By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

Trump's Second Term Is Reshaping the U.S. and the World

Both supporters and critics of U.S. President Donald Trump agree that the first year of his second term has been extraordinarily disruptive. But for all its significance, this disruption wasn’t entirely unexpected. Even as the final votes were being tallied, enough was known about Trump’s intentions to make some relatively confident predictions about the shape of his second term. Trump’s most senior advisers are, as he promised they would be, people chosen based on personal loyalty and their capacity to mobilize his base. With some notable exceptions, such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, who may have fit into the old Trump cabinet, the personnel now driving Trump’s second-term policy apparatus are the “chaos agents” expected after the election.

Trump is also leaning even further into unilateralism, which was predictable given that he entered office this time around without many of the geopolitical constraints he had previously. In 2017, for instance, he inherited two coalitional wars with U.S. troop involvement (Afghanistan and the counter-ISIS campaign), and his hands were tied regarding Iran by the coalitional diplomatic approach embodied in the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Similarly, the constraints of the global trading system, which the first Trump administration had already sought to reduce, were reduced still further in the intervening years by efforts after the COVID-19 pandemic to create greater resiliency. Economically, Trump had a much freer hand to play in 2025, and as such he could pursue his maximalist approach to tariffs.

It was also possible to foresee much rockier civil-military relations this time around. Trump spent much of his first term surrounded by retired military brass, but during the last six months of that term, when their advice increasingly diverged from Trump’s preferences and his base criticized him for giving in to their concerns, Trump concluded that the military was part of a “deep state” that was committed to hobbling him. Trump and his surrogates made clear that they intended to clean house on their return. Although his decision to summarily remove at least 15 senior officers—many of them women or people of color—without reference to specific instances of dereliction was alarming, it was not altogether surprising.

Still, despite the predictability of this opening act, several developments have progressed much further and faster than most had expected. Indeed, Trump has managed to truly shock observers on three fronts: his deployment of the military within U.S. borders; his pivot to the Western Hemisphere as the primary foreign policy theater, effectively pushing China to the back burner; and his ability to cow Congress into abdicating its powers and responsibilities. The significance, and perhaps permanence, of these first-year surprises suggests they could have an outsize influence on Trump’s national security and foreign policy legacy. They also create the conditions for a wild swing of the pendulum, as future presidents attempt to overcorrect or, alternatively, pursue their own agendas to the new limits established by the Trump precedent.

 

The Deployment Dilemma

Given how extensively Trump campaigned on the issue of immigration, it was no secret that on retaking office, he would turn inward with an exacting stance on undocumented immigrants. In his stump speeches, he floated the idea of involving the National Guard in deportation efforts—an outgrowth of how he used military units to patrol the southern border with Mexico during his first term. He also doubled down on his argument that local law enforcement was chronically overwhelmed, a conclusion he reached during the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.

But little from his first stint in office or from his campaign foretold the kinds of domestic military deployments that he has ordered in his second term. Trump has sent thousands of troops from the National Guard to major U.S. cities, such as Chicago, Los Angeles, Memphis, Portland, and Washington, D.C., in most cases over the objections of local authorities. In Los Angeles, Trump also authorized the use of active-duty marines, saying that local protests—which were sparked by aggressive raids by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement—had gotten out of hand. Trump and his advisers even talked repeatedly about invoking the Insurrection Act, which would empower the president to direct a large military response to function as an arm of law enforcement and address what he considered to be a domestic emergency.

Trump is by no means the first U.S. president to federalize the National Guard or deploy active-duty forces to handle problems within U.S. borders. But most domestic deployments are in response to natural disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina in 2005, or to help at major events, such as the Super Bowl or the inauguration. Likewise, using the military to patrol the border is not a shocking mission. Even critics of Trump’s use of the military for border patrol during his first term didn’t focus on the legitimacy of the deployment itself; instead, they questioned whether it was an efficient or appropriate use of military resources and training.

By contrast, Trump’s domestic use of military forces over the past year has more clearly crossed a line by putting the apolitical military in the middle of partisan conflicts. Service members were sometimes sent to respond to peaceful protests of Trump’s policies, other times to deal with a chronically high crime rate. In certain cases, they were sent for no evident reason beyond trolling or threatening predominantly Democratic cities. To be sure, prior presidents deployed the military domestically for contentious missions that they framed as defending the Constitution, most notably during the civil rights era, when local law enforcement could not be trusted to ensure the rights of the entire citizenry. Those deployments were politically controversial at the time, especially to those in the South who wanted to preserve the Jim Crow system of segregation. But history ultimately vindicated the decision, as Trump may believe it will do for him. The wide gap between the enormity of the military response and the triviality of the local threats in the present moment, however, raises the possibility that Trump’s deployments will be judged not as a victory for constitutional defense, but rather as an attempt to advance a partisan policy agenda.

