U.S Withdrawal From UNESCO and China's Smart Response

As you might have already read, yesterday on October 12th Trump administration announced its plans to withdraw from UNESCO – the United Nations cultural, scientific, and educational organization – by the end of 2018. Partially, this is due to the complicated U.S-Israel-Palestine relations and the due to the fact that quite a few of UNESCO members have very opposite views on the Palestine question than the U.S. This isn't the first time the U.S has gone awol in the organization as it was also absent during Reagan's, Clinton's and both Bush's administrations from 1982 to 2002. Since 2011, domestic actors in the U.S have raised concerns over the violation of U.S laws and UNESCO membership, as U.S is by law forbidden from participating in organizations that support sovereign Palestine state. Obama tried to repeal the law numerous times only to see the Congress veto his every effort to do so.

After Trump administration announced its withdrawal, Chinese government decided to withdraw their own candidate for UNESCO director-general position and instead endorse Egyptian candidate – a vocal supporter of Palestine's sovereignty – in a move that was well appreciated in Cairo and elsewhere in the Muslim world. As a result, China is gaining an ever increasing role in global politics, in international organizations and in the increasingly multilateral global order. China is keen on improving its presence in international organization as a way to project its growing influence in cultural, political, legal and economic spheres, and Beijing has identified the membership and active role in international organizations as a great vehicle for driving Chinese interests and spread its soft power throughout the globe. Moreover, China's growing influence in (Northern) Africa, Central Asia and the Middle-East, Muslim-dominated states, should concern West and especially the U.S who are now seemingly threatened on the very territories they have accustomed to control for centuries by China who has equally anti-Western views due to colonial history and the humiliation it experienced in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The world we live in is no longer controlled from Washington, London or Brussels, and the rise of emerging economies and China will create new challenges to the post-1945 status quo in global affairs. Should we see the Chinese to become the dominant authority among the developing world nations, we can expect more anti-Western and anti-U.S sentiments from these regions as people who feel they have been mistreated by the West for centuries, are now increasingly being supported politically and economically from Beijing. Moreover, the nature of international organizations such as UNESCO, International Permanent Court of Arbitration, International Court of Justice and other bodies of global governances is at stake as they are facing growing scrutiny from the non-Western world.