The Trump administration’s imposition of sweeping tariffs and territorial provocations has sparked a significant reorientation of Canada’s foreign policy. Under Prime Minister Mark Carney, Ottawa has adopted a doctrine of ‘values-based realism’ that combines the defence of liberal principles with hard-power pragmatism. The key pillars of the Carney Doctrine are unprecedented military investment, aggressive trade diversification away from the United States, and a strategy of ‘variable geometry’ that tailors coalitions to specific issues rather than rigid alliance structures. This shift reflects deeper changes in Canadian political culture and public opinion, but the Carney Doctrine faces structural constraints. While rapid decoupling is unlikely, the broader shift may prove self-reinforcing and politically difficult to reverse.

Donald Trump remains a disruptive president, with every day a new adventure for America and the world. Some of his policies, notably his major disruptions to the global economic order and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency’s dismantlement of the US Agency for International Development and the Voice of America, have been reckless and seriously harmful. But as 2025 winds down, on most core matters of security – the size, shape, overseas posture and budget of the military; the nation’s system of security partnerships and alliances; and America’s stance on the Russia–Ukraine war, Gaza situation and Iranian nuclear programme – things are better than might have been expected at the start of the year. Those who believe in the core foundations of the post-Second World War security order can breathe half a sigh of relief, at least for now.

Food weaponisation has gained momentum and become more effective as the weakening of the international order has diminished global food security and increased the vulnerability of many populations. The difficulty of proving specific intent to cause hunger and famine, and international bodies’ lack of enforcement mechanisms even if it is proven, leave considerable room for military actors leveraging food deprivation to manoeuvre. The dire hunger situation in Gaza – for which Israel has been criticised but not, so far, held accountable – is a case in point. A logical focal point for reorienting and reasserting international law with respect to the use of hunger as a weapon would be the principle of distinction, a fundamental tenet of humanitarian law that requires parties to armed conflict to distinguish combatants from civilians, and to avoid harming the latter.

NATO is more vulnerable to a war in the Indo-Pacific than is commonly understood. In a conflict between the United States and China, key US space-based capabilities would be tasked away from Europe and likely degraded by Chinese attacks. NATO is reliant on these capabilities for key functions such as command and control, surveillance and targeting. While NATO and non-US NATO members are engaging with commercial space operators and investing in limited numbers of new platforms, their space ambitions do not match future needs. Unless Europe strengthens its space investments, it risks a degradation in war-fighting capabilities during a conflict in the Indo-Pacific.

A Federalist Alternative for European Governance: The European Union in Hard Times Sergio Fabbrini. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024. £26.99. 272 pp. Frontiers of Empire: Max Sering, Inner Colonization, and the German East, 1871–1945 Robert L. Nelson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024. £85.00. 320 pp. Lost Fatherland: Europeans Between Empire and Nation-states, 1867–1939 Iryna Vushko. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2024. £25.00/$35.00. 352 pp. Europe Without Borders: A History Isaac Stanley-Becker. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2025. £30.00/$35.00. 416 pp. Embedded Autocracy: Hungary in the European Union András Bozóki and Zoltán Fleck. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2024. £104.00/$135.00. 382 pp.

The United States and the European Union are poised to follow radically different domestic and international economic paths starting in 2025. While ambitious trade and investment agreements had already been buried by the mid-2010s, the return of Donald Trump to the White House in 2025 heralds a new era of transatlantic discord over trade, investment, taxation, regulation and climate policy. Economic divergence will likely accelerate and relations cool, with higher growth rates in the US than in the EU. The EU’s implementation of the recommendations of the 2024 Letta and Draghi reports could upend this pattern, but this is unlikely, especially if a potential ceasefire in Ukraine reduces the urgency for reform. ‘Economic security’ is a potentially promising – though still fraught – area of transatlantic cooperation, as the challenge from China is a joint one and both sides could come to see a shared effort to manage it as mutually advantageous.

Ukraine is unlikely to be able to cope on the battlefield if Donald Trump’s administration cuts off new requests for aid. A Russian military victory against Ukraine would entail massive increases in the burden borne by NATO’s current members to preclude Moscow’s intended reversal of the strategic effects of the break-up of the Soviet Union. Even a Ukraine territorially diminished by way of a deal imposed by Trump would likely end successful post-Second World War efforts to counter the unilateral annexation of a European state’s legal territory and potentially change Russia’s assessment of what Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty means in practice. If the United States also substantially withdrew from Europe, as Trump has at times suggested it could, the Europeans would have to incur defence costs far exceeding 3% of GDP to make up for the unavailable US capabilities. Europe may not have the strategic focus and unity of purpose necessary to meet these challenges.

Despite periodic crises, ties between Israel and the United States have remained fundamentally strong owing to Cold War dynamics and the political strength of American Jewish voters. Even as Israel has moved to the right and become – perhaps unsurprisingly given that it has been in a state of near-perpetual war with its neighbours – increasingly militant, American liberals, both Jewish and non-Jewish, have tended to perceive Israel as a liberal country. Owing to the Gaza war, it is impossible for them to sustain that view. Thus, the prospect of a continuing US relationship with Israel has become a vexing challenge to American liberal voters. The brutal and illiberal cast of the Netanyahu government increasingly undermines American Jewish liberals while fuelling the indignation of their non-Jewish liberal compatriots. In rejecting Israel, the latter will have a structure of vindicated beliefs to fall back on. Their Jewish compatriots will not. For them to deny Israel’s legitimacy would be to deny a critical aspect of their own identity.