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What might former US President Donald Trump’s foreign policy look like if he wins the presidency again? The Republican candidate tends to be blunt — for example, he once boasted that he could end the Russia-Ukraine conflict in a day. Trump has also been quick to distance himself from policy documents that have become politically inconvenient, such as the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025.

Yet, beyond the noise of the campaign, one way to assess Trump’s likely foreign policy agenda for a second term is to analyze the national security thinkers around him: Which advisers does he listen to? What perspectives and ideas have shaped the former president’s current worldview?

The following list can be used as a reference, especially in the days leading up to November 5. But before listing the list, a few points need to be made. First, the people listed below are not in order of importance, but in alphabetical order. The candidates on the list are not specifically marked as a specific position, such as national security adviser or secretary of state; this article only describes those who may have an important influence on Trump's foreign policy decisions. Finally, it should be emphasized that the purpose of listing these candidates is to add some context to the "guessing game" that is common in Washington at present - of course, no one can predict with certainty what Trump will do.

Here is the list:

Elbridge Colby

Fred Fleitz

Ric Grenell

Keith Kellogg

Robert Lighthizer

Johnny McEntee

Christopher Miller

Stephen Miller

Robert O'Brien

Kash Patel

Mike Pompeo

Elbridge Colby was one of the loudest and perhaps most logical voices in Washington.It advocates that the United States should completely accept the "China threat theory" instead of continuing to focus on Europe, NATO and Russia.

During the Trump administration, Colby served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for more than a year, during which he promoted the United States' belated "Pivot to Asia" strategy. He then co-founded the Marathon Initiative, a Washington-based think tank focused on great power competition, with other Trump administration veterans. If he is reappointed in a future Trump administration -His name has been mentioned as a possible candidate for another defense post, even one on the National Security Council — where he would further emphasize his core point: The greatest threat to the United States comes from China, not Russia.

Over the years, Colby has argued through a series of articles, books and speeches that the United States should use its limited defense resources to prevent the rise of adversaries in the Asia-Pacific region.

Colby’s ideas can be seen as a timely restatement of the original blueprint for American grand strategy, even if he inverts the theory proposed by Nicholas Spykman in the middle of World War II: Asia, not Europe, is now the center of global economics and politics, and Beijing’s dominance will severely limit America’s future prospects and freedom of action.

One problem Colby faces, however, is that his potential future boss (Trump), while sometimes tough on CHN, is also extremely transactional.Realist hawks like Colby don’t fit neatly with a foreign policy without a clear direction.

Another problem is that Colby’s repeated emphasis on dedicating limited U.S. resources to a possible future great power war, even if it means abandoning U.S. support for Ukraine in a war, is a position that Kremlin supporters exploit;Russian state TV welcomes Colby's foreign policy priorities。

Whether it is in the future Trump administration or in the future Kamala Harris administration,Members of Congress are unlikely to accept a defense strategy focused solely on Asia.A congressionally mandated defense review panel said in July that the United States should be prepared to defend its core interests in Europe and Asia.

Despite his long career in the U.S. national security community, Fred Fleitz is a staunch supporter of the Trump-led anti-establishment “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) ideology that has stirred up a four-year storm in Washington.Fleitz was a senior member of the Trump administration and is now one of the former president's few national security advisers on the campaign trail.

Fleitz, along with Keith Kellogg, drafted a plan for Trump to consider after his reelection that would end the conflict in Ukraine.The plan includes pushing Ukraine and Russia to the negotiating table and a ceasefire on the current front to maintain the ceasefire until the peace talks are over. The Trump administration will put pressure on Ukraine by threatening to cut off US aid to Ukraine, while putting pressure on Russia by threatening to provide Ukraine with a large amount of military aid without peace talks.The proposal is the most detailed forecast yet of future Trump White House Ukraine policy, and it could become a reality if Fleitz and others join the new administration.

Fleitz is currently the vice president of the Center for American Security under the America First Policy Institute, a think tank founded in 2021 to maintain the presence of MAGA forces in Washington when the Biden team is in power. He is also a frequent commentator on the right-wing news channel NewsMax and wrote "Obama's Nuclear Bomb: A Dangerous and Growing National Security Scam" (Obamabomb: A Dangerous and Growing National Security Fraud) and "North Korea's Nuclear Nightmare: What Trump Must Do to Reverse Obama's Policy of 'Strategic Patience'" (The Coming North Korea Nuclear Nightmare: What Trump Must Do to Reverse Obama’s ‘Strategic Patience’）。

Fleitz has sparked controversy for some of his past comments and ties to far-right, anti-immigrant groups that opponents have labeled marginalized and Islamophobic. (He has since distanced himself from those past ties.)

