U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has flooded the zone with nominations for key national security positions that raise questions even among longtime Republican foreign-policy hands about the U.S. approach in a second Trump administration.

Trump campaigned on promises to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, to start a global trade war, to use the U.S. military in controversial and even illegal ways to enforce his immigration plans at home, and to use the Justice Department to settle personal scores. His early picks for top posts bear out plans to make those promises reality, and some of them have sparked concern even in a Washington that will be entirely in Republican hands.

“The basic problem is that [Trump] can’t tell the difference between the national interest and his personal interest,” said John Bolton, who served as national security advisor for a time during the first Trump administration and has warned about the risks of a repeat since. “As Louis XIV used to say, ‘l’état, c’est moi.’”

Having served with Trump before, in addition to decades of experience in previous Republican administrations, Bolton has seen how the next president’s limited grasp of international relations weakens his ability to be an effective advocate for U.S. interests. “He has a very limited appreciation of what is at stake in international affairs. He can’t be an effective bargainer, because he often has no idea what he is giving up,” Bolton said, recalling Trump’s unilateral offer to curtail U.S.-South Korean military exercises to curry favor with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

“Hard men like Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin know what their national interests are, whereas Trump is just being taken for a ride,” Bolton said.

Read more

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump announced on Wednesday that he has selected Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz to serve as attorney general and former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard to serve as director of national intelligence. 

Gaetz is a polarizing figure and close Trump ally who is currently the subject of a House Ethics Committee investigation into allegations that Gaetz may have “engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, accepted improper gifts, dispensed special privileges and favors to individuals with whom he had a personal relationship, and sought to obstruct government investigations of his conduct.” Gaetz has denied the allegations.

Last year, the Justice Department also investigated him in a sex trafficking probe. The department concluded its investigation in 2023 without bringing charges against Gaetz. Gaetz also denied the allegations in that case.

“Matt is a deeply gifted and tenacious attorney,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social social media platform. “Matt will end Weaponized Government, protect our Borders, dismantle Criminal Organizations and restore Americans’ badly-shattered Faith and Confidence in the Justice Department.”

Once a Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii who ran for president as a Democratic candidate in 2020, Gabbard left the Democratic Party in 2022 to register as an independent and has since become a staunch Trump supporter. She deployed to Iraq from 2004 to 2005 as a major in the Hawaii National Guard and is now a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserves, but she has little direct intelligence experience. If confirmed by the Senate, Gabbard would oversee the U.S. intelligence community.

Read more

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s selection of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio as his nominee for secretary of state means that Latin America could play a prominent role in U.S. foreign policy over the next four years. Rubio, who is Cuban American, is known for hawkish positions on countries including China, Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela.

If confirmed, Rubio would be the first Latino to become Washington’s top diplomat. Although Trump has promoted an isolationist foreign-policy agenda that could see the United States withdraw from global engagement, it might not extend to the Western Hemisphere.

For Foreign Policy, Oliver Stuenkel, an associate professor of international relations at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, argued that “at least in the case of Latin America, Trump’s return to the White House would lead to a far more interventionist U.S. foreign policy”—in part due to competition with China and the salience of immigration in U.S. political discourse. In Rubio, Trump seems to have found a champion for this approach.

Read it here: Trump Has His Own Monroe Doctrine

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has spent the week since his election victory filling out his cabinet and key policy personnel, with a few surprising names thus far. One particular announcement on Tuesday, however, was less surprising.

“I am pleased to announce that the Great Elon Musk, working in conjunction with American Patriot Vivek Ramaswamy, will lead the Department of Government Efficiency (“DOGE”),” Trump wrote in a statement shared on his social media platforms. DOGE—a thinly veiled reference to one of Musk’s favorite meme cryptocurrencies—has been formed to slash government spending and drastically reduce federal budgets.

“To drive this kind of drastic change, the Department of Government Efficiency will provide advice and guidance from outside of Government, and will partner with the White House and Office of Management & Budget to drive large scale structural reform,” Trump added. 

Musk, the world’s richest man, had floated the idea of creating such a department as early as September, and he repeatedly mentioned it while supporting Trump on the campaign trail. At a preelection rally in New York City last month, Musk said that he would cut as much as $2 trillion from the federal budget. (The U.S. government spent $6.75 trillion in fiscal year 2024.)

There is little clarity on how Musk might do so without cutting key government expenditures such as social security and defense spending, and he appeared to acknowledge that the strategy might cause severe short-term economic upheaval.

Read more

This week, China Brief covered how U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and his allies will approach Beijing in the four years ahead. In my view, three key questions remain about China policy in the next White House:

Can the administration’s China policy can be reconciled with its domestic economic needs? Trump’s oft-stated preference for tariffs on China set at 60 percent may lead to significant inflation.

How much leverage does Beijing get from business holdings in China among Trump allies? Trump has shown that he can be persuaded when it comes to Chinese business interests if spoken to directly.

Is the United States facing down China out of ideological principle, or is it doing so out of a need for geopolitical primacy? These differences would significantly affect U.S. positions on Taiwan.

