Five restraint successes — and five absolute fails — in 2025

Five Foreign Policy Successes for Realism/Restraint in 2025

1. A New National Security Strategy: The new National Security Strategy (NSS) represents a significant, if incomplete, shift away from the pursuit of primacy. Its formal rejection of global dominance marks a necessary break from the post-Cold War consensus that led to endless war and strategic overextension.

Framing power, balancing, and prioritization as central pillars of statecraft — while explicitly stepping back from democracy-versus-autocracy ideology, a cornerstone of the Biden administration’s strategy — creates space for a more focused and sustainable foreign policy. This is clearest in the document's approach to Ukraine, where it acknowledges the imperative of managing escalation risks with a nuclear-armed Russia.

However, while the strategy pivots away from primacy, its transition to restraint at best incomplete. The focus on the Western Hemisphere, for example, is rational, but Washington's continued reliance on coercive tools in Latin America risks undermining regional partnerships and pushing nations closer to Beijing — already a top trading partner for many.

While the strategy correctly diagnoses the multifaceted European decline, its language on Europe’s “civilizational erasure” feels over-wrought, and its overt courting of nationalist parties in Europe may backfire in the same way the administration’s rhetoric on Canada hurt the chances of a pro-Trump candidate in that nation.

The true test will be whether this nascent framework translates into an actual policy of restraint. For now, the NSS stands as an acceptable, though hesitant, first step away from primacy and toward a more realistic grand strategy.

2. Re-engagement with Russia on Ukraine: The administration’s handling of the Ukraine war is perhaps its clearest — if most contentious — expression of nascent strategic restraint.

President Donald Trump’s core objective — to shut the war down — is a necessary break from the prior policy of indefinite proxy war and severed diplomatic contact with Moscow. He deserves credit for re-establishing direct U.S.-Russia dialogue, launching a peace initiative and resisting significant pressure, including from within his own party, to take escalatory steps like supplying Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine or imposing secondary sanctions on Russian oil.

However, this remains a highly qualified success. The initiative has been undermined by inconsistent presidential rhetoric and a flawed transactional approach. A truly successful strategy would require steadier execution and, critically, must avoid the trap of any NATO-like security guarantee to Ukraine.

For now, the shift from maximalist aims to active, if messy, diplomacy represents the best path toward ending the conflict and de-risking a direct NATO-Russia confrontation.

3. Breakthrough with Belarus: This achievement stems from a discreet, calibrated engagement with the Belarussian government, replacing the fruitless moralizing and maximalist rhetoric typified by the Biden administration and European officials. The current U.S. approach, spearheaded by Special Envoy John Coale (who deserves high praise for this achievement), directly secured the release of over 100 high-profile political prisoners in Belarus in exchange for sanctions relief on some Belarussian agricultural exports and a prospect of further normalization.

This process demonstrated to both Minsk and its close ally Moscow that Washington can be a pragmatic actor, that sanctions are not perpetual but can be lifted in exchange for concrete concessions, creating a powerful incentive for negotiation.

4. Restraint in Yemen: The 2025 U.S.-Houthi ceasefire stands as a clear example of America First restraint in action. By securing a halt to attacks on U.S. vessels in exchange for ending its own bombing campaign, the administration achieved a narrow, definable security interest through discrete diplomacy, facilitated by Oman.

Crucially, this success stemmed from refusing to link the deal to broader, unrealistic goals, such as demanding the Houthis cease their campaign against Israel absent a Gaza ceasefire. This disciplined focus on a direct, reciprocal arrangement avoided the trap of another endless war in the Middle East.

5. The domestic realignment: A cross-ideological movement for foreign policy restraint gained momentum in 2025. This movement found its most potent symbol in the strategic alliance between Republican Congressman Thomas Massie and Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna. Their partnership, focused on reasserting Congress’s constitutional authority over war, became a powerful vehicle for a growing left-right consensus against endless conflict.

Simultaneously, a significant ideological shift occurred on the right, particularly among younger Republicans, who are increasingly skeptical of unconditional support for Israel. Together, these developments fractured the longstanding bipartisan foreign policy orthodoxy, signaling a promising domestic realignment in favor of restraint.

5 Foreign Policy Failures for Realism/Restraint in 2025

1. The Iran strikes debacle: A catastrophic strategic blunder. After promising negotiations with Iran, the U.S. joined Israeli strikes on Iran, shattering diplomatic progress. The administration’s adoption of Israeli red lines (no uranium enrichment) rather than American ones (no weaponization) has led negotiations to a dead-end. With Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu back lobbying for another war with Iran, this time over the country’s ballistic missiles (with Trump claiming that the nuclear infrastructure was destroyed during the U.S. strikes), Trump’s ability to resist the pressure will define the commitment to restraint in the Middle East. The track record is not encouraging.

2. Reckless escalation with Venezuela: The lethal interdiction of vessels without clear proof of illicit activity constitutes an illegal act of war absent congressional mandate. The administration offers shifting rationales for its aggressive posture: first, it was about fighting drug trafficking, then it shifted to allegations of Venezuela “stealing American oil.” This creates an overall impression that Trump’s real goal is a regime change in Caracas.

Given the record, regime change in Venezuela is more likely to produce a Libya in the Western Hemisphere than a prosperous, stable, US.-friendly nation. Besides, the focus on regime change exposes glaring inconsistency: while accusing the Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro of drug trafficking, the U.S. pardons a convicted drug-trafficking ex-president of Honduras and actively meddles to support his political party in the elections in that nation.

3. The Syria quagmire endures: The deaths of U.S. personnel in Syria are a direct consequence of the failure to decisively end the military mission after the defeat of ISIS's territorial caliphate. American troops remain in Syria without a clear strategic objective, making them perpetual targets for ISIS and other hostile forces.

There is a general acknowledgment that the Middle East should no longer dominate U.S. foreign policy. Rather than securing American interests, the indefinite deployment in Syria drags the U.S. back into regional quagmires and guarantees future casualties. The only way to prevent further loss of life is to finally execute a complete withdrawal from Syria. The U.S. presence there has long outlived whatever rational purpose it ever had and become a lethal liability.

4. Failure to apply pressure on Israel: The Trump Administration's comprehensive failure to apply meaningful pressure on Israel in 2025 represents a dual collapse of foreign policy restraint, abandoning both diplomatic leverage and the principles of international law.

While providing unconditional support for Israeli actions, the administration removed any incentive for Israel to respect a Trump-mediated ceasefire in Gaza, let alone pursue a genuine political solution with the Palestinians.

This abdication was compounded by the administration's decision to sanction International Criminal Court judges investigating the conflict. Punishing jurists for following international law to shield an ally from accountability is the antithesis of restraint and of America First policy. It is a myopic and reckless strategy that entangles America as a co-sponsor of conflict and injustice.

5. Congressional dereliction of duty on War Powers. In December 2025, Congress failed in its most basic constitutional duty when the House of Representatives defeated, by a razor-thin 211-213 vote, a resolution to prohibit unauthorized military action against Venezuela. This was not a simple policy disagreement but a dereliction of the legislative branch’s power to declare war. The vote came as President Trump had already imposed a blockade on Venezuela — an act of war under international law — and amassed a formidable naval armada in the Caribbean, creating a clear path toward open conflict.