A Tale of Two Paris Agreements

In my weekly column for World Politics Review, I compare the Donald J. Trump administration's decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement to the early twentieth century U.S. rejection of the Covenant of the League of Nations.

Almost a century after the U.S. Senate rejected the Covenant of the League of Nations, President Donald J. Trump last week formally announced that the United States would begin quitting the Paris climate agreement, the most important multilateral convention of the 21st century. Future historians may well look back on these twin abdications as bookends to the “American century,” underscoring enduring U.S. ambivalence toward globalism and defensiveness regarding national sovereignty. The tale of these two Paris treaties reveals both how much the global agenda has changed and how little the U.S. has learned since 1919.

Read the full World Politics Review article here.