Finally, staffing choices matter. Some figures in Trump’s orbit have shown a commitment to human rights in China, including his pick for national security advisor, Rep. Mike Waltz. Sen. Marco Rubio, who has played a prominent role in human rights work, is also broadly in this camp. (On Monday, it was reported that he is Trump’s likely pick for secretary of state.)

Yet Trump has also praised Xi for ruling “with an iron fist” and for his abolition of presidential term limits.

Read it here: Where Does China Stand With the Next White House?

U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping will hold a long-telegraphed meeting on Nov. 16 on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Peru, according to senior U.S. administration officials. 

This will be the first convening of the two leaders since last November, and it is expected to be the last of the Biden presidency. The U.S. officials, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity under terms set by the administration, said no major new deliverables are on the table; instead, the two leaders will discuss the agenda they set out at their meeting on the sidelines of last year’s APEC summit in California. 

In the year since, the United States and China have managed to forge new stability through increased diplomatic contact. They have used that stability to push forward cooperation on military-to-military communication, climate change, fentanyl, and artificial intelligence, even while both countries have continued to take assertive actions in other areas, from technology restrictions to Taiwan. 

With President-elect Donald Trump taking office in January, though, that careful balance of cooperation and competition is all but guaranteed to be cast aside in exchange for a more mercantilist approach. 

The Biden administration’s priority at this weekend’s meeting seems to be keeping relations as smooth as possible until then. “We’ll expect to try to continue to ensure that we’ve got those channels working—law enforcement and [military-to-military] in particular—which we see as critical to underpinning stability in the relationship in the period ahead,” a senior administration official said. 

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has picked former New York Rep. Lee Zeldin to lead the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), several outlets reported on Tuesday. Zeldin, a four-term Republican congressman who lost the New York gubernatorial election in 2022, confirmed his selection in a post on X and stated a novel priority for the EPA to make the United States the “global leader” of artificial intelligence.

Vivek Chilukuri, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security who has written critically on U.S. tech decoupling from China in Foreign Policy, observed: “It’s a strong signal the Trump administration will target existing environmental permitting for data centers and energy infrastructure as part of its strategy to boost American AI.”

Zeldin’s attention to data centers echoes Jared Cohen, the president of global affairs at Goldman Sachs, who argues that the next phase in AI competition will focus on where the data centers that power the technology will be built. In an October piece for Foreign Policy, Cohen wrote that the United States faces “significant bottlenecks” with building data centers—which in turn “presents an opportunity for governments and enterprises to practice data center diplomacy.”

Read it here: The Next AI Debate Is About Geopolitics

Arab and Muslim Americans in Michigan, especially in the city of Dearborn, shifted away from the Democratic Party and toward President-elect Donald Trump in 2024. The Biden-Harris administration’s unwavering military assistance to Israel—and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’s willingness to continue this policy—drove Arab American voters in Michigan away from a party that the community had consistently supported since the early 2000s. Trump won the state by  more than 80,000 votes after losing it to outgoing President Joe Biden by more than 150,000 votes in 2020.

Trump won Dearborn, where more than half the population is of Middle Eastern or North African descent, by capturing 42 percent of votes to Harris’s 36 percent; the Green Party’s Jill Stein also took a substantial 18 percent of the vote in the city. In neighborhoods within the city where Arab Americans are the majority, such as eastern Dearborn, Harris performed even worse.

For example, in 2020, Biden beat Trump in eastern Dearborn by nearly 10,000 votes. On Election Day this year, the Detroit Free Press reports that Trump defeated Harris in eastern Dearborn by nearly 3,700 votes, accumulating 45 percent of the vote in 2024 after receiving only 18 percent in 2020 resulting in a 27 percent swing toward Trump that demonstrates how the Democrats’ refusal to restrain Israel as it destroyed Gaza likely pushed Arab Americans to the right.

Read more

As G-20 leaders gather next week in Rio de Janeiro, Donald Trump’s big win in the U.S. election has raised questions about the future of multilateralism. With his “America First” message, Trump is anything but a poster boy for the cause. And a new administration will take the helm against a backdrop of increasing paralysis at hallowed international organizations such as the United Nations and World Trade Organization. Multilateralism seems to be in big trouble.

But this distrust of multilateralism also comes in the context of decreasing unipolarity in the international system. Taken together, these factors may open the door to a revitalized G-20. It will take a new bargain between the United States and the global south to get there.

Read more

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has chosen former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee to serve as U.S. ambassador to Israel. A close Trump ally and staunch supporter of Israel, Huckabee will take up the role at a critical time for the Middle East as Israel wages a multifront war against Iran’s proxies and as Gaza teeters on the brink of famine. 

An ordained Southern Baptist pastor who served as governor of Arkansas from 1996 to 2007, Huckabee has never served as a U.S. diplomat overseas.

Huckabee regularly travels to Israel, leading tours popular among evangelical Christians, and has repeatedly spoken in favor of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and advocated for Israel to annex the territory. 

