Abandoning the Table: America’s Retreat from International Ocean Cooperation
SEVENSEAS Media | February 2026
By Mark J. Spalding, President, The Ocean Foundation
On January 7, 2026, the United States withdrew from sixty-six international commitments. Among them were two bodies of work I have spent significant portions of my career helping to build: the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation and UN Oceans. As I absorbed the news, I felt something between grief and vertigo—the sensation of watching structures I helped construct over decades being dismantled with the stroke of a pen.
To me, these are not abstract policy frameworks. They represent thousands of hours of negotiation, relationship-building, and painstaking diplomatic work. They represent friendships forged across borders and the hard-won trust of colleagues in dozens of countries who believed that when America committed, it meant something.
The NAFTA Side Agreements: Building Guardrails on Capitalism
In 1992, I was a young, freshly minted international relations specialist with my JD already in hand, working as an international environmental law intern for the Natural Resources Defense Council. Part of that work was advising the transition team for the Clinton-Gore administration on what became a signature achievement: the side agreements to the North American Free Trade Agreement that would protect environmental and labor standards even as trade barriers fell.
I was not the architect of these agreements, nor their primary author. But I contributed over many years to shaping both the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation and the North American Development Bank into something meaningful—institutions that provided guardrails on capitalism via free trade, even as that trade was designed to deepen multinational integration, reduce unnecessary competition, strengthen diplomatic relations, and help avoid conflict.
The Commission for Environmental Cooperation was never perfect. What international institution is? But it represented something important: the recognition that economic integration without environmental protection would be a hollow victory. It embodied the principle that prosperity and environmental stewardship could advance together—that we need not sacrifice one for the other.
Now, thirty-four years of institutional development have been abandoned. The message to our neighbors in Mexico and Canada is unmistakable: American commitments are provisional. American partnerships are capricious. American leadership is a thing of the past.
UN Oceans: A System That Is Working
Like so many of us in international ocean conservation, we have been deeply involved in UN Oceans. I have been fortunate to have been engaged with many aspects of UN Sustainable Development Goal 14, the blue economy, the ocean-climate nexus, and ocean science diplomacy. The Ocean Foundation staff have been represented at all three UN Ocean Conferences as panel organizers, speakers, and advocates. As important, so too have been those whose presence we have been able to sponsor—adding key voices to the conversation.
For the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, I believe I’ve played a positive role in furthering philanthropic cooperation and coordination through the Foundations Dialogue. I served on the U.S. National Committee for the Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The Ocean Foundation’s work on Underwater Cultural Heritage was recognized by the Decade.
Here is what makes this withdrawal particularly painful: the international system is working. The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea—part of UN Oceans—provides the foundational framework for ocean governance. And we are in a time of genuine progress.
For example, the world’s nations reached an agreement on the high seas—the 65% of our ocean that lies beyond the boundaries of any country. On January 17, the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) Treaty will enter into force, creating the first international framework for protecting marine biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction. Separately, negotiations are underway for an international treaty on plastics—a critical step towards addressing this problem in our seamless global ocean and in coastal and island nations worldwide. Likewise, we celebrate the elimination of harmful fisheries subsidies, a decades-long effort that will help restore depleted fish stocks worldwide. Finally, most nations are moving toward a moratorium on seabed mining, recognizing the profound risks of industrializing the deep ocean before we understand what we would destroy.
Is the international system without flaws? Of course not. Are the negotiation processes with nearly 200 nations slow and occasionally frustrating? Yes. Are we succeeding in protecting the ocean? Yes, we are making genuine, measurable progress. And we are doing it through precisely the kind of multilateral cooperation that America has now chosen to abandon.
The Cost of Isolation
There is a particular kind of political rhetoric that frames international engagement as weakness—as if cooperation with other nations somehow diminishes American sovereignty. This framing has it exactly backwards.
When you have a seat at the table, you have a voice. When you abandon that seat, you don’t gain independence; you lose influence. The decisions still get made. The rules still get written. The rules still apply to everyone. You simply no longer have any say in what they contain.
Consider which nations refuse to participate in international cooperation: North Korea, Syria under Assad, and Russia. These are the pariah states, not models of sovereignty. By withdrawing from the community of nations, we are not putting America first. We are self-selecting for isolation before anyone has even asked us to leave. We are voluntarily surrendering the leadership position that generations of American diplomats built and generations of Americans have fought to defend.
And for what? The ocean doesn’t recognize borders. Migratory fish don’t carry passports. Climate change affects every coastline. Plastic pollution circulates through every ocean basin. The challenges we face are inherently international because the ocean is intrinsically shared. Walking away from international cooperation doesn’t make these problems disappear. It simply ensures that we will have no voice in how they are addressed.
The Personal Cost
I have spent nearly four decades building international partnerships for ocean conservation. I have worked in over 130 countries. I have built relationships with scientists, policymakers, and advocates around the world—relationships grounded in the assumption that American engagement could be counted upon, that our word meant something, that when we signed an agreement, we intended to honor it.
Those relationships don’t disappear overnight. But they are now clouded by uncertainty. When I meet with colleagues from other nations, I can see the question in their eyes: Can we still count on you? Can we still count on America? I don’t have a good answer.
What I can say is that The Ocean Foundation’s work continues. The ocean doesn’t care about American electoral cycles. The need for conservation doesn’t pause while we sort out our domestic politics. We will continue to advocate for marine protection, to build capacity in coastal communities worldwide, and to advance the science and policy that healthy oceans require.
But make no mistake: this withdrawal makes our work harder. It undermines American credibility. It signals to the world that American commitments are conditional, our partnerships are unreliable, and our leadership is up for grabs. Other nations will fill the void. They always do.
Refusing to Stop
I find myself thinking about the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact—that often-overlooked but pivotal moment that sought to outlaw war for the pursuit of territory and transform international relations. It was imperfect. It did not prevent the catastrophe that followed a decade later. But it changed the conversation.
The Pact represented something essential: the aspiration toward a world order based on cooperation rather than conflict, on law rather than force. It was a foundation upon which the post-war international system was built—a foundation that increased prosperity, including our own.
Nearly 250 years ago, the Declaration of Independence laid the groundwork for governance that was more representative, had more checks and balances, and aimed for greater equality than any constitutional monarchy or other governance model at the time. Over the following decades, that document and subsequently the US Constitution were the gold standard for global change from colonialism to more democratic institutions.
We are in danger of squandering that inheritance. The institutions we are abandoning were built by American leadership, often at American insistence. They reflect American values—or at least, values that America once claimed as its own. The decision to walk away from them is not a return to some imagined golden age of unfettered sovereignty. It is a retreat from responsibility, a surrender of influence, a gift to those who would prefer a world without American leadership.
But those principles remain in force. They can be upheld. January 7th did not mark the end of international engagement. The work of ocean conservation continues, with or without official American participation. The international community will adapt, as it always does. And those of us who believe in the importance of global cooperation will keep building, keep advocating, keep showing up at the table even when our government chooses to stay home.
The ocean has taught us patience. It has taught us that change happens slowly, then suddenly. It has taught us that even the most powerful forces eventually meet their match. The tide will turn again. When it does, we can be ready because we will still be here.
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Mark J. Spalding is President of The Ocean Foundation, which he has led for twenty-three years. He serves on the U.S. National Committee for the Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development and has worked on international ocean policy for nearly four decades.