It is not surprising that the military has obeyed every order from Trump so far. The military plays only an advisory role in the American system, giving input to the president’s deliberations but not otherwise independently adjudicating whether his or her decision is wise. Instead, the surprising part of the deployments is Trump’s intention. Why Trump thinks they are necessary or smart remains uncertain. In the absence of clear and convincing explanations from the Trump administration as to the purpose of the deployments, many critics are offering worst-case extrapolations. They are surmising, for instance, that this is a dress rehearsal for aggressive deployments timed to shape, if not interfere with, the 2026 and 2028 elections. If accurate even only in part, such a dramatic escalation would cast doubt on the reliability of the election results and put the military at the center of the blame for the outcome. This would make it difficult for the military to remain the nonpartisan institution on which every administration depends. It would also turn the military into an unreliable protector of the Constitution.

 

Homeward Bound

It may have been obvious that the “America first” president intended to focus more of his attention on the Western Hemisphere, but it remains surprising the extent to which the second Trump administration has elevated the Western Hemisphere above the Indo-Pacific in its foreign policy approach. Based on the model of the first Trump administration, which effectively mobilized the entire federal government to take a more aggressive posture toward China, the Indo-Pacific seemed likely to be a priority in Trump’s second term. The messaging from Trump’s second campaign similarly promised an end to the distractions in Gaza and Ukraine in order to, as Vice President JD Vance stated, “focus on the real issue of China.” Addressing competition with China is also the one area for which there is broad bipartisan support.

But while the administration has certainly not ignored the Indo-Pacific, it has surprised many, and perhaps Beijing most of all, just how unexceptional China is in Trump’s second-term view. Trump seems to be approaching China through the narrow lens of trade deals as opposed to a comprehensive, all-elements-of-national-power competitive strategy. China currently faces higher tariff rates than most other countries, but Trump has earnestly signaled his willingness to bring China’s rates in line with those of other countries in exchange for a suspension of Beijing’s restrictions on U.S. access to rare-earth minerals. After Trump met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in South Korea in October, he confirmed the potential to decrease, or even suspend, certain U.S. tariffs on China.

Adding to this surprise is Trump’s unexpected treatment of the Western Hemisphere, where expansive foreign policy aims and considerations of the use of force have suddenly arisen. Trump’s musings about expanding U.S. territory to include both Canada and Greenland and retaking control of the Panama Canal, for instance, which were originally dismissed as jokes, seem to be genuine foreign policy goals. Trump has returned to the threats more than once, including in direct statements on social media.

The president has also turned the “war on drugs” from a metaphor to a reality. He has repeatedly threatened military force to strike drug gangs in Mexico without the cooperation of the Mexican government, which would amount to an act of war against the United States’ southern neighbor—the first major military operation there since U.S. President Woodrow Wilson authorized the Punitive Expedition to capture the Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa on the sidelines of World War I. At the same time, Trump is dramatically ramping up aggressive military actions and coercive diplomacy against Nicolás Maduro’s regime in Venezuela with repeated, lethal strikes on vessels he says are carrying drugs in the Caribbean and the Pacific.

Along the way, the Trump administration has given every indication that it is pursuing regime change in Venezuela, including Trump’s recent confirmation that he has authorized covert CIA action there. Trump famously criticized regime change as a strategy in 2016, which helped make him a viable presidential candidate in the first place. The transformation of Trump from regime-change critic to champion is among the most astonishing developments thus far. Trump’s pursuit of the violent collapse of a South American country is especially ironic considering it could directly increase the flow of migrants across the United States’ southern border—an issue Trump campaigned aggressively on solving.

In every respect, Trump’s pivot from China to the Western Hemisphere is a significantly unexpected dimension of his second term. If it’s sustained, it will have global reverberations, possibly shifting the balance of power decisively in China’s favor and further shrinking U.S. global influence.

 

Blank Checks and Imbalances

To a certain extent, it is normal for second-term presidents to start with lofty, even overreaching ambitions. They enter office believing they have a clear mandate from the electorate, and they don’t require the same learning curve as first-term presidents do. They are also eager to hit the ground running because, inevitably, they will confront the lame-duck stage of their presidency.

But while this political pattern could be predicted, Trump’s impressive control over his base and his party is new. Even as his agenda oscillates wildly between opposing policies and backtracks on campaign promises—arming Ukraine versus not arming Ukraine, getting tough on China versus cutting a deal with China, ending forever wars versus striking adversaries in multiple theaters—Trump boasts stunning levels of popularity, with over 90 percent approval among Republicans. For the roughly 43 percent of respondents who self-identify as or lean Republican, what matters most is loyalty to Trump’s agenda.

