The NPR Politics Podcast - Year In Review: Trump's Foreign Policy

Episode Date: December 16, 2025

As we approach 2026, the NPR Politics Podcast is taking a look back at the year that was in different political areas. Today, we explore what President Trump's administration has done in terms of foreign policy, and what might be expected in the coming year.This episode: senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith, White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez, and national security correspondent Greg Myre.This podcast was produced by Casey Morell and Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye.Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Frank O'Donias. I also cover the White House. And I'm Greg Myrie. I cover national security. And today on the pod, we want to take a look back at foreign policy decisions during the first year of the second Trump administration. And Greg, before we get into the nitty gritty of what has happened this year, President Trump is fond of saying that he has solved eight wars. Let's start there. Has he? Well, Tam, the president has had some diplomatic success, but it's a real stretch to claim he's ended eight wars. Many of these were small-scale skirmishes or tensions along a border or just diplomatic disputes with no actual shooting. And in several cases, negotiations had already been going on for some time before Trump came into office. But there have been a few successes. For example, this long-running feud between India and Pakistan, which dates back generations, they started trading fire in the spring for a few days. Secretary of State Marco Rubio jumped into the fray and quickly brokered a ceasefire. This could have escalated and the U.S. intervention worked very well. Absolutely a good thing. But they didn't

resolve any of their fundamental differences. They just agreed to stop fighting for now. And the same could be said of some of these other wars that Trump has claimed to have ended. You know, they're still fighting going on in the Congo, Congo and Rwanda. You've got Congolese rebels who are still, you know, really pushing this Thailand and Cambodia. There's questions about who's firing on who. When I talk to foreign policy pundits, they are very happy that Trump is putting this much bandwidth, administration bandwidth behind seeking peace in the world, particularly in some of these conflicts that generally in historically don't get this. much attention from a White House, from an administration. That said, you know, what's very clear is that Trump wants these peace deals so badly that he is so less interested in the details of those peace deals. He repeatedly wants to announce peace. And as many people tell me, before peace actually happens.

He loves a deal. It's the follow-through that can be a bit more of a challenge. And, of course, he has now been awarded a FIFA Peace Prize. Yeah, the FIFA Peace Prize is a very, very curious one. I was actually at the World Cup FIFA draw when it happened. It was very interesting to hear the applause, which was very, very measured when it was announced that Trump was receiving this award. It was amazing to hear the applause for Andrea Buccelli, the famous tenor, in comparison. You know, there's a lot of controversy about this award. It did not exist before the FIFA chief Gianni Infantino, you know, has been currying favor with Trump for so long now. There's definitely mutual interest in this. And of course, of course, as we talked a lot about, Trump wants the Nobel Peace Prize, another award that has alluded him that he feels he deserves.

The FIFA chief has lobbied on his behalf so often. So this was certainly another way to curry favor with Trump. And I think the measured applause and kind of. of the reports and controversy surrounding that award, I think, speaks to those issues. Well, Greg, let's turn to the conflict where there is no indication of peace just yet, though President Trump has repeatedly said he thought this would be the easiest one. That's the war in Ukraine. There's also the conflict between Israel and Hamas.

Starting with Ukraine, what's the latest development there? Yeah, the war grinds on. It looks right now like it looked a year ago. before Trump entered office. And this is a place where Trump really hasn't had success and he predicted it that he could end this war in a day. Trump is still pressing for a deal, but virtually all the pressure is on Ukraine. It's being asked to give up a significant territory, about 20 percent of its land, and make other concessions as well. And it's not clear what Ukraine would get in return except for an end to the war. Now, Trump came into office, this term, sounding supportive of Russia and

its president, Vladimir Putin, and sharply critical of Ukraine and its leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, we've had lots of twists and turns. Trump has staked out various positions, then reversed himself. And as this year winds down, we're largely back where we started. Trump appears more aligned with Russia and putting more pressure on Ukraine. And Franco, the president ran on a campaign that was skeptical of U.S. intervention in global conflict. How has that played out with respect to Ukraine. Yeah, I mean, Maga World has really been pushing Trump to pull out of, you know, kind of U.S. leadership of this battle. His son, even, Donald Trump Jr., in recent weeks, has, you know, been suggesting that the president may walk away from Ukraine and, you know,

kind of rethinking, you know, the priority. Even the president himself in recent days, you know, as he has is going back and forth in support for Ukraine. or Russia has talked about pulling back support from Ukraine, talking about corruption, talking about the need for elections. Still, though, I mean, the United still continues to play a leadership role in this and pushing this as we've reported on his, you know, chief advisor and son-in-law trying to negotiate some kind of beast deal with both sides. At the same time, he has been pulling away from that leadership. He stopped funding the war. At least, at least sending more money to Ukraine. He's now always, you know, repeatedly says that

