Welcome back to your final 2025 edition of Foreign Policy’s Situation Report. We’re pausing the newsletter for the next two weeks to celebrate the holidays but will be back in your inboxes on Thursday, Jan. 8!
Alright, here’s what’s on tap for the day: The former presidents of Colombia and Mexico discuss U.S. actions in Latin America, Dan Bongino is leaving the FBI, and Ukraine urges Europe to give it frozen Russian assets.
The controversial U.S. strikes on alleged drug boats near Latin America and the Trump administration’s increasingly aggressive posture toward Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro’s regime have raised alarm across the globe.
SitRep sat down on Tuesday with former Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, a Nobel Peace laureate, and former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo to get their thoughts on the escalating situation and its impact on Latin America.
The conversation with Santos and Zedillo, who are part of the Nelson Mandela-founded group The Eldersoccurred shortly before U.S. President Donald Trump announced a blockade on sanctioned oil tankers to and from Venezuela. Santos and Zedillo were not available to comment on that development, but they had already made clear their concern over recent steps that the United States has taken in the region.
Santos and Zedillo also discussed the Gaza peace process and why they’re pushing for the release of Marwan Barghouti, a prominent Palestinian leader imprisoned in Israel.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
SitRep: How concerned are you about the U.S. strikes near Latin America and Trump potentially taking military action in Venezuela?
Ernesto Zedillo: Venezuela needs and deserves to have democracy and the rule of law return. What’s happened under [former Venezuelan President Hugo] Chávez and Maduro is outrageous. They have destroyed Venezuela’s democracy and economy, and have imposed tremendous pain on the Venezuelan population, forcing millions of Venezuelans to leave to places like Colombia. It has been a humanitarian disgrace. Any reasonable human being should be offended and concerned about the situation in Venezuela.
Having said that, and this applies to the U.S. and to others—history is very clear in Latin America that every time there has been foreign intervention in the internal affairs of our countries, that has been a disaster for our countries and also a failure for whoever is intervening. Because those interventions have fostered the power of those opposing human rights, democracy, and freedom.
Juan Manuel Santos: What has been advocated as the main purpose of this operation is drug trafficking. This is not the way to effectively fight drug trafficking.
We have fought the drug traffickers for many decades, and it has been a failure, and therefore to try to replicate strategies that have failed so dramatically—the result is going to be the same.
SitRep: President Santos, given your experience with peace negotiations, how concerned are you about the state of the cease-fire in Gaza and about what happens next?
JMS: We are very concerned. What we are seeing and the information that we have received makes us very worried about what’s going to happen. If these types of agreements, and I say this from my own experience, are not implemented correctly and they don’t follow through, things might reverse and be worse than at the beginning. What we are seeing right now is the need for a lot more pressure on Israel and on Hamas to comply with what was agreed and to go into the second phase of the agreement. Otherwise, if things continue to evolve in this negative way, we’re going to have a disaster there again.
NO: We continue to believe that at the end of this tortuous, difficult road, there must be a two-state solution. We need a road map to that situation. Without addressing the root of this tragedy, they could go back to the very difficult moments we have gone through over many years. Our plea at this point is: Yes, comply with what has been agreed, but as part of that, include explicitly how the agreement to a two-state solution will come.
JMS: And I would like to add that we would advocate and ask for the release of Marwan Barghouti. We have talked to his son and wife. And it is well known that he is a person with credibility among the Palestinians—he’s probably the most popular person right now, and he would be an ideal interlocutor in a peace negotiation. If you really want peace, one of the conditions to have a successful peace agreement is to sit down with the correct persons who can deliver peace from the other side. This is a basic rule in peacemaking. And if Israel really wants to show the world that they are interested in peace, releasing Barghouti would send a very clear signal.
NO: And we do that on the premise that Mr. Barghouti, long ago, stated that he had given up on violence and believes in using politics and diplomacy to address the conflict. We think it will be a significant gesture and also a practical step toward peace if he’s freed.
SitRep: Do you think Barghouti will be released without more pressure from the United States, in particular?
JMS: No, we need more pressure from the United States. That is very clear.