Huckabee’s nomination comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also nominated a strong supporter of settlements, Yechiel Leiter, to serve as ambassador to the United States. On Monday, Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said he hoped Israel would push to annex parts of the West Bank in 2025, raising the prospect that the Israeli government may seek a green light from the United States to formally annex the Palestinian territory during Trump’s second term. 

“Mike has been a great public servant, governor, and leader in faith for many years,” Trump said in a statement announcing his choice of Huckabee. “He loves Israel, and the people of Israel, and likewise, the people of Israel love him. Mike will work tirelessly to bring about peace in the Middle East!”

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has promised to stop the war in Gaza, ending over a year of fighting that has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, devastated the region, and spread to Lebanon, Yemen, and other countries nearby. Even if Trump is serious about keeping his promise, the chances of ending Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza are low and fighting is likely to continue.

Israel believes it is riding high, and even if Hamas offered a hostages-for-withdrawal deal—the core of cease-fire proposals in the past year—on favorable terms to Israel, it is unlikely that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would agree. Israel has decimated Hamas’s leadership and disrupted much of its military capacity. Although it has not destroyed Hamas completely, as Netanyahu has vowed, the group is on its heels, and Netanyahu contends that a cease-fire would allow the group to recover. Israel appears to have settled for a grinding conflict in Gaza with the goal of keeping Hamas weak, even if it prevents any larger political deal in the strip that would end the suffering there.

On the Palestinian side, making peace—and enforcing it—is difficult. Israel has killed Ismail Haniyeh, Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif, and other Hamas leaders, as well as numerous low-level commanders. The result is a leadership vacuum. This is particularly pronounced in Gaza, and it is unclear if external leadership has any influence over the Hamas fighters remaining in the strip. Any leader in Gaza who tries to consolidate control there is likely to end up on the receiving end of an Israeli missile strike.

Read more

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has reportedly tapped Florida Sen. Marco Rubio as his secretary of state. If Rubio were confirmed, it would make him the first Latino to hold the nation’s senior cabinet position.

Rubio, who has been in the Senate for 14 years, should not face any confirmation headaches. Even temporarily losing his seat with a handpicked Republican replacement, the GOP should have an easy 52-vote majority in the upper chamber. 

Rubio ticks nearly all the boxes for a future Trump foreign policy: He is hawkish against all the usual suspects. He is suspicious of, if not belligerent, toward China, hostile to Iran, not keen on Venezuela, rueful of the Cuba his parents left, and indifferent toward Gaza and Ukraine. The only problem with Rubio, from Trump’s point of view, is that he might be too hawkish.

Trump campaigned on a pledge to end wars. He did so messily in Afghanistan, and he has vowed to do so in Ukraine. He called off a large-scale attack on Iran during his first term and alternated between berating China and selling it soybeans. The big question is whether Trump’s vision of an “America First” foreign policy has enough room for the small diplomatic wars—a fresh recourse to sanctions on Iran, redoubled pressure on Venezuela, or an overhaul of U.S. policy toward Cuba—that Rubio’s worldview would encompass, or whether Rubio would have to set his sights exclusively on China.

Read more

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Monday asked Florida Rep. Mike Waltz to be his national security advisor, according to multiple reports, filling another key cabinet position as his future administration takes shape. Waltz, who served 27 years in the U.S. Army Special Forces (also known as the “Green Berets”) and U.S. National Guard before retiring as a colonel, was elected to Congress in 2018 in the seat previously held by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. 

Waltz has been one of the most vocal China critics in Congress, serving on the China Task Force and sponsoring legislation to restrict government funding from U.S. universities with ties to China. He also serves on the Armed Services Committee and Foreign Affairs Committee.

While Waltz has broadly been supportive of U.S. aid to Ukraine in its fight against Russia, he has more recently criticized what he called the “blank check” approach and called on European countries to shoulder more of the burden.

Waltz is the latest addition to Trump’s cabinet, with Reps. Elise Stefanik and Lee Zeldin named as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, respectively. Waltz’s fellow Florida lawmaker Marco Rubio is also set to be named secretary of state. 

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has 70 days until he takes office, but his foreign-policy decision-making has already begun.

1. The United Nations. On Monday, Trump nominated New York Rep. Elise Stefanik to be the United States’ ambassador to the United Nations. Stefanik is a longtime critic of the international body. She has accused the U.N. of antisemitism for criticizing Israel’s settlements in the West Bank, and in October, she called for the “complete reassessment of U.S. funding of the United Nations.” Her appointment suggests that the incoming Trump administration intends to more aggressively defend Israel on the world stage.

2. Israel-Hamas war. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that he has spoken with Trump three times since the U.S. election last Tuesday and that the two men “see eye to eye on the Iranian threat in all its components and the danger it poses.”

It is unclear if Trump’s administration will help mediate cease-fire talks between Israel and Hamas. The president-elect has expressed support for Netanyahu’s efforts to achieve “total victory” and has argued that a truce deal would only allow Hamas to regroup, but he has also stressed the need for the war in Gaza to end.

