In the Year ‘25,’25
In the Year ‘25,’25
In the Year 2025
Donald Trump took the oath of office on January 20. He was 78 years old. Within hours, his administration raised tariffs to an average effective rate of 17 percent—eight times what they had been the year before. It pardoned more than 1,500 people who had stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021. It disbanded the taskforce that had been tracking Russian oligarchs.
One European leader attended the inauguration. Giorgia Meloni, the Italian prime minister, came hoping to bridge Washington and Brussels. The gulf would widen beyond what any single leader could span.
On February 14, Vice President JD Vance stood before the Munich Security Conference. The audience expected him to talk about Russia. He talked about Europe.
The greatest threat to the continent, he said, was not external. It was internal. European governments were censoring speech. They were suppressing dissent. They were excluding populist voices from power. He named examples: Romania had annulled a presidential election. The UK had jailed a man for praying silently near an abortion clinic. Germany's mainstream parties refused to work with the Alternative for Germany.
"The threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia," Vance said. "It's not China. It's not any other external actor. What I worry about is the threat from within."
He warned that American support would now depend on whether European governments upheld free speech as Washington defined it.
German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius responded from the same stage. Chancellor Olaf Scholz issued a rebuke. So did Friedrich Merz, who would soon replace him.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi spoke next. He noted that critics had once accused Beijing of wanting to change the international order. They were falling silent, he said, because "now there is a country that is withdrawing from international treaties and organisations."
On December 4, the White House released its National Security Strategy. The document mentioned Europe 48 times. It mentioned North Korea zero times.
Europe faced "civilizational erasure," the strategy said. Immigration policies, declining birthrates, censorship, and loss of national identity had weakened the continent. "Should present trends continue," it read, "the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less." It raised doubts about whether European countries would "have economies and militaries strong enough to remain reliable allies."
A longer version circulated before publication. It named Austria, Hungary, Italy, and Poland as countries the US should work to pull away from the European Union. It called for supporting "parties, movements, and intellectual and cultural figures who seek sovereignty and preservation/restoration of traditional European ways of life."
Gérard Araud, who had served as France's ambassador to Washington, read the published version. "The stunning section devoted to Europe reads like a far-right pamphlet," he wrote.
The Houthis had been attacking ships in the Red Sea since October 2023. They said they were acting in solidarity with Palestinians. By mid-March 2025, they had struck more than 190 vessels, sunk two, seized one, and killed four sailors.
On March 2, Israel blocked humanitarian aid to Gaza. The Houthis announced they would resume attacks on Israeli shipping. On March 13, they shot down an American drone.
Two days later, Trump ordered Operation Rough Rider. American jets and ships struck radar systems, air defences, missile sites, and drone launch facilities across Yemen. They also struck Houthi leaders and technical experts—targets the Biden administration had avoided.
The strikes continued for seven weeks. More than 1,000 airstrikes. Over 800 targets hit. Hundreds of Houthi fighters killed, including senior commanders.
On April 17, American forces struck the Ras Issa fuel port in Hodeidah. The port handled 70 percent of Yemen's commercial imports and 80 percent of its humanitarian aid. Eighty-four civilians died. More than 150 were injured. Human Rights Watch called it an apparent war crime.
On April 28, strikes hit a detention centre holding African migrants in Saada Governorate. Sixty-eight people died.
On May 6, Oman brokered a ceasefire. Trump said the Houthis had "capitulated." The Houthis said the agreement did not prevent them from attacking Israel.
Maritime traffic through the Red Sea did not resume. In July, the Houthis started attacking ships again.
In mid-August, the USS Iwo Jima and its amphibious ready group sailed into the Caribbean. The stated mission was to fight drug trafficking.
On September 2, Trump posted a video to social media. It showed a missile striking a small boat. The boat burned. All 11 people aboard died. Trump said they were members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang. He said they were carrying drugs. He provided no evidence.
More strikes followed. September 15: three killed. September 19: three killed. The Dominican Republic said it helped locate one boat and recovered 1,000 kilograms of cocaine. For the others, no drugs were shown. No evidence was released.
In October, Admiral Alvin Holsey announced he would retire early from his command of US Southern Command. He had held the position for less than a year. Sources told the Wall Street Journal he had objected to what he called "murky legal authority" for the strikes.
On October 22, Trump said he would order strikes on land. On November 13, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth unveiled Operation Southern Spear. The USS Gerald R. Ford, the world's largest aircraft carrier, arrived in the Caribbean. Fifteen thousand American troops were now in the region—the largest deployment to Latin America in decades.
The State Department designated the Cartel of the Suns as a foreign terrorist organisation. The US alleged that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro ran it. Maduro denied this.
On December 24 or 25—Trump gave conflicting dates—American forces struck a dock on the Venezuelan coast. It was the first land attack. Trump said the dock was used to load boats with drugs. He would not say whether the military or the CIA carried it out.
By month's end, 30 strikes had killed at least 107 people. Human rights groups called them extrajudicial killings. Colombia and Venezuela called them murder. The Republican-controlled Senate twice rejected resolutions to limit Trump's authority to continue.