Even more surprising than Trump’s continued control of his base, however, is the truly shocking dominance he has managed to assert over the legislative branch. Every modern president has dreamed of bypassing Congress and poaching congressional prerogatives, such as control of the purse strings, but no president since Franklin Roosevelt has been able to do so as effectively as Trump. This is especially impressive given the razor-thin majorities Republicans have in the current Congress. Only a few Republicans would have to defect to the Democrats’ side to thwart some of Trump’s more radical policies, but they have been remarkably reluctant to do so. The few who have flirted with defying the president have quickly seen their reelection fortunes falter. More remarkably still, the members who have announced their retirement and thus should be immune to reelection worries nevertheless remain reluctant to vote with Democrats to check the Trump administration in any meaningful way. In the wake of the dramatic Democratic sweep in the November 2025 elections, Republicans who are concerned about Trump’s policies may be emboldened to flex their congressional oversight muscles. But thus far, the defining feature of Trump’s second term has been the extent of Congress’s deference to the executive, even as Trump usurps his colleagues’ independent authority.

Trump, for instance, has ignored explicit congressional mandates in the area of foreign aid and undermined quasi-independent foreign policy institutions created by Congress. He has also sidelined the Government Accountability Office and the inspectors general. He has curtailed briefings to Congress by executive branch officials in the national security and foreign policy arenas. And he has bypassed congressional oversight on arms sales to the Middle East and security aid to Ukraine, even when those benefits were appropriated by Congress. But despite the litany of overt infringements on congressional authority, legislators have done little to retake their traditional role in policymaking.

If this trend continues, the American constitutional system could be decisively altered. The framers of the Constitution created a powerful president because they counted on the powerful legislative and judicial branches to serve as counterbalances. If those branches willingly cede their responsibility to enforce guardrails on the executive, then the only check on presidential impulses will be whatever restraint the administration’s internal deliberative process provides.

 

Trump’s Tomorrow

One year after Trump’s reelection, the biggest unknown is how long any of this can last. Trump’s actions, those foreseen and those unforeseen, are creating immense opportunities for change. Both domestic and international actors are sure to respond. Domestically, for instance, Trump has unsettled delicate equilibria critical to both civil-military relations and constitutional checks and balances. In doing so, he has raised troubling questions about the future of the constitutional system. Yet the trends at home are not irreversible. If Congress rediscovers a zeal for protecting legislative prerogatives and exercising rigorous oversight of the executive branch, the rest of Trump’s second term could diverge sharply from the first year. And if Democrats win one or both chambers of Congress in the 2026 midterm elections, the checks on the president would likely revert to historical norms—perhaps even returning to the congressional assertiveness of the immediate post-Watergate era.

If Republicans maintain control or even extend their majorities in Congress, the prospects are harder to predict. By that point, Trump would look increasingly like a lame duck, and ambitious Republicans might see some advantage in putting distance between themselves and the more controversial second-term Trump policies. On the other hand, such a history-defying electoral outcome could just as easily empower the administration to do whatever is necessary to cement Trump’s legacy as the most transformative president of the modern era.

Internationally, the United States has long relied on the global power and influence that it built in the post–Cold War era to preserve great-power peace. But Trump is drawing down on these reserves, and at some point, the institutions that the United States relies on to constitute its power and manage the global order will crack. What comes next is anyone’s guess. China, for instance, as the United States’ principal rival for global power, has made it clear that it has no interest in shoring up the American-built order. Beijing seeks a replacement system that would more parochially benefit China, and at the moment, it might relish Trump’s diversion to the Western Hemisphere so it can pursue its agenda in Asia, the region of greatest economic importance in the future.

Meanwhile, no foreseeable amalgamation of U.S. partners and allies appears capable of replacing American leadership on the global stage. While our European and Asian partners are keen to work with the United States to address geopolitical challenges, they are not capable of effecting lasting beneficial solutions without the United States shouldering its part of the burden. Without a change in trajectory, Trump’s siphoning of American global power could usher in a new geopolitical order—one in which great powers that are hostile, or at best indifferent, to U.S. interests would hold sway in vast spheres of influence. Those spheres would increasingly rub up against one another, and the prospects for geopolitical fracture and great-power war would intensify.

Ultimately, Trump and his supporters are right when they boast about the extraordinary impact the second administration has had since taking office. It is as consequential a first year as any president since Roosevelt. Much of Trump’s approach was predictable, including his general unpredictability. But the true surprises are those that are likely to reverberate for years to come. They are also the ones that make the long-term forecast harder to discern.

 

 

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