In this short essay, my @CNASdc colleague @gibbs_mckinley adapts our “global swing states” framework to identify pivotal African countries - and sketch a path for U.S. engagement. Check it out: cnas.org/publications/commen…

2025 has been a year of dramatic foreign policy transformations. The U.S. has a new way of dealing with the world, and the world with Washington. Here are the six most striking shifts: ✅ The China consensus proves illusory. A year ago, most agreed that China represents America’s greatest long-term strategic challenge; that the U.S. should be more active in the Indo-Pacific, the region where Chinese weight is greatest; and the necessary U.S. response to China involves strengthening alliances and partnerships. All this has gone out the window, at least for now. The administration today sees China as mostly a solvable economic conundrum. Export controls on items like advanced semiconductors are down while tensions with partners like India are up. The U.S. Congress, which has generally pushed for tougher policies on China, has been quiescent on this and most other foreign policy issues. ✅ Tariffs as the universal solvent. In January, the average U.S. tariff rate was less than 2.5%. Now it’s around 17%, the highest level in almost a century. Want to reduce trade deficits, restore the U.S. manufacturing base, and boost government revenue? Use tariffs. Want to prod India to stop importing Russian oil, Brazil to free Bolsonaro, and Thailand and Cambodia to cease fighting? Tariffs. In a word awash with challenges, the Trump administration has embraced tariffs as the skeleton key that unlocks all doors. The problem is that skeleton keys don’t actually exist in either foreign policy or economics. ✅ Focus on the Western Hemisphere. A year ago, the U.S. had its normal, relatively low complement of military assets in the Western Hemisphere. Today an aircraft carrier strike group is in the Caribbean, F-35s are flying out of Puerto Rico, Marines are training in Trinidad, and B-52s have flown along the Venezuelan coast. It’s the greatest buildup of U.S. military power in the hemisphere since at least the 1989 invasion of Panama. Drug interdiction doesn’t require that kind of firepower; a full-scale invasion of Venezuela would probably need even more than is there. However the effort to push out Maduro unfolds, the administration appears committed to holding Latin America, not Asia, as the region of greatest strategic importance to the United States. ✅ A remade Middle East. Israel is the undisputed heavyweight actor in the Middle East today, with Assad gone from Syria, Hezbollah decimated in Lebanon, Hamas damaged in Gaza, and with a near-defenseless Iran’s uranium enrichment program set back by years. Many positive developments are now possible, but it remains the Middle East: the recent strikes on ISIS positions reminds that the region remains far from settled and by no means free of U.S. involvement. The U.S. lead on postwar Gaza shows how deeply Washington will remain enmeshed. ✅ Seeking peace above all in Ukraine. The U.S. and Europe a year ago were promising to support Ukraine for “as long as it takes.” That has changed in a major way. Now it’s clear that President Trump wants an agreement to stop the fighting, with the precise terms of a deal less important than its existence, and an effort to bring postwar Russia in from the cold. Trump himself has lurched from first saying that Kyiv couldn’t win the war, then that Moscow could not, and then again that Kyiv can’t. The diplomacy has been intense, European nervousness high, and American unpredictability profound. Yet there remains a constant through it all: Russia’s insistence that it will take Ukrainian territory for itself, either through negotiations or force. ✅ A new American foreign policy style. Highly personalized, reliant on a handful of negotiators and key officials, focused on deals (especially of the financial variety), prone to big announcements and broad terms, and very unpredictable. It’s been a volatile year. 2026 could, however, represent a period of even greater change and consequence. Let’s get ready.