On Christmas morning, a Navy warship in the Gulf of Guinea fired Tomahawk missiles at two camps in Sokoto State, Nigeria. MQ-9 Reaper drones launched 16 guided munitions at fighters near the border with Niger.
Trump announced the strikes that evening. He called them a "Christmas present" for terrorists. Islamic State fighters had been killing Christians, he said, "at levels not seen for many years, and even Centuries." He had warned them. Now there was hell to pay.
Nigerian officials confirmed the strikes. They said their government had provided intelligence and approval. They said the operation was not aimed at protecting any particular religion.
Debris from the missiles fell on Jabo, a village in Sokoto. Residents said they heard a blast and saw flames. They could not sleep. They had never seen anything like it. They told reporters their village had no history of terrorist activity. Christians and Muslims lived there peacefully together.
Defense Secretary Hegseth said there was "more to come."
The war in Ukraine entered its fourth year. Trump had promised to end it. He did not.
In March, US military aid and intelligence sharing to Ukraine paused. In April, Putin announced a 30-hour Easter truce. Both sides accused the other of breaking it. In May, talks in Istanbul produced a prisoner exchange and nothing else.
On August 16, Putin met Trump in Alaska. It was his first visit to American soil since the invasion. Trump had given him a 50-day ultimatum: make progress toward a ceasefire or face sanctions. Then he shortened it to 10-12 days.
The meeting produced neither a ceasefire nor sanctions. Trump said he expected Zelensky and Putin to meet directly. Putin proposed Moscow as the venue.
In November, the US presented a 28-point peace plan. Ukraine and its European allies rejected it. They said it reflected Russian demands: cede the eastern territories, give up NATO membership.
By December, American and Ukrainian negotiators had hammered out a 20-point consensus in Florida. The draft called for an 800,000-strong Ukrainian army and a specific date for EU membership. It left unresolved the questions of territory and the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant. Moscow had not responded.
Throughout the year, Europeans moved to fill the gap. Germany amended its constitution to borrow for defence. The EU proposed €163.5 billion in defence loans. France announced that 26 countries had committed to deploy troops in Ukraine after a ceasefire. The EU signed security agreements with Japan and South Korea—the first such deals with Asian partners.
The ceasefire in Gaza lasted from January 15 to March 18. Then it collapsed.
By November, 70,000 Palestinians had been killed. More than 170,900 had been wounded. Twenty thousand of the dead were children. That worked out to one child every hour for two years.
The Gaza Health Ministry published the names. The first 350 pages of the document were children under 16.
One thousand and nine of the dead children were under one year old. Four hundred and fifty of them had been born during the war.
Forty-two thousand children were injured. Twenty-one thousand were left permanently disabled.
On August 22, famine was declared in Gaza Governorate. One million people faced catastrophic hunger. Half of them were children. By that point, 135 children had starved to death.
A study in The Lancet estimated the true death toll was 41 percent higher than official figures—approximately 93,000 by mid-2025. That count did not include deaths from collapsed healthcare, contaminated water, or starvation.
Satellite analysis showed that 78 percent of all structures in Gaza had been destroyed.
A new ceasefire began on October 10. Israeli military operations continued. By November 29, at least 67 more children had been killed.
In February, Germany held elections. The Alternative for Germany won 20.8 percent of the vote—its best result ever. The Trump administration had endorsed it. Elon Musk had posted that "only the AfD can save Germany."
By December, the AfD was polling at 26 percent. It had passed both the CDU/CSU and the SPD. In some eastern states, it polled at 39 percent. German intelligence had designated it a "confirmed right-wing extremist movement."
In Portugal, the far-right Chega party won 22.8 percent in May—a tie for second place with the Socialists.
In Romania, far-right candidate George Simion lost the presidential election but won 46 percent in the second round. The Trump administration had endorsed him.
In Poland, far-right candidate Karol Nawrocki won the presidency in June. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had travelled to Warsaw to endorse him days before the runoff.
By year's end, seven EU countries had far-right parties in government or supporting coalitions: Croatia, the Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, and Slovakia.
In France, Marine Le Pen's National Rally held the most seats in parliament. Le Pen herself could not run for president. She had been convicted of embezzlement in March.
Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian prime minister, spoke at a Patriots for Europe rally. "Yesterday, we were the heretics," he said. "Today we are the mainstream."
On December 14, a father and son opened fire at a Hanukkah celebration on Bondi Beach in Sydney. They killed 15 people and wounded more than 40. Australian authorities said the attack was motivated by Islamic State ideology. It was the deadliest terrorist incident in Australian history.
Four days earlier, Australia had banned social media for anyone under 16.
More than 110 armed conflicts were underway around the world. The transatlantic alliance that had held since 1945 was strained past recognition. The administration that had built that alliance now worked to undermine it. The document meant to define American security named European democracies as the problem and did not mention North Korea at all.
In Gaza, the bodies kept being counted. In the Caribbean, the boats kept burning. In Yemen, the ceasefire held for two months, and then it didn't.
The year ended. The wars did not.