Fleitz worked in the U.S. government for more than two decades, serving in a variety of positions at the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the State Department, and on the Republican side of the House Intelligence Committee.He has worked closely with hard-line conservative hawk John Bolton at several points in his career.Fleitz served as Bolton’s chief of staff during the George W. Bush administration when Bolton was undersecretary of state for arms control. Later, when Bolton served as Trump’s national security adviser, Fleitz again became the chief of staff at the National Security Council.

Although Bolton later broke publicly with Trump, Fleitz remained in the MAGA camp.Although Trump has yet to reveal who would make up his administration if he wins the election, many Republican insiders say Fleitz could be high on the list.

Diplomatic relations between the United States and Germany have been on a downward spiral since 2018, when Ric Grenell publicly demanded on Twitter that German companies doing business with Iran “cease operations immediately” within hours of handing over his diplomatic credentials to then-German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

Grenell's differences with the German government have been made public in public, with him threatening to withdraw U.S. troops from Germany over insufficient defense spending and impose sanctions on Germany over the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project, which will increase Germany's dependence on Russian energy. Wolfgang Kubicki, vice president of the German Bundestag, even accused Grenell of acting as if the United States "is still an occupying power."

Although Grenell's tough approach shocked Berlin's moderate political class,But if ambassadors are measured by their ability to convey their bosses' messages, Grenell is undoubtedly an effective implementer.He was later appointed special envoy to the Balkans, where he was controversially accused of contributing to the collapse of the Kosovo government, and was named acting director of national intelligence, becoming the first openly gay cabinet-level official.

Grenell, a graduate of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, served as a spokesperson for several prominent Republicans before joining the 2000 presidential campaign of former Senator John McCain, who later became one of Trump's most vocal critics.

From 2001 to 2008, Grenell served as communications director for the U.S. mission to the United Nations, working with four ambassadors, including John Bolton, who later became Trump's national security adviser.

Long before Trump's presidency, Grenell was known for his combative tweets, which often slammed journalists and mocked the appearance of prominent female Democrats, similar to the Twitter style of his future boss, Trump.

Grenell remained loyal even as several senior officials in the Trump administration broke with him toward the end of his term. According to a recent New York Times profile, Grenell was sent to Nevada after the 2020 presidential election to help challenge the results, even though he knew the allegations were unfounded.

Since leaving the administration, Grenell has traveled the world as Trump's special envoy, meeting with far-right leaders and undermining the State Department's influence on multiple occasions, including in Guatemala. It is this loyalty that has made him a candidate for a senior foreign policy post in a future Trump administration.

In a March 2023 podcast interview, Grenell said the secretary of state would need to be "tough" and "ruthless."

When Michael Flynn was fired just 22 days into Trump’s first term for lying about his conversations with the Russian ambassador to the United States, Keith Kellogg was one of the first candidates to be considered to replace him. Although the position ultimately went to another three-star Army general, HR McMaster,Kellogg later served as an adviser to Vice President Mike Pence and as chief of staff to the National Security Council.

In those roles, Kellogg was involved in some of the key moments of Trump’s presidency. He said he “didn’t hear anything wrong or improper” in a July 2019 call in which Trump asked Ukrainian President Zelensky to investigate Biden. And on January 6, 2021, as pro-Trump rioters were still being cleared out of the U.S. Capitol, Kellogg privately urged Pence to certify the results of the 2020 election that night.Yet, despite this, Kellogg still endorsed Trump over Pence in August 2023, criticizing Pence for being too focused on "political maneuvers" and image issues. (Pence dropped out of the presidential race in October 2023 and did not endorse Trump.)

Since then, Kellogg has sought to become a core member of Trump's national security think tank, playing a key role in the pro-Trump think tank America First Policy Institute, which is seen as Washington's "White House in lieu." Kellogg is a Vietnam War veteran and a three-star Army general at the Pentagon when al-Qaeda flew a Boeing 757 into the west side of the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.He is supportive of both Ukraine and NATO, but also willing to apply Trump’s famous pressure tactics on both. He has tried to implement Trump’s promise to end the Russia-Ukraine conflict “in one day,” laying out a plan that would cut U.S. military aid to Ukraine if Kiev refuses to negotiate, but increase it if the Kremlin refuses to negotiate.