3. Russia-Ukraine war. The Washington Post reported on Sunday that Trump had spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin last Thursday to urge Moscow not to escalate its war against Ukraine. The Kremlin dismissed the report on Monday as “pure fiction” and said there were no concrete plans yet to connect with the president-elect. Trump (alongside billionaire Elon Musk) spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last Wednesday.

Trump has touted his ability to end the Russia-Ukraine war within 24 hours, but the details for how he plans to do that remain vague.

As Week 2 of the presidential transition begins, President-elect Donald Trump’s list of key policy personnel is starting to take shape. 

Two big names moved out of the “rumored” column on Monday. 

Trump named New York Rep. Elise Stefanik as his ambassador to the United Nations, a post occupied in his first term by Nikki Haley. (Trump had said earlier that Haley and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo would not be asked to join Trump’s new administration.) 

The second Trump appointee is Tom Homan, the former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Homan will be in charge of U.S. border policy and will oversee “all Deportation of Illegal Aliens back to their Country of Origin,” Trump wrote in a post on his social media platform Truth Social. 

That’s in addition to Susie Wiles, Trump’s co-campaign manager whom he named White House chief of staff last week. Wiles will be the first woman in U.S. history to serve in that role.

Trump is expected to tap Stephen Miller, a key ally and immigration advisor in his first administration, as deputy chief of staff for policy, CNN reported. 

Two Republican governors—Kristi Noem of South Dakota and Doug Burgum of North Dakota—are reportedly being considered for the role of secretary of the interior. Burgum is also believed to be a candidate for energy secretary, as is former Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette. 

Other positions in the incoming Trump administration—including all the members of his cabinet—are yet to be confirmed, but here are some of the names we outlined in our Situation Report newsletter last week:

Brian Hook, who served as the director of policy planning and special envoy for Iran in the first Trump administration, is expected to lead the transition team at the State Department, CNN reports.

Former Veteran Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie is running point on the Defense Department’s transition team, Politico reports.

Former Democratic Rep. Peter Deutsch has expressed interest in becoming the next U.S. ambassador to Israel, Jewish Insider reports.

Sen. Tom Cotton has said he would not accept a cabinet position offer, despite being a top contender, Axios scoops.

Politico reports that Sens. Marco Rubio and Bill Hagerty and former acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell have been mentioned as potential contenders for secretary of state.

Other names that we’re hearing as likely contenders for senior positions include: Rep. Mike Waltz; Keith Kellogg, a former chief of staff on the National Security Council; Kash Patel, a former chief of staff at the Pentagon; former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe; former National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien; and former Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary Elbridge Colby.

In recent weeks, North Korea deployed troops to Russia to reinforce Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. This is only the latest example of the increased collusion among the new Axis of Aggression: China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia.

How can the new Trump administration address this challenge?

While the Trump 2.0 National Security Strategy has yet to be written, a major part of the answer will center on the president-elect’s promise to bring a quick end to the war in Ukraine.

The interlinkages among this Axis of Aggression are not as deep and robust as some might think. Rather, almost all of the ties revolve around the other dictators supporting Putin’s war against Ukraine.

North Korea is providing troops and munitions. Iran is providing drones. China is providing enormous economic support short of lethal military assistance, including the heavy-duty trucks and excavation equipment that are allowing Putin to literally dig in to Russian-occupied Ukraine. In exchange for this largesse, it is rumored that Russia is providing advanced military assistance related to nuclear weapons and space technology.

Apart from backing Putin’s war against Russia, however, the ties among these dictators are sparse. To be sure, there would remain a general antagonism to the U.S.-led, post-World War II international system, but the near-term, life-or-death incentives for urgent military collaboration would be removed.

Bringing the war in Ukraine to a quick and decisive conclusion, therefore, as Donald Trump has promised to do, would remove many of the incentives for autocratic collaboration.

This would provide time and space for the natural enmities among these dictators to emerge, providing Washington and the free world with the opportunity to develop a coherent long-term strategy to counter, deter, and if necessary defeat the Axis of Aggression at the same time.

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is set to nominate New York Rep. Elise Stefanik to serve as his ambassador to the United Nations, multiple outlets report. Stefanik has accepted the offer, according to the New York Post. 

The position of U.N. ambassador is often seen as a proving ground for rising stars of the party in power. The news will come as little surprise to those who have tracked Stefanik’s ascension through GOP ranks over the past decade, serving most recently as chair of the House Republican Conference. 

Known for her prosecutorial style of questioning in House hearings, most memorably when questioning the heads of elite colleges about allegations of antisemitism on their campuses, she is likely to produce made-for-TV moments at the U.N. Security Council. She is widely expected to serve as Trump’s enforcer at the international body. 

She was first elected in 2014, making her the youngest woman ever to win a seat in Congress at the time. A once-proud moderate, she has become a Trump acolyte—even joining the attempt to try and overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. 

In 2022, I profiled Stefanik in search of answers as to what her rise and political evolution could tell us about how the Republican Party has changed since Trump was first elected. Her nomination as U.N. ambassador further cements her role in the party’s future.

