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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.Read more below.Emma Ashford Senior Fellow with the Reimagining U.S. Grand Strategy program at the Stimson CenterThe 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