New Delhi, Jan. 9 -- President Donald Trump has pulled the US out of more than five dozen global organizations. As the White House put it, these "no longer serve American interests" and promote "ineffective or hostile agendas."

A variety of causes, from climate action to health and human rights, will be left bereft of US funding. Particularly damaging is the US withdrawal from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, although it's consistent with Trump's view of the crisis as a "hoax."

The burden of saving the world from the ill-effects of a disastrous warm-up will have to be borne by others, even as the US turns its military focus to the Arctic Ocean, where a fast-melting polar ice-cap is opening navigation routes and...