Europe is going to be funding. You know, he's talked about issuing more sanctions, but rarely never does. Or when he threatens to do that, Putin will come forward and, you know, Trump will kind of pull back. Remember when he was flirting with sending Tomahawk missiles, he stopped short of that. I think it'll be very interesting to watch this go forward. But certainly I think Trump continues to kind of take steps to pull away while still kind of dangling and still wanting to fulfill that campaign issue. Because as we are saying before, Trump really wants the Nobel Peace Prize and he has suggested that he needs this in order to get it. I want to turn to the war between Israel and Hamas. A ceasefire did take effect earlier this year.

Franco, how much of that was due to U.S. intervention? I mean, a lot. You know, it definitely was. I mean, in so many different ways on the most basic level, of course, U.S. led the negotiation and was the architect of the plan. But you also had just the months or years of the U.S. backing Israel in its war against Hamas, you know, kind of giving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu kind of political cover as he continued to wage this war and attack Hamas in some of the most brutal ways. And then, you know, kind of getting this. plan to, you know, on paper with his chief advisor and his son-in-law, and then actually really forcing Israel's hand to take the deal because, you know, a lot of Israeli leaders did not want to do that. They wanted to keep the fighting going. They wanted to try to rid Hamas forever, and obviously that did not happen. In recent days, you have the UN Security Council adopting the plan, which provides kind of a legal mandate for not only ending the war, but moving forward to rebuild. That said,

I want to be very clear. There's still a lot of uncertainty. Strikes continue and there's a lot of questions about how, you know, this so-called stabilization force and the rebuilding process is going to deal with Hamas fighters who are still armed. You know, just add, as Franco noted, this truce or ceasefire is step one. What is really hard is steps two and three here. Now, step two would be basic things like establishing a government in Gaza, then starting to rebuild Gaza, getting a security force there, stabilizing the place and solidifying the truce and ceasefire, making an actual peace. But then the really hard part is how do you negotiate a political settlement here? The Israelis and Palestinians have been feuding for generations. So in a sense, Trump has claimed

success by lowering the bar and saying there's a truce, we've been successful here. Well, these Israeli Hamas battles have played out periodically over the past 25 years. They go on for a while and then they stop and then they start up again. So, yes, it is an achievement that the Trump administration has been able to achieve this, but the really hard parts that other presidents have tried and failed of getting a larger political settlement. That hasn't happened. Trump hasn't even laid out an idea and it's not even on the table for discussion at this point. I do want to ask, we've talked about a bunch of different conflicts here. Do you see a throughline developing in President Trump's approach to foreign policy? I still think it's hard to put it together in sort of one coherent package here. In fact, I think you're seeing some contradictory strains. On the one hand, as we've noted, Trump has made an effort to end some conflicts. On the other hand, he's continued to alienate a lot of allies, sometimes with just his comments, sometimes with his threatened or actual tariffs. And one thing that's actually been pretty surprising is his willingness to use the military. He has bombed Iran. He bombed the Houthis in Yemen for weeks. He's bombing suspected drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean. He's put a large U.S. military presence in the region also and threatening possible military action against Venezuela. People were not expecting this level of turning to the military that Trump has displayed so far.

The one point I would make is he's using, to this point, air strikes, bombing missions. things that can be turned on and turned off really with a snap of a finger. He hasn't put troops on the ground. And I think that's something we should keep a very careful eye on. But again, you see peace efforts, you see tariffs and insults to allies, you see the use of military force. So he's been a very active foreign policy president in his first year. I don't know that there's one clear through line. I think there are several different directions he's going at the same time. Obviously, there is like a bigger picture to, you know, what Trump is trying to do. I think we're starting to see that more and more play out. But kind of on a more direct scale, kind of Greg is looting to, I mean, with the with the tariffs, with immigration, it's like foreign policy is his policy. It's the things he's interested in. If someone wants something from the United States, Trump will use his interest as it leverage, whether it's immigration in South America. We have the. obviously the strikes related to immigration, all the different relationships that he has

with certain Central American and South American countries, those he has good relationships usually are taking immigrants from the United States. Similarly, with tariffs if the United States will use tariffs as a, you know, a bludgeoning tool, a weapon to get things that the United States wants. And he's done that pretty effectively in lowering tariffs for the United States, increasing tariffs for other nations, and getting, you know, kind of using those tools, whether it's immigration or tariffs, to kind of build on his interests, which, you know, often are, you know, campaign promises. But, but not necessarily the same friends or enemies that the U.S. has traditionally had.

