Dr. Jessica Genauer
Senior Lecturer in International Relations
Flinders University
POLICY PERSPECTIVES #19, February 2025 | DOI
Foreign Policy and Trump 2.0: National interest and great power politics
Since assuming the United States (US) presidency for a second time on 20 January 2025, Donald Trump has been surprisingly interventionist in his approach to global affairs.
Notably, he declared that the US may take a more direct role in the Middle East conflict and be more instrumental in ending the on-going full-scale war between Russia and Ukraine.
These statements may seem at odds with the isolationist Trump in his first term, who focused on retreat from multilateral institutions and criticised the rules-based, liberal international order.
In fact, both Trump’s long-standing economic isolationism and his seemingly new-found foreign interventionism align with a realist, interests-based approach to national politics. The Trump administration consistently emphasises economic and military might as key objectives in both domestic politics and foreign policy.
Trump’s interventionism is based on a view of the world that harks back to the early 20th century. According to this approach, great and regional powers are the only significant actors in world politics. States with small or medium power are bit-part-players in the geopolitical theatre of the great-power, main-character actors who compete amongst themselves for the largest share of territory and resources.
Trump 2.0 and the War in Ukraine
When it comes to applying this approach to the war in Ukraine, Trump appears to have a pre-1990s view of Russian and North American power. Whilst Russia has been severely degraded since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Trump still appears to consider Russia to be a global power.
Accordingly, Ukraine is regarded as a small power under the sphere of influence of Russia. Russia’s actions towards Ukraine are considered a by-product of its relations with stronger regional or global powers. Ukraine, from this perspective, can either capitulate to Russia or become a proxy for great powers’ conflicts with the Russian nation.
In line with this view, Trump’s administration has already suggested that Ukraine should have surrendered their territory to Russia and has engaged senior Russian diplomats in bilateral talks, sidelining Ukraine.
So, what does this mean for the war in Ukraine this year?
First, it’s clear that neither Russia nor Ukraine will enjoy a decisive military victory in 2025. Despite fierce fighting and massive loss of life, front lines have moved little since the end of 2022. Both sides have committed massive financial and human resources to the war in an attempt to gain a military victory. If either side could have achieved their military objectives, they would have done so by now.
Figure: Russian hold of Ukrainian territory since full-scale invasion. Source: Quincy Institute, 2025.
A comprehensive political agreement is also unlikely, as this would mean either Ukraine formally ceding its territory to Russia or Russia returning significant swathes of territory to Ukraine. Control over Russian-occupied territory of Ukraine is currently an indivisible issue. Neither side will forgo their core interests around territorial control.
However, a short-term ceasefire or cessation of hostilities is likely given pressure from the Trump administration for a shift in the status of the war.
Any cessation of fighting at this stage, is a win for Putin. Russia is now in control of more Ukrainian territory than before the full-scale invasion. If this territory is de facto Russian-controlled, even without a formal agreement, Putin will claim this territory for Russia and present this as a win to the Russian people.
Trump would also claim any cessation in fighting as a success for the US brought about by his exerted pressure on Russia and Ukraine.
Throughout 2025, Ukraine will continue to push hard for more comprehensive bilateral or multilateral security agreements with NATO-member countries, to deter further encroachment of Russian forces in future. President Zelensky has suggested that he would abdicate the Presidency in exchange for NATO membership. However, it is highly unlikely that Ukraine will succeed in joining NATO given that all member countries would need to agree, and a state with contested borders cannot be accepted into the alliance.
A temporary truce resulting in a cessation of fighting without a more comprehensive political agreement will essentially mean a frozen conflict for months, years or even decades to come.
Could unexpected factors disrupt this trajectory?
Regime change in Russia – whilst unlikely – would create significant uncertainty in Russia’s on-going involvement in the war.
An unexpected, major domestic event in the US could focus all attention inwards for the Trump administration – and mean US withdrawal from a central role in the conflict this year.
A more assertive role for Türkiye or China could change the calculus for Russia and Ukraine. Do Türkiye see a role for themselves as a mediator in any potential negotiations? Will China view a rapprochement between the US and Russia as a threat to their own geopolitical and regional interests and how might they respond? Only time can tell.
The War in Ukraine and a New World Order
Under Trump’s second term, Make America Great Again now seems to refer not only to boosting the domestic economy, but also to asserting – rather than retreating from – a central position for the US on the world stage.
However – we no longer live in the nineteenth, or even the twentieth, century. Russia is not the super-power that it was during the Cold War. The US is not the unilateral power that it was in the 1990s. We live in a multipolar world, where small and medium powers, countries of the so-called “global south”, and non-traditional powers influence the trajectory of global decision-making.
At the same time, the post-WWII international order is no longer taken for granted as the on-going basis of the international architecture into the future.
The Russia-Ukraine war sits at an inflection point between an old and a new world order.
The way in which the Russia-Ukraine war evolves in 2025, whether it is “decided” by great powers, whether Ukraine has a voice, whether European powers step into the arena, whether and how China or Türkiye respond, may all indicate emerging structures and key actors in the future of global governance.
Dr. Jessica Genauer is a Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the College of Business, Government and Law.
Jessica is an expert in international conflict and provides regular analysis for national and international media outlets on global conflicts. Jessica‘s research interests include conflict, threat perceptions, and post-conflict institution-building with a focus on the Middle East as well as Russia / Ukraine.