American Foreign Policy (Mar. 11) in the Second Trump Administration

Join retired U.S. Ambassador George Krol in an analysis of American foreign policy in the first year of the second Trump administration. Since Inauguration Day 2025, the year has witnessed dramatic developments in the structure, personnel and thrust of American foreign policy in the world at large. Political, trade and military conflicts, and major peace-making efforts have waxed and waned. Long standing foreign affairs agencies, such as the U.S. State Department, have been restructured, and some have either disappeared or been significantly reduced in size, like USAID and the National Security Council. This session will examine questions such as: What is behind these changes? What has actually changed in American foreign policy and its implementation? What has remained the same? What does all this change bode for the future for America’s world role and international engagement?

George Krol is a retired career U.S. diplomat, who spent 36 years in the U.S. Foreign Service (1982-2018) serving in senior positions both in the U.S. State Department in Washington and in U.S. diplomatic missions abroad, including posts as ambassador to Belarus, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Krol, a resident of Middletown, Rhode Island, currently serves as an adjunct professor at the U.S. Naval War College and is an associate of Harvard University’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies.