The object of the children’s game musical chairs is to find a seat when the music stops. The object of the diplomatic game of “empty chair” is to leave a seat unoccupied to show displeasure with whatever diplomatic game is being played. The United States is now playing the empty-chair game with the United Nations, and the recent Security Council adoption of the U.S. peace plan for Gaza does not change that policy.

Historically, France’s famous “empty chair” policy in 1965 marked a serious setback for the development of the European Union. French President Charles de Gaulle, reluctant to give up French sovereignty to a multilateral organization such as the European Economic Community, refused to send representatives to critical meetings. The United States is showing similar petulant behavior toward the United Nations in its absence from the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) Peer Review session as well as the U.N.’s climate summit in Brazil.

“You are as others see you,” is not only a principle of social psychology, it also has meaning in international relations. Since 2008, the UNHRC has conducted a formal Universal Periodic Review (UPR) to evaluate how countries uphold human rights. Every four and a half years, different countries are brought before the 47 member Council – members are elected by a majority vote of the U.N. General Assembly. This year it was the United States’ turn to have its human rights record reviewed by its peers.

Guess what? It didn’t show up, making it the first member country to opt out of its own review in the 17+ years of the UPR. Other countries have had their reviews postponed, but there has never been a complete withdrawal. The only other country that has missed its UPR session is Israel (in early 2013), but it later participated after a delay.

The UPR was established to facilitate dialogue among all 193 U.N. member states about their human rights policies. Since the first UPR in 2008, the U.N. has reviewed all 193 member states three times with participation rates close to 100 percent. The U.S. Peer Review has been rescheduled for November 2026 in the hope the U.S. will return to the table. However, its withdrawal means that there will be no U.S. national report, no official U.S. appearance at the review, and no responses to issues raised by civil society in the traditional stakeholder submissions.

A State Department official, as reported by The Hill, justified the empty chair saying taking part would overlook the body’s “persistent failure to condemn the most egregious human rights violators,” and that the U.S. would not be “lectured about our human rights record by the likes of HRC members such as Venezuela, China, or Sudan.”

Others disagree. “Showing up and explaining your own record on human rights is the bare minimum for any government that purports to exercise international leadership and uphold democratic norms,” said Uzra Zeya, president and CEO of Human Rights First. She added, “The United States isn’t being singled out — every U.N. member state takes its turn having its human rights record assessed. Running away from that scrutiny doesn’t just show weakness and a lack of confidence, it will give rights-abusing governments cover to do the same themselves.”

Two academics observed, “T]he USA’s withdrawal from the UPR is (1) an unprecedented step that risks contributing to further regression in global human rights protections, and (2) suppresses civil society organisations’ (CSOs) ability to hold the USA to account both domestically and internationally.”

The UPR is not the only venue where the United States is deploying an “empty chair” policy. Top U.S. government officials did not attend the annual United Nations climate summit for the first time in 30 years. No major American political leaders traveled to Belém, Brazil, to participate in COP30. “President Trump will not jeopardize our country’s economic and national security to pursue vague climate goals that are killing other countries,” a White House spokeswoman explained the absence to the New York Times. Already on his first day in office, Trump had withdrawn from the Paris climate agreement.

Again, others disagree about the U.S. empty chair, this time in Brazil. “The United States has lost credibility…It is completely immature, irresponsible, and very sad for the United States…” a Costan Rican diplomat, Christina Figueres, was quoted in The Guardian.

By empty-chairing COP30, the Trump administration has weakened America’s leadership role in climate diplomacy and given geopolitical competitors like China more room to assert themselves. A June 2025 New York Times article made it clear that “China came to dominate even clean energy industries the United States had once led. In 2008 the United States produced nearly half of the world’s polysilicon, a crucial material for solar panels. Today, China produces more than 90 percent. China’s auto industry is now widely seen as the most innovative in the world, besting the Japanese, the Germans and the Americans.”

Empty-chairing is smugness personified. “I don’t need you, I can do it alone.” France eventually became a member of the European Union and one of its driving forces. “America First,” a popular isolationist slogan from the 1910s through the 1940s that resurfaced in Trump’s 2016 campaign, has reappeared in the administration’s attitude towards multilateral institutions. While Trump’s actions against Venezuela and elsewhere are certainly not isolationist, refusing to participate in the UPR and COP30 and denigrating the United Nations are self-defeating in an interdependent world.

As for the Security Council adopting the U.S. peace plan for Gaza as a potential indication of Trump’s support for multilateralism, Julian Borger in The Guardian described Resolution 2803 (2025) as “a miasma of vagueness” and “one of the oddest in United Nations history.” He added, “The fact that the resolution passed 13-0, with Russia and China abstaining, is testament to its calculated haziness as well as the global exhaustion and desperation over Gaza after two years of Israeli bombardment…” Hardly a ringing endorsement of multilateralism, the resolution does little to signal a fundamental shift in U.S. policy toward the U.N. Its provisions for official Palestinian participation are conditional and extremely limited, reflecting American hegemonic power rather than genuine pluralism.

Musical chairs is a game for children. Empty-chairing is a childish reaction in the adult world of diplomacy. While countries can certainly disagree with one another, refusing to show up is an immature way of expressing that disagreement. Empty-chairing and cherry-picking when to engage multilaterally undermine international cooperation. When the music stops, everyone should have a chair.

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