Kellogg was one of the former officials European officials sought to meet with Trump insiders at the July NATO Washington summit. However, what they may have heard was not what they hoped to hear. Kellogg had said that countries that did not meet NATO defense spending targets were violating the Washington Treaty. (Trump threatened at a campaign rally earlier this year to withhold defense for allies that did not meet NATO's 2% GDP spending target.)

Robert Lighthizer is one of the few members of the Trump administration who still has a huge influence on policy. As Trump's trade representative, current adviser, and possible future Treasury Secretary, Lighthizer has become an influential economic voice, especially through his return to the past trade vision, which has an important impact on the Biden administration's new trade war policy.

Lighthizer, a longtime trade lawyer who began his public service career in the Ronald Reagan administration, has helped turn Trump's vague trade and economic ideas into more coherent policy in the Trump administration. Now, as Trump campaigns to return to the White House, Lighthizer is eager to double down on the policies he promoted during his first term.

The famous Trump tariffs — on steel, aluminum and a host of other products from China — are the product of Lighthizer’s vision, and they are just the beginning. By raising import taxes on American consumers and businesses, he believes that it will reduce imports and, ideally, encourage American companies to produce and export more.

Lighthizer’s plans for the future, as he laid out in books and articles since leaving office, include imposing higher tariffs on more countries — virtually all of them — to balance America’s import and export books, especially targeting China, one of America’s largest trading partners and its biggest geopolitical rival.His ultimate goal is to achieve a state of almost complete “decoupling” rather than the mild “de-risking” currently preferred by the Biden administration.

It doesn’t matter to Lighthizer and some of Trump’s other still-influential trade advisers, like Peter Navarro, that tariffs and tough trade policies didn’t achieve their intended goals during their administrations. The trade deficit — a major issue for tariff hawks like Trump and Lighthizer — has grown during their tenures. U.S. exports have fallen, and manufacturing jobs have finally shrunk because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Retaliatory tariffs by allies have weakened U.S. trade options abroad and reduced the prospects for an anti-China coalition. Consumer prices have risen due to increased import taxes. Far from changing the predatory economic behavior that initially sparked the trade war, China has made export-driven industrial policy the centerpiece of its economic resurgence.

But as Lighthizer himself defends, it takes time to right a ship that has veered off course. Perhaps this time, the old prescription will produce very different results.

By Johnny McEntee In the summer of 2020, when Trump was struggling for reelection, the White House sent out an email inviting Pentagon officials to interview in order to assess their potential for service in a second administration after Trump's reelection. Pentagon officials viewed these interviews as a test of loyalty as the White House increasingly tightened its control over the Department of Defense.

The manipulator behind the email was none other than Johnny McEntee, director of the White House Office of Presidential Personnel. McEntee was a backup quarterback for the University of Connecticut football team and served as the president's "personal assistant" during the first year of the Trump administration. He was fired by White House Chief of Staff John Kelly in 2018 for failing a background check in a gambling investigation, and two years later he returned to the White House, this time in charge of the powerful Office of Presidential Personnel.

It’s often said in Washington that personnel is policy. Many of Trump’s early appointments came from traditional Republican foreign policy circles, people who were more international, more pro-trade, pro-NATO, and pro-alliance than the standard MAGA camp. Kelly, National Security Advisor HR McMaster, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson formed the “axis of adults” that controlled foreign policy in the first two years of the Trump administration, even as the commander-in-chief accused Washington’s “deep state” of stalling his agenda.

However, later in his term, McEntee helped install MAGA-backed figures into senior positions. He was involved in Trump's reorganization of the Pentagon's leadership, including the firing of then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper. He also worked with others to try to replace members of the Pentagon's senior policy committees with pro-Trump allies. If Trump wins reelection, McEntee will play a key role in implementing Trump's planned "Schedule F reforms,"The reform would essentially make jobs in government that were once career-tenure positions “on-hire.”

Since then, loyalty tests have become the norm in Trump's world. McEntee now works at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, where he is leading Project 2025, an initiative that calls on the next president to "confront the deep state." If you want to get on the shortlist of Trump appointees, you must submit your phone number and fill out a detailed questionnaire based primarily on loyalty to Trump.

After being named Trump's acting defense secretary in November 2020, Christopher Miller made some early missteps — literally.

First, he fell while walking up the steps of the Pentagon. Then, two days later, he forgot his prepared remarks while delivering his first public speech at the National Museum of the United States Army, setting the tone for his two-month tenure as leader of the