Dan Bongino, the former right-wing media personality who has served as Trump’s deputy director of the FBI for the past year, will be leaving his position in January, he announced in a post on X.
Trump announced in a Truth Social post on Tuesday that he had nominated Troy Edgar, currently the deputy secretary of homeland security, as the United States’ new ambassador to El Salvador.
What should be high on your radar, if it isn’t already.
Venezuela waiting game. Trump’s Venezuela blockade has ratcheted up the pressure on Maduro while raising still more questions about the Trump administration’s endgame in the country, a spectrum ranging from regime change to recouping “Oil, Land, and other Assets” to Trump’s originally stated goal of stopping the flow of drugs into the United States. The bigger question is what comes next. Trump has hinted at land strikes on Venezuela for monthsbut they have yet to happen.
Lawmakers—even those close to Trump—also want answers. “I want to know what’s going to happen next,” Sen. Lindsey Graham told NBC News after a briefing on the boat strikes by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday that Graham described as “confusing.”
Two Democrat-led resolutions to rein in Trump’s campaign against Venezuela were narrowly voted down in the House of Representatives on Wednesday evening despite support from some Republican lawmakers. In the Senate, Sen. Adam Schiff requested unanimous consent for passage of a resolution that would force the Trump administration to release the full video of its controversial Sept. 2 “double-tap” boat strike but was denied by Republicans.
Ukraine’s bargain. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky joined several European Union leaders in Brussels on Thursday at a crucial summit to decide whether the more than $200 billion in frozen Russian assets on the continent can be used to support Ukraine.
“Just like authorities confiscate money from drug-traffickers and seize weapons from terrorists, Russian assets must be used to defend against Russian aggression and rebuild what was destroyed by Russian attacks,” Zelensky said at the meeting. “It’s moral. It’s fair. It’s legal.” He also met with the prime minister of Belgium, which holds most of the Russian assets but has expressed reservations about deploying them due to fear of legal and financial risks. “I understand all of Belgium’s concerns; however, a decision on the reparations loan must be made,” Zelensky wrote on social media.
Efforts to end the war, meanwhile, remain intractable as ever. Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a defiant speech to his Defense Ministry board on Wednesday, indicating that he is unwilling to compromise on Moscow’s claim to large swaths of Ukrainian territory or to stop Russian attacks on Ukraine.
“The goals of the special military operation will undoubtedly be achieved,” Putin said, using Russia’s term for the war. “We would prefer to accomplish this and address the root causes of the conflict through diplomatic means. However, if the opposing side and its foreign patrons refuse to engage in substantive dialogue, Russia will achieve the liberation of its historical lands by military means.”
U.S. and Russian officials are reportedly set to meet in Miami over the weekend.
Trump arms Taiwan. The Trump administration on Wednesday approved the United States’ biggest-ever package of arms sales to Taiwan, totaling roughly $11 billion. The package includes several advanced weapons systems such as HIMARS rocket launchers, Javelin missiles, and autonomous aircraft. Congress must still approve the sale for it to go forward.
The decision has predictably angered China, with a spokesperson for Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office calling on Washington to “immediately cease its policy of arming Taiwan.”
Trump is expected to visit Beijing in April, following a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea around six weeks ago that yielded a tentative pause on trade hostilities between the world’s two largest economies.
Mourners pay tribute outside Bondi Pavilion in Sydney on Dec. 18 to honor victims of the Dec. 14 Bondi Beach shooting.David Gray/AFP via Getty Images
Monday, Dec. 22: Foreign ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations meet to discuss Cambodia-Thailand border fighting.
Saturday, Dec. 27: Ivory Coast holds parliamentary elections.
Sunday, Dec. 28: Myanmar’s military junta holds a general election.
$901 billion—the total budget of the National Defense Authorization Act that Trump is set to sign on Thursday. The legislation includes restrictions on Trump’s ability to reduce the number of U.S. troops overseas, including in Europe and South Korea.
“[Trump] has an alcoholic’s personality.”
—White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, in one of many eye-catching quotes to Vanity Fair over the course of nearly a dozen interviews in the past year.
