The Foreign Policy Winners and Losers of 2025

The first year of the second Donald Trump presidential term has been a carnival of outrages and delights. Historians will struggle to make sense of the whirlwind of activity around the Oval Office, but the significance of some events is already clear. The year has had some big winners, including:

Donald Trump: The president’s moxie and force of personality have taken Washington by storm. He clearly intends to cement his legacy as a peacemaker and claims credit for eight peace agreements just this year. Where gentle suasion has failed, he has resorted successfully to more vigorous methods of pursuing U.S. interests. Operation Midnight Hammer—the stealth attack on Iranian nuclear facilities that the Israelis enabled through their own air offensive—has emerged as the gold standard of American-allied cooperation.

Keeping up this string of successes will be tougher in the coming year. The Supreme Court’s review of Trump’s tariffs looms ever closer and could take away one of his most powerful foreign policy instruments. Midterm elections are usually tough on the president’s congressional allies too, and he will need all his considerable political gifts to prevent his last two years in office from being mired by Democratic oversight panels and investigations.

Theodor Herzl: The founder of modern Zionism predicted that Jew-hatred was too entrenched and rabid for his fellow Jews to live peacefully in their European homes for long. He devoted his life to creating a Jewish state that would be strong enough to defend itself and its people.

Herzl died in 1904, almost half a century before his brainchild Israel came into being, but this year has vindicated him again. Anti-Jewish bigots have emerged from their lairs since Oct. 7, and the Hanukkah massacre in Sydney underscores that even the usually tolerant Anglosphere has its share of murderous ne’er-do-wells. But Israel’s aerial evisceration of Iran’s command and control, long-range missiles, and nuclear program this summer—and earlier campaigns to devastate Iran’s terrorist lackeys—showed the Jewish state’s power.

Sanae Takaichi: The Japanese prime minister shattered her country’s glass ceiling, which appeared to be thicker than the windows of President Trump’s armored limo, to lead Japan during a period of existential danger. She immediately charmed Trump, who remembers earlier periods of trade tensions with Japan, and is standing firm amid intense Chinese pressure over Taiwan.

Takaichi’s prior career as a metal band drummer is good preparation for taking the helm of America’s most capable ally in Asia. She will need excellent timing and relentless speed to bolster her headline-stealing American bandmate as Xi Jinping attempts to force everything to a screeching halt.

Some did not fare as well in 2025. The losers include:

American isolationists: Having postured for the past decade as a lonely band of peaceniks preventing Uncle Sam from handing Syria over to jihadists and then singlehandedly talking Joe Biden down from nuclear war with Russia, the gatekeepers of Fortress America thought they finally had their man in Donald Trump. All they needed to do was prevent the dreaded Israel Lobby from tricking Trump into bombing Iran and igniting World War III.

Whoops. Trump is hardly a card-carrying member of the Washington blob, but he is also determined to keep the United States on top internationally. From his passion for solving thorny international problems to his willingness to confront America’s enemies militarily, Trump has had an exceptionally active foreign policy. There’s no shrinking violet in this Oval Office.

International greens: A year ago, the green movement seemed poised to take over the world. The movers and shakers who fill the halls at Davos and other international confabs had decided climate change was the existential threat to humanity. Accordingly, the world needed to retire fossil fuels as quickly as possible in favor of wind and solar energy and replace their gas-powered cars with electric vehicles.

That agenda is in tatters. The annual environmental summit had embarrassingly low attendance, and it came on the heels of Bill Gates reminding the greens that poverty and disease are bigger problems for the global poor. The European Union just gave up on its electric vehicle mandate this week. Even with their hostility to tailpipes, the greens are running on fumes now.

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei: With a little more than a week to go, Grand Ayatollah Khamenei may yet forfeit his place as 2025’s biggest loser to Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro. But Iran’s top place on the loser-board looks secure for now. Oct. 7 seemed to be the culmination of his greatest desires, as one of his minions slaughtered 1,200 innocents in Israel. Since then, the Israel Defense Forces have escorted most of his top subordinates to meet their maker.

Khamenei spent decades painstakingly assembling a regional network of terrorists, a ballistic missile arsenal, and a nuclear program, and Israel annihilated it in months. Ever willing to throw away other people’s lives for his cause, the supreme leader is trying to rebuild his arsenal of terror. May 2026 frustrate him as much as 2025 did.