Read it here: Elise Stefanik Is Most Likely to Succeed 

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s desire to end Russia’s war against Ukraine is sincere. But it is understandable that Ukraine and its supporters may have concerns about how, exactly, the “deal” promised by Trump during his campaign will look. If it does not include ways to guarantee Ukraine’s ability to defend itself, the fighting may only stop temporarily; history shows that Russia will return in a few years to finish what it started. The war would not truly end—it would merely be frozen.

But these same supporters of Ukraine must also be honest and recognize that a Harris administration would have posed its own challenges, albeit for different reasons. Vice President Kamala Harris would likely have continued President Joe Biden’s tepid policy of doing just enough to help Ukraine to survive but never enough to succeed.

Long delays in providing key weapon systems, the illogical restrictions placed on those systems, and the slow drip of aid far short of what Biden had the legal authority to deliver have caused immense frustration among Ukrainians. These policies often seem to defy basic principles of military strategy and practice. As Ukraine endures daily attacks from Russian missiles, North Korean artillery, and Iranian drones—and with more than 10,000 North Korean soldiers now deployed on the Russian side—many Ukrainians see the Biden team’s self-imposed limits to military aid as an open invitation to the Kremlin to keep escalating its brutal war.

Read more

 U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s congratulations for U.S. President-elect Donald Trump this week signals his pragmatic willingness to forge a working relationship with the incoming president. Starmer, striving to bridge differences, finds himself in the unenviable position of balancing his party’s distaste for Trump with the U.K.’s long-standing strategic reliance on the United States. Starmer’s outreach may smooth over initial tensions, but when Trump returns to power, maintaining this fragile connection may prove difficult.

Starmer finds himself on the more conciliatory end of his party. David Lammy, now the foreign secretary, has described Trump as a “racist KKK and Nazi sympathiser” and a “neo-Nazi sympathising sociopath” and sought to make him the first U.S. president denied a state visit to the U.K. Parliament. He has compared Trump consistently to Adolf Hitler.

It has been widely reported that this history might sour relations. In the run-up to the vote, Woody Johnson, the former U.S. ambassador in London and a Trump ally since at least the 1980s, warned that Trump “will remember” Lammy’s remarks. Trump has a habit of paying close, almost neurotic attention to the negative things that people say about him, especially online.

Read more

President-elect Donald Trump’s post-election call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday included tech billionaire and staunch Trump ally Elon Musk, according to multiple reports. Zelensky described the call as “excellent” in a post on X (the platform that Musk owns) shortly after it took place, but he did not reference Musk’s involvement. 

Musk has been a key player both in Ukraine’s war against Russia and in the Trump campaign. The Starlink satellites operated by Musk’s company SpaceX have provided internet connectivity to Ukraine’s war effort. Yet Musk has also clashed with Zelensky over the former’s controversial peace proposal, which would see Russia retain control over Crimea, which it illegally annexed in 2014; Ukraine drop its bid to join NATO; and other measures that Zelensky opposes.   

Musk’s donation of more $100 million to Trump’s election campaign and appearances with him at rallies appear to have gained him Trump’s ear and a seat at the table during the presidential transition period. (Trump has previously hinted at giving Musk a formal role in his administration.) The billionaire Tesla and SpaceX CEO reportedly also joined Trump’s call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan this week. 

A Trump campaign spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Foreign Policy on Musk’s role in those calls and what was discussed.

Kenyan President William Ruto took longer than many African leaders to congratulate Donald Trump for his victory in the U.S. presidential election. Ruto had become a close ally of President Joe Biden’s administration, much to the chagrin of Kenyans, who held monthslong protests against Ruto’s economic policies and alleged corruption in his government. During that time, Biden designated Kenya a major non-NATO ally and secured its involvement in the Haiti peacekeeping mission.

In his congratulatory message to Trump on Wednesday, Ruto affirmed Kenya’s commitment to its long-standing partnership with Washington on “trade, investment, technology and innovation, peace and security, and sustainable development.”

Yet Ruto’s critics have called attention to the delayed messaging. “Trump win is bad news to the ruto administration. Trump abhors foreign aid as a means of developing africa . He will not meet ruto to dish out free sanitary towels and mosquito nets,” Kenyan MP Caleb Amisi wrote in a post on X. “Kenya will now be forced to work hard and stop over reliance on Western economic bloc!”

A trade and investment partnership with Kenya was slated to be finalized by the Biden administration next month, including investments in agriculture, climate resilience, and improving governance. The deal replaced formal trade negotiations undertaken by the first Trump administration in 2020 that emphasized U.S. access to Kenya’s wheat market and cooperation with small businesses.

It’s unclear whether Trump will revert to his more transactional trade proposal. Kenyan Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi on Friday sought to dampen fears. “American policy generally doesn’t change much whether the White House is held by a Republican or a Democrat,” Mbadi said. “Our current engagement is more at the multilateral level. The U.S. supports the World Bank, from which we receive assistance.”