Yeah, that is absolutely true. There is no question about that. Some of the allies almost seem like enemies in many ways. I mean, even more recently when talking about Ukraine, European leaders are called weak by, you know, the president of the United States. It's fascinating while, you know, calling European leaders weak. He's, you know, cozing up with the, you know, the autocratic leaders of Saudi Arabia and Russia, Putin, for example. It is very interesting to see how this president, again, has kind of changed the rules of engagement between allies and adversaries. All right. Well, we're going to take a quick break and we will have more in a moment. And we're back. And I want to zoom out a bit when it comes to how the U.S. has been acting with Ukraine. It seems like a rejection of the post-World War II world order, the idea of American-led multilateralism. And we know President Trump has not been a fan of multilateral organizations. But what do you make of this? I think Ukraine is the leading example, but you can see it on several fronts with Trump turning away from all these key pillars of the international system that the U.S. built after World War II and has used to maintain its leading role economically, militarily, diplomatically. You know, Trump has talked about America first and pulling back the U.S. role for years. And now it's happening on multiple fronts in his current term and much more rapidly than his first term.

So the Trump administration has released its national security strategy, which they did in December of 25. You know, this document outlines the administration thinking on foreign policy and national security. It's absolutely scathing toward Europe, saying that Europe is essentially fading into irrelevance. So he's again angered the Europeans. There were a couple moments this year when it seemed like they'd reach some sort of truce, but now many Europeans are quite angry at this position. and the fact that it's being put in writing. The document also is surprisingly soft on both Russia and China. It doesn't really describe either as a serious threat to the U.S. The Kremlin, in fact, has said this policy is largely aligned with Russia's thinking.

And on China, Trump came into office saying he would put tariffs on China and forced concessions. Instead, China punched back with punitive measures of its own against the U.S. We have essentially reached a truce at this point, but no real changes in Chinese policy. And, you know, if you had to sort of sum up the year in foreign policy and the plans in this document, you could say a lot of U.S. allies are deeply disappointed, if not angry at the U.S. And traditional rivals like Russia and China are pretty pleased with Trump's positions. Trump kind of joked in the beginning of this administration about taking over the Panama Canal, of taking over Canada. I remember all the jokes about Governor Trudeau, taking over Greenland. But you've started to see, you know, kind of some of those steps taking.

I mean, when I would talk to experts about, you know, those jokes, you know, they took them very seriously because it kind of was in the U.S. sphere of influence. And we've talked about that as well as like U.S. may be pulling out of Europe where President Trump doesn't see U.S. interests aligned and putting more focus in the way. Western Hemisphere. You know, Greg was talking about the National Security Plan. There's a lot of talk about increasing the influence in the Western Hemisphere, for example. And we're seeing that specifically with these boat strikes. Clearly there is more there than just waging a war on drugs. You know, Trump has talked about more about exerting even more pressure on other countries, whether it's Colombia and Mexico. I think what you're seeing is Trump kind of breaking the world up into these spheres of influence where Russia and Putin has its sphere of influence, China has its sphere of influence, and the United States has its sphere of influence. And they kind of try to keep it separate and have their own kind of world.

But Greg, talk to me about this because that has not been the U.S. approach in the past. Like the idea that Russia and China are great powers equal to the U.S., and we'll just take our sphere of influence and they take their sphere of influence, that seems like a pretty dramatic change. Oh, absolutely. No doubt about it. I mean, it's a world we haven't seen since World War II. And Trump has sort of talked about it in a kind of somewhat fuzzy way for a while, but now it's becoming much more explicit. And again, I don't want to harp too much on this national security strategy. But it is a place. where they put down their thoughts in writing. And you see this, especially the emphasis, what may have seemed like a collection of somewhat random moves in Latin America now start to take on a little more focus. And in this document, for example, it says, quote, we will assert and enforce a Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. And for those of you who might not have been paying attention in high school when we taught the Monroe Doctrine. Just remind us. Yes, I will. Just remind us.

So back in 1823, U.S. President James Monroe said the Western Hemisphere is the American Hemisphere, the American zone of influence, and European countries shouldn't interfere here. And over the past two centuries, any number of U.S. presidents have invoked this doctrine. One example, Teddy Roosevelt, building the Panama Canal, and all of the many U.S. political and military interventions over the past two centuries. But in recent decades, the U.S. has been less heavy-handed. More of the talk has been about democracy and trade. But Trump is, again, very much putting this or framing this in terms of U.S. influence in the Western Hemisphere, but perhaps less involvement in Asia, in Europe, and in other parts of the world. Let's talk for a minute about Venezuela. President Trump has ordered strikes on suspected narco-trafficking boats in the Caribbean. and Pacific, more than 80 people on those boats have been killed so far, many boats destroyed. Franco, what is your read on why President Trump is being so interventionist in this case?

