governed increasingly by precedent rather than rules, such experience becomes political currency. Poland has emerged as a strategic front-line state, not merely geographically but functionally, and as a central hub of support for Ukraine. Its ability to integrate security, infrastructure, and economic logic positions it as an actor whose relevance is defined by utility rather than formal status.

At the same time, the erosion of institutional multilateralism carries clear risks for Poland. Rule-based systems historically amplified the position of medium-sized states by limiting arbitrariness. A shift toward direct negotiation and coalition politics increases exposure for states located along Europe’s primary fault lines. Comfort derived from procedure gives way to the demands of constant strategic positioning.

Yet this does not condemn Poland to passivity. In a European Union struggling with internal inertia, states capable of action can function as translators of the new systemic logic into European practice. Poland has the potential not to replace EU institutions but to bridge the gap between a rules-based mindset and a precedent-driven reality, shaping adaptation rather than merely responding to it.

The January 8 decision should therefore not be read in Warsaw solely as a threat to international order but also as a signal that the criteria of relevance are shifting. As institutions lose their automatic capacity to elevate medium powers, value accrues to those able to demonstrate resilience, security provision, and stabilising capacity.

American withdrawal from institutional automaticity does not negate the interdependence Willkie described. It changes how that interdependence is managed. The world remains “one world,” but increasingly it is governed not through shared institutions but through negotiated action, credibility, and demonstrated capability.

For Poland, the central question is not whether the emerging order is normatively desirable. It is whether the state can operate as a relevant actor in a system where legitimacy flows from performance rather than membership. The answer lies not only in foreign policy but in the ability to integrate security, economy, infrastructure, and diplomacy into a coherent instrument of state presence.

In this sense, the current transformation of the international order is not merely a challenge for Poland. It is a test of strategic maturity in an era where institutions no longer provide shelter and precedent increasingly defines the rules of the game.

Endnotes

[1] White House, Presidential Action: Withdrawing the United States from International Organizations, Conventions, and Treaties Contrary to the Interests of the United States, 8 January 2026.

[2] G. John Ikenberry, After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order after Major Wars, Princeton University Press, 2001.

[3] Woodrow Wilson, Address to the Senate on the League of Nations, 1919.

[4] Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War, Cambridge University Press, 2005.

[5] Ian Hurd, After Anarchy: Legitimacy and Power in the United Nations Security Council, Princeton University Press, 2007.

[6] George W. Bush, West Point Commencement Address, 1 June 2002.

[7] United Nations, Security Council Resolutions and Debates on Iraq, 2002–2003.

[8] White House / State Department, statements on U.S. withdrawal from WHO, Paris Agreement, UNESCO (2017–2020).

[9] Wendell Willkie, One World, Simon & Schuster, 1943.

[10] Samuel Zipp, The Idealist: Wendell Willkie’s Wartime Quest to Build One World, Harvard University Press, 2020.

[11] Barry Buzan, George Lawson, The Global Transformation, Cambridge University Press, 2015.

[12] European Council, Strategic Compass for Security and Defence, 2022.