Movie fans know that sequels are rarely any good, and they often take a darker turn than the original. The first installment of Trump as President was disappointing to many and fatal for some, which explains why he lost the 2020 election. The remake is going be worse—here are the top 10 implications of the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

U.S. politics is a mystery. If it wasn’t clear already, it is now crushingly obvious that nobody understands how U.S. electoral politics works and that much of the conventional wisdom on the subject is dead wrong. Polls aren’t reliable, truisms about the importance of a “ground game” don’t apply, and all the smart people who thought they knew what would happen weren’t just wrong but off by a lot. As in 2016, I suspect former U.S. President Donald Trump and his team were as surprised as the rest of us. My crude take is that U.S. elites are still underestimating how much white-hot anger and fear is out there in the body politic, much of it directed at them. There will be reams of post-hoc analysis explaining what went wrong for the Democrats and why the experts missed it yet again, but these same “experts” have had eight years to figure this out and are still at sea.

Trump will be unpredictable. Well, duh. Trump sees unpredictability as an asset that keeps others off balance, and his well-deserved reputation for erratic behavior makes it harder to criticize him for being inconsistent. For this reason, nobody—including his supporters—should be confident that they know exactly what he’ll do. It’s a safe bet that he won’t do anything that isn’t in his personal political and financial interest, but how that translates into policy is impossible to fathom. He said a lot of crazy things during his campaign, but how much of it was bluster and bluff and how much was sincere remains to be seen.

Read more

The United States has chosen former President Donald Trump as commander in chief once more. Here’s what we know about Trump’s plans for the Pentagon during his second term in office.

Domestic deployment? Trump has repeatedly spoken about using the U.S. military on domestic soil for a host of law enforcement purposes, including securing the southern border with Mexico, policing civil unrest, cracking down on crime in cities such as Chicago, and even pursuing his political opponents. 

A long-standing law known as the Posse Comitatus Act bars federal troops from participating in almost all civilian law enforcement roles, but the 1807 Insurrection Act offers some exceptions if needed to quash a rebellion. 

An American Iron Dome. On the campaign trail, Trump spoke repeatedly about building an Iron Dome missile defense shield—which was also included in the Republican Party platform this year. 

But critics of Trump’s proposal have noted that building such a system to defend the entire United States would cost a fortune, and it would be of little use intercepting medium- and long-range missiles fired by Russia or North Korea.

Schedule F. Trump had vowed on the campaign trail to revive efforts to strip job protections from thousands of federal civil servants in policymaking roles, which will also expand to the Pentagon. Trump’s promise to pursue “rogue bureaucrats” has raised fears that the move could be used to politicize the federal workforce. 

Goodbye DEI. During a campaign event in October, Trump said he would create a task force to monitor “woke generals” and eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion training. He is also likely to reinstate a ban on transgender people serving in the armed forces and has promised to restore Confederate names to U.S. military bases. 

Washington is deep in the throes of its favorite parlor game—trading gossip on who is set to serve in the second Trump administration.

Here’s a look at who is confirmed, rumored, and vying for a top job—and who has turned them down. A word of caution: Two days after the election, almost everything is informed speculation at this point.

Brian Hook, who served as the director of policy planning and special envoy for Iran in the first Trump administration, is expected to lead the transition team at the State Department, CNN reports.

Robert Wilkie, the former Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, is running point on the Pentagon’s transition team, Politico reports.

Peter Deutsch, a former Democratic U.S. representative from Florida has expressed interest in becoming the next U.S. ambassador to Israel, Jewish Insider reports.

Sen. Tom Cotton has said he would not accept an offer of a cabinet position, despite being a top contender, Axios scoops.

Politico reports that Sens. Marco Rubio and Bill Hagerty and former acting National Intelligence Director Ric Grenell have been mentioned as potential contenders for secretary of state.

Other names that we’re hearing as likely contenders for senior positions include the following: Florida Rep. Mike Waltz, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former chief of staff on the National Security Council Keith Kellogg, former chief of staff to the acting Defense Secretary Kash Patel, former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, former National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien, and former Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary Elbridge Colby.

U.S. voters have given President-elect Donald Trump a mandate to govern the United States, but his policies are certain to influence the entire world. It’s possible to speculate on the potential effects based on Trump’s first term as president. But his agenda is now more extreme, and his power less restrained.

Is Europe any more prepared than it was eight years ago to contend with a Trump presidency? What does another Trump administration mean for global climate policy? And what is China’s view on the U.S. election?

Those are just a few of the questions that came up in my recent conversation with FP economics columnist Adam Tooze on the podcast we co-host, Ones and Tooze. What follows is an excerpt, edited for length and clarity. For the full conversation, look for Ones and Tooze wherever you get your podcasts. And check out Adam’s Substack newsletter.

Read more

The clearest change that U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is likely to make on foreign policy is in Ukraine. Republican support for spending more on sending weapons to Kyiv has been declining, and Trump will probably follow through on his promise to seek a peace deal. 

The problem is that peace will likely come at terms that do not favor Kyiv. Now, Ukraine’s military losses have begun to mount, and the practical barriers to continued support to Ukraine—declining Western stockpiles, Ukraine’s significant manpower and corruption problems—have increased. Trump has a popular mandate to seek a settlement, even though Europeans might object. 

What, then, would a settlement in Ukraine look like? The territorial question will be settled by facts on the ground: Russia’s recent gains suggest that this will be worse for Ukraine than it would have been a year ago. The Kursk incursion could give the Ukrainians some leverage, but only if they can succeed in holding it.

Then there are the bigger strategic questions. Kyiv insists that any peace deal must include a security guarantee, ideally via NATO; Russia isn’t likely to tolerate this. Despite what Ukrainian leaders say publicly, a minimum acceptable deal for Kyiv might look more like Ukrainian sovereignty, the ability to arm itself with Western help, and economic integration into Europe. 

Trump is well placed to put pressure on Kyiv, but he and his advisors should be under no illusions that they can force Kyiv to the negotiating table. 

It’s possible that whatever deal is negotiated—particularly if it is negotiated over the heads of Ukrainians—would be politically unacceptable to the Zelensky government. Kyiv might opt to keep fighting and seek European support instead.

For the Trump administration, the choice would be whether to continue to support Ukraine or to step back and drop the problem on Washington’s European allies.

Emma Ashford: Morning, Matt. We finally have an answer to the question the world has been asking for months. The next president will be Donald Trump—and he seems to have won, if not by a landslide, then by a healthy margin in almost every key swing state. It’s a clear mandate from the voters for another four-year Trump term.

I assume you’re popping Champagne?

Matthew Kroenig: Trump supporters drink beer.

The results of Trump’s foreign policy were objectively better than Biden’s (who likes major wars in Europe and the Middle East with no end in sight?), and I am optimistic about a Trump 2.0.

On the results, it proves the adage that Washington, D.C., is 12 square miles surrounded by reality. Progressive elites in Washington and other capitals are horrified by this outcome, but the American people clearly were not buying what Kamala Harris was selling. They prefer Trump by a decisive margin.

EA: Harris was a weak candidate, though Democrats didn’t have a lot of choice given the late-stage switch from President Joe Biden. But it’s definitely interesting that foreign policy seems to have played a role. Remember we asked that question last time: Do voters care about foreign policy? The answer is that they usually don’t.

But this time, I’m pretty confident that at least some of Harris’s trouble with younger voters, and Arab Americans in particular, come from her decision to double down on Biden’s unpopular foreign policies and her strange embrace of the neoconservative architects of the Iraq War. She lost by about 80,000 votes in Michigan, more than 100,000 voted third party, and some clearly stayed home—that’s easily enough to lose it.

MK: I think you are right that it contributed to the outcome. Reports from Dearborn, Michigan, suggest a protest vote against Biden.

Read more

President-elect Donald Trump’s Iran policy during his first term was never as bellicose as his rhetoric. His “maximum pressure” campaign was mostly similar to former President Barack Obama’s application of sanctions that brought the Iranians to the negotiating table and resulted in the 2015 JCPOA nuclear deal.

Just because Trump called that agreement the “worst deal ever” did not mean that he wanted to pursue regime change in Tehran, however. Rather, he wanted to negotiate a better deal with the Iranians, one that allowed him say his nuclear deal was superior to Obama’s nuclear deal. Trump was otherwise quite dovish on Iran. At moments when it would have been legitimate for Trump to use military force—after the IRGC seized oil tankers, mined the Persian Gulf, shot down an American drone operating in international airspace, and bombed Saudi oil facilities—the president chose (with bipartisan support) not to respond.

There are still comprehensive sanctions on Iran, but the Biden administration has tended to look the other way at Iran’s oil sales. That had everything to do with the political calculations of a president who was stung early on in his administration by high energy prices. The collective pain of Americans at the gas pump contributed to Biden’s persistently low approval rating.

It remains an open question if Trump would risk the same through tougher sanctions enforcement. It depends on how he calculates his parochial interests: Does he want to be the guy who got “the better deal”—consistent with his self-image as master dealmaker—or does he want to ensure that Americans enjoy cheap oil and gas? Does he think he can do both? Only President-elect Trump could know the answers to those questions—and he may not either.

President-elect Donald Trump’s broad mandate portends many changes to U.S. policy, but when it comes to the Middle East, things are likely to remain mostly the same. Support for Israel will continue, Iran will be a major pre-occupation, and Team Trump will likely look for ways to establish normal diplomatic relations between Saudis and Israelis. Sounds familiar, no?

Like the Biden administration, which worked for a cease-fire in Gaza that never was, Trump wants the war there to end sooner rather than later. In a phone call ahead of the election, the president-elect told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to wrap up major military operations in Gaza before Inauguration Day. That is consistent with the Biden team’s efforts, though it is inconsistent with Israel’s timeline.

Unlike Biden, however, Trump and the people around him are unlikely to apply pressure on the Israelis to get there. They are more likely to give Israel a lot of leeway, including releasing Biden’s hold on the transfer of certain weapons to finish the job as soon as possible. Biden, to be sure, has overseen an unprecedented 14-month effort to re-supply the Israel Defense Forces. But Trump is less likely to ask hard questions about Israel’s operations, the provision of humanitarian aid, and the status of Gaza after the war ends.

For Gazans, it may seem that the quicker the war ends the better. But if the Trump administration allows the Israeli government to pursue the end of the conflict in ways it sees fit, it is likely that more Palestinians will be killed along the way. Then, of course, there are Netanyahu’s partners who want to resettle the Gaza Strip, the logical conclusion of which is the further dispossession of a population that was already predominantly refugees and their descendants.

Europe is better prepared to work with a Trump White House than it was eight years ago but still needs to do more to boost its defense spending, former NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said in an interview with Foreign Policy. 

“Though the Europeans are better prepared now, we need to do much more,” said Rasmussen, who added that the alliance should raise its spending targets from 2 to 3 percent—a move that both President-elect Donald Trump and NATO officials have backed. 

Rasmussen echoed the cautious optimism of Ukrainian officials that Trump’s businesslike approach to world affairs could potentially be of benefit in any talks to end Russia’s war in Ukraine. 

“His unpredictability combined with his desire to look like a winner could be used to help the Ukrainians build up a leverage that can be used,” Rasmussen said. “From my time as secretary-general of NATO, I know that unpredictability can be very forceful when it comes to deterrence.”

The former NATO chief said restrictions on Ukraine’s ability to use Western weapons to strike Russia should have been lifted a long time ago, and he criticized the Biden administration for being too cautious in its approach to the conflict out of fear of provoking Moscow. 

“I think our hesitation, and the hesitation of the Biden administration, has actually fueled the war. It has given [Russian President Vladimir] Putin appetite for more,” he said.

As the world wonders who will be calling the shots in a second Trump administration, one name keeps popping up among possible economic advisors: Robert Lighthizer. As the U.S. trade representative during President-elect Donald Trump’s first term, Lighthizer was the architect of the United States’ aggressive use of tariffs and other trade restrictions against friend and foe alike, abandoning decades of U.S. support for free trade. His trade policy revolution was subsequently embraced and expanded by the Biden administration.

Lighthizer may now be on the short list for a key economic post come January, with treasury secretary mentioned as one possibility. If he gets the nod, he could apply equally revolutionary ideas to policy areas beyond bilateral trade—with enormous implications on the financial sector and on economies around the world, as FP columnist Edward Alden describes in his profile of Lighthizer with a view to a second Trump term.

But even if a Lighthizer comeback is limited to a trade portfolio, the world could be in store for an economic upheaval. As Bob Davis outlines in his review of Lighthizer’s 2023 book, No Trade Is Free: Changing Course, Taking on China, and Helping America’s Workers, the former trade official favors an economic and technological decoupling from China so comprehensive that it would take the protectionism initiated during Trump’s first term to an entirely new level.

Read it here: The Man Who Would Help Trump Upend the Global Economy and Trump Trade War Mastermind Is Back With a Dangerous New Plan

This week’s South Asia Brief examines the fallout of former U.S. President Donald Trump’s reelection for the region. Expectations are high for significant changes in U.S. foreign policy, but in South Asia we can expect considerable continuity from Washington.

The U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy has become the core driver of U.S. policy in Asia more broadly. This strategy first emerged under Trump as great-power competition intensified. The Biden administration robustly embraced the approach, albeit with some modifications, and has sought to strengthen ties with most South Asian capitals and to counter China’s deepening footprint in the region.

Trump prioritizes great-power competition considerations in foreign policy. This suggests the Indo-Pacific strategy (or the goals that drive it) will remain intact. However, Trump’s victory will certainly lead to some changes to U.S. bilateral ties in the region. Climate change could take on less importance, as well.

Read it here: In South Asia, Expect Continuity From Washington

Someone in Donald Trump’s inner circle needs to take him to one side and tell him this home truth: as president-elect, he must immediately explain his plan to end the war in Ukraine. 

Trump, still celebrating his historic victory, will naturally be thinking about his domestic agenda. But he should understand that the longer that he dithers, the more strategic advantages he hands to Russia—which is now a firm U.S. adversary. 

Ideally, his plan should not involve Ukraine giving up territory that has been captured by Russia over the course of the war. Nor should it be based on empty promises from Russian President Vladimir Putin, which he has a history of making.

Read more

What’s fascinating about former U.S. President Donald Trump’s return to the White House is that he is both replicating former President Grover Cleveland’s rare feat of two nonconsecutive terms and is doing so on a tariff policy that would make Cleveland’s final successor, William McKinley, blush. The world may still be getting its bearings after Trump’s landslide victory, but historians of the 19th century are in fine fettle.

Trump, who took tariffs to new depths in his first term, has promised to make them the centerpiece of his second-term economic agenda—alongside tax cuts, a bigger deficit, possible cuts to the safety net, and a reversal of everything outgoing President Joe Biden has done.

The questions about Trump’s tariff plans boil down to: How big, how soon, how, why, and what happens next?

Read more