U.S. Foreign Policy Surprises in 2025

The first year of President Donald Trump’s second term brought many significant changes to U.S. foreign policy, as the administration worked to reshape policy to fit its priorities and to respond to emerging challenges to U.S. interests. As the 2025 National Security Strategy laid out, the Trump administration’s tone and approach to the world departs from many long-held assumptions in American foreign policy. The last year also saw events such as Israeli and U.S. strikes on Iran in June, the buildup of U.S. forces in the southern Caribbean, Trump’s on-again-off-again relations with both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and much more.

As we wrap up 2025 and move into 2026, we asked five experts to identify an aspect of U.S. foreign policy that surprised them in the last year.

Emma Ashford Senior Fellow with the Reimagining U.S. Grand Strategy program at the Stimson Center

The most surprising U.S. foreign policy development of 2025: This time around, the Trump administration means it.

The administration has actually begun to follow through on many of the more radical ideas expressed by the president and those around him. From demanding European defense spending to bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities, pursuing an unpopular peace in Ukraine, and a serious military pivot to the Western Hemisphere, Trump 2.0 has been largely unbound by past convention and unconstrained by those around the president. The administration has also been willing to wield a hatchet — rather than a scalpel — when it comes to aid, diplomacy, and even the foreign policy bureaucracy. Elon Musk’s DOGE cut a swathe through USAID, and the National Security Council is now just a fraction of its former size.

None of these actions should really have come as a surprise. Nor are they all bad. But if the second Trump administration’s apparent willingness to actually follow through on the president’s pronouncements continues, the world could see a remarkably different American foreign policy by the time the next president is inaugurated in 2029.

U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America is still driven by domestic politics — the age-old priorities of drugs and migration. But the biggest surprise for me was the sudden resurgence of the Western Hemisphere as a foreign policy priority. The “Trump Corollary” places a once-ignored region at the heart of U.S. national security policy. Trump’s attraction to the Monroe Doctrine is nothing new, but what is surprising is the degree to which this administration is willing to go to defend “our hemisphere.” This military commitment to the Western Hemisphere, by definition, means a readjustment of military presence away from regions that have traditionally ranked higher as security concerns. This is not to say that this new prioritization will result in more consistent policy. When looking at the radically different approaches toward Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, we see that, for Trump, transactions and personal affinity override any coherent security strategy.

H.A. Hellyer Senior Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress

From the perspective of U.S. policy toward the Middle East, the most surprising development in 2025 was the decision to lift sanctions on Syria. For years, U.S. sanctions were treated as immovable — designed to constrain the Assad regime and signal opposition to its conduct. What made their removal unexpected was the widespread assumption that Washington would remain unwilling to ease sanctions, given the background of the new leadership and its roots in Hayat al-Tahrir al-Sham. Instead, the decision reflected a pragmatic recognition that continuing to apply a sanctions architecture built for a different regime would not strengthen stability in a fundamentally new political reality. Lifting sanctions was less an endorsement than an acknowledgment that economic isolation would only entrench fragmentation, undermine governance, and constrain regional stabilization efforts. In that sense, the move marked a notable break from entrenched policy reflexes rather than a wholesale shift in U.S. principles.

Oriana Skylar Mastro Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University

The most surprising development was the Trump administration’s strategic shift to the Western Hemisphere and away from East Asia — a significant divergence from the strategic outlook of the first Trump administration, which was on the right track when it focused on the Indo-Pacific, and particularly the threat posed by China. The 2017 National Security Strategy stated that China, along with Russia, “challenge[s] American power, influence, and interests, attempting to erode American security and prosperity.” But the new National Security Strategy does not treat the Indo-Pacific as the primary theater or clearly identify China as the main threat.

This shift is particularly striking in the context of a rising China. The United States easily remains the dominant power in the Western Hemisphere. Of all the regions of the world, China is the least active militarily in Central and South America, and Latin America is a distant third after Africa and Central and Southeast Asia in terms of Chinese foreign development assistance. China has significantly fewer business interests in Latin America than elsewhere — although its links to the region through infrastructure projects and other investments are growing. In terms of homeland defense, China currently lacks a fielded, credible conventional capability to attack the U.S. homeland, including all 50 states, leaving Beijing with only cyber, space, or nuclear options.

Joshua Shifrinson Associate Professor with the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland

The most surprising development in a busy year for U.S. policy towards Eastern Europe and Russia has been the sustained American effort to broker an end to the Russo-Ukrainian War. With the arrival of the second Trump administration, we might have expected one of two policies for the United States. Given then-candidate Donald Trump’s complaints about U.S. support for Ukraine under the Biden administration, we might have expected Washington to wash its hands of the war. Conversely, given Russia’s limited enthusiasm for a peace deal, we might have seen the famously mercurial Trump decide that Russia was not a reliable partner and so back Ukraine in some fashion — albeit not to the same degree as Biden. Neither happened. Instead, the United States has pursued a middle course, pushed for a peace deal, and — most dramatically — stuck to this course despite twists and turns imposed by all players. Different people can criticize or applaud Trump’s efforts, but the continued push for a deal is novel, interesting, and something few would have expected at the start of the year.