The coming year will test incoming US President Donald Trump’s geopolitical strategies, as wars flare up in the Middle East and Ukraine and tensions rise in Asia.
Here are some of the biggest foreign policy hotspots facing him and other world leaders in 2025.
middle east
More than a year after the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, the Middle East risks heading toward regional conflict. Israel is carrying out its own deadly counteroffensive in Gaza, while also fighting another armed group, Iran-backed Hezbollah, in Lebanon.
Trump has nominated staunch pro-Israel politician Mike Huckabee as his ambassador to Israel.
Michael Horowitz, an analyst at consultancy Le Bac International, said Trump has promised to “end the war” but is unwilling to set terms for Israel.
“The conflict in Gaza may actually be hanging in the balance,” he told AFP, as Israel implements a new military solution that keeps troops inside the strip and declares that the conflict is over – even That even without the beginning of a political solution.”
Horowitz considered a ceasefire in Lebanon more likely, as Israel has achieved “many of its objectives” by bombing Hezbollah and killing many of its leaders.
ukraine
Ukraine is struggling to fight off an invasion launched by Russia in February 2022. Kiev is short on troops and dependent on Western military aid, while Russia is advancing in Ukraine’s east and has been bolstered by troops from its ally North Korea.
The Republican election victory raises the possibility of halting US military aid to Ukraine, after party representatives had stalled the package for nearly a year.
Moscow is pressuring Kiev to compromise.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on 16 November that Kiev would like to end the war by “diplomatic means” next year.
But Russia has demanded Kiev surrender four territories as a precondition for talks, which Ukraine has rejected.
Trump said during his election campaign that he could end the war “in 24 hours”.
His nominee for the post of US National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz, called for talks on 24 November.
“We need to restore deterrence, restore peace and move forward from this ladder of escalating tensions rather than reacting to it,” he said.
north korea
Pyongyang has conducted several ballistic missile tests in 2024. Tension has increased between it and South Korea. The North has also strengthened its ties with Moscow.
The two countries signed a mutual defense treaty in June and North Korea sent 10,000 troops to aid Moscow in its fight against Ukraine.
“In return, North Korea will seek military technology from Moscow – everything from drone defense systems to ballistic missiles,” said Fyodor Tertisky, a senior research fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a US-based think tank.
“These steps signal that we must be prepared for actions by North Korea that we have not seen before.”
Meanwhile, Andrew Yeo, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, another US think tank, pointed to rising tensions between North and South Korea.
Pyongyang recently blew up roads and railways between the two states and accused the South of sending drones into the North.
If Russia escalates militarily to North Korea, “the United States and its allies in Europe and Asia will need to prepare for a new phase of greater instability and potential escalation in Northeast Asia,” Yeo said.
Taiwan, China
Elsewhere in Asia, Taiwan remains a potential epicenter of global conflict. China claims the island as part of its territory and has said it will never refuse to occupy it by force.
The United States is Taiwan’s most important supporter and largest supplier of arms, but like most other countries it does not have official diplomatic relations with the island.
Trump has appointed Chinese dictator Marco Rubio as his secretary of state, sparking tensions with Beijing.
Waltz, meanwhile, has declared that the United States is in a “cold war with the Chinese Communist Party.”
He has said that the United States should learn from the experience of Ukraine’s war with Russia by supporting Taiwan in the face of China.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
