The World Trump Will Inherit

Michael Froman is president of the Council on Foreign Relations.

The world President-elect Donald Trump will inherit in ten days is far less placid in many ways than the one he inherited eight years ago.

Across the world, a coalition of aggressors led by China and Russia is determined to undermine the leadership of the United States and the international system it built. Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine will soon mark its third anniversary. An unprecedented competition with China is playing out across the political, military, economic, and technological domains. Conflict is raging between Israel and Iran’s proxies, and Iran is closer than ever to obtaining a nuclear weapon. A humanitarian crisis in Sudan has displaced more people than the wars in Ukraine and Gaza combined.

And here at home, we face serious weaknesses in our defense industrial base and our capacity to incorporate cutting-edge innovation into our warfighting capabilities.

But in other ways, the world Trump will inherit is better off than it was during his last inauguration. It is a world where the level of operational cooperation in the Middle East among the United States, Israel, Europe, and Arab partners is closer than ever. It is a world where the security architecture of the Indo-Pacific is more impressive than ever, with the building out of the Quad, the launch of AUKUS, the strengthening of trilateral cooperation between the United States, Japan, and South Korea, and the tightening of the alliance between the United States and the Philippines. And it is a world where NATO is larger, more unified, and better-resourced than ever before.

Notwithstanding the challenges here at home, it is also a world in which the U.S. economy is the strongest and most dynamic in the world, the envy of other industrialized countries. America’s unique innovation ecosystem remains a magnet for entrepreneurs from across the world who want to start something new.

Trump campaigned on a policy of “peace through strength.” How he builds on these strengths to deal with the challenges we face remains to be seen.

What should his priorities be? This week, CFR’s Center for Preventive Action released its annual Preventive Priorities Survey, in which hundreds of foreign policy experts make predictions about which new conflicts might break out and which existing ones might escalate. The survey makes for a sobering read, especially since never in the seventeen years since the survey began have respondents rated so many contingencies as both high-impact and high-likelihood. (Interestingly, neither Greenland nor Panama nor Canada made the list.)

What worried respondents most this year was the possibility that the conflicts Israel is now engaged in—in Gaza, in the West Bank, and with Iran—could escalate. All were rated as having a high likelihood and high impact.

Beyond the Middle East, the experts were concerned about Russian military gains in Ukraine, potential conflict on our southern border over migration and other issues, and Chinese aggression over Taiwan and in the South China Sea.

What’s striking about the Middle East risks at the top of the Preventive Priorities Survey is that so far, they have mainly remained just that—risks. At several points over the course of 2024, there was deep concern about one or more of the specific conflicts escalating into a regional conflagration. But now, with Israel having destroyed Hamas and significantly degraded Hezbollah as military threats, the Assad regime in Syria having disintegrated faster than virtually anyone expected, and Iran’s capacity to strike Israel significantly limited, conventional escalation scenarios seem unlikely.

But that is no reason for complacency. Every day, U.S. forces in the region are shooting down multiple anti-ship ballistic missiles fired at them and at other countries’ ships by the Houthis. The attacks have become almost normalized as unnewsworthy, in part because the U.S. military has been so successful at intercepting them, but we should remind ourselves that for the first time since World War II, the U.S. Navy is experiencing daily incoming fire.

Then there is the nuclear question. Iran has lost its second-strike capability against Israel through the degradation of Hezbollah, its missiles have proved relatively powerless in the face of Israel’s air defenses (supported by the United States and others), and most of its own air defenses have been destroyed by Israeli strikes. As a result, factions in Iran might well feel that their country has no choice but to cross the nuclear threshold.

Israel and the United States have declared that this would be unacceptable. The question is what the two are willing to do about it. Trump has pledged to restore his “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is looking forward to working with a U.S. president he expects to support Israel’s plans unconditionally.

On Wednesday at CFR, I had the privilege of interviewing General H. R. McMaster, who served as Trump’s national security adviser for thirteen months. He predicted that Trump will further constrain the cash flow to the Iranian regime and more aggressively interdict its material support for its network of proxies across the region, especially advanced components for anti-ship missiles used by the Houthis.

McMaster also thought it was nearly certain that Israel would carry out a strike on Iran’s nuclear program in the coming years. That would raise a crucial question for Trump: join the attack or sit it out? And if he chose to join the attack, that would pose the risk of an all-out war between the United States and Iran.

The last three administrations tried to pivot away from the Middle East. Those around Trump are considering whether to do so once again, either to focus on China or as part of a broader strategy of retrenchment. President Barack Obama withdrew U.S. forces from Iraq and pursued a “rebalance” to Asia, Trump ordered a partial withdrawal of troops from Syria and negotiated an agreement with the Taliban for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, and President Joe Biden carried out that withdrawal. But to paraphrase Michael Corleone in The Godfather, the Middle East has a way of pulling the United States back in, just when it thought it was out.

Trump will re-enter office in ten days with significant assets at his disposal, at home and abroad. He has majorities in both houses of Congress, and he is appointing a team committed to implementing his vision faithfully. Leaders across the world are all asking the same question: What do I need to do to cut a deal with him?

The agenda is now his to manage. How he uses the assets America has to deal with the risks it faces will leave a lasting impact on the country’s position in the world—and on his own legacy.