Yeah, I mean, I think there really are so many questions about the goals of this administration. I think what's clear from my reporting and talking to those close to the administration, outside, inside the administration, is that it's not just about firing on some drug boats that may or may not be coming towards the United States, but it's something larger that this administration, that this president is looking at regime change in Venezuela and trying to put as much pressure on the current leader, Nicholas Maduro, to leave. And I think it's another sign of what we've been talking about, about the U.S. putting its thumb on the scale more in this hemisphere, which it sees as its sphere of influence. But I do find very interesting is how different it is from, in many ways, on what the president

campaigned on and kind of pulling the United States out of intervention, foreign wars. But the president does see this as in the U.S. interests. And I do think there is kind of a juxtaposition that we're going to continue to be watching because the president clearly sees U.S. interests in dealing with these foreign powers, while many of his base do not. And I do think one thing is clear is that the president definitely is involved with foreign policy, but it is on his own terms. Well, one thing that I just keep thinking about is how critical he was of the war in Iraq. And the Bush administrations, you know, focus on regime change in Iraq. Trump was like, no regime change. And now, like, what is the end goal with Venezuela?

Well, not only that, Tam. I mean, just in Saudi Arabia, you know, President Trump took the stage at, I think it was the business economic conference this spring and talked about the U.S. will no longer lecture countries on how to lead their countries. You know, it was a clear statement that the U.S. was going to stop meddling. And here, you're right, the United States is. obviously and clearly meddling in Venezuela and trying to push for a change. Now, I also think it's important to note that I think there is some unfinished business here from the first Trump administration. You know, he did try to push out Nicholas Maduro. He supported another leader. He backed multiple efforts to kind of get regime change at that time, including, you know, welcoming that leader to a state of the union address. So I do. think there is something there. There's some context there that President Trump still feels that. You also have his connections in the administration itself. It is full of Floridians. You've got

obviously the Secretary of State, National Security Advisor Marco Rubio, Susie Wiles. There is a lot of members of his administration with strong connections to Florida and South Florida, where, as we know, has big, big concerns, has a Venezuelan diaspora, a Cuban diaspora. And those in that part of the country, this is a very significant issue and with hopes that there also could potentially be regime change in Cuba. This is all fascinating. And I'm wondering what you're watching for in terms of U.S. foreign policy in the new year. One question I have is, can President Trump keep up this pace or will he turn his attention to domestic policy? Well, he's certainly got a lot of irons in the fire right now.

In the coming year, I would expect to see something give on the issues we've been talking about. With Venezuela, you probably can't keep this large force. You can't keep naval ships parked in the Caribbean at a large troop presence in Puerto Rico on heightened alert, ready to go, and not doing anything. So that's going to have to sort of go one way or the other. Maybe they go with an attack, an intervention, an invasion of Venezuela, or they step down. But you wouldn't expect them to just stay there in place for an extended period of time. That's just something the military does not like to do really is a strain on everything, to have them on this heightened state of alert, but not acting. So that's one thing.

Then the other would be Ukraine with this cutoff of the U.S. flow of weapons. Russia, again, trying to knock out Ukraine's electricity grid during the winter, Ukraine being very stressed in its ability to have enough air defense systems to knock down all the incoming Russian weapons. There's a lot of strain there. Ukraine has largely been able to hold the line for a war that is now four years old since the big Russian invasion in early 22. But the military and political strains are growing on Ukraine. I would kind of echo those thoughts as well. I think with such a big presence of U.S. military in the Caribbean, I don't know how Trump does not do something. Now, perhaps there will be some kind of exit ramp for Maduro,

but if Maduro doesn't leave and, you know, right now there's not many indications that he's going to leave. He seems to be calling Trump's bluff. Trump seems to going to need to do perhaps. something, what that will look like. I don't see an invasion, but I could see kind of some type of limited strike of some kind and then calling that a victory and then pulling out. And on Ukraine, I'm very interested in watching kind of the politics here in the U.S. as well as over there and how that plays out. Will Trump continue to kind of take on a leadership role? Will he still kind of dabble with his feet in and feet out of this issue? Or will kind of like this MAGA pressure, especially with the midterm elections coming to play, will he start to pull back as he

turns his focus and he turns Republican focus to domestic issues. All right. Well, we will be watching, but we're going to leave it there for today. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Frank O'Donias. I also cover the White House. And I'm Greg Myrie.

I cover national security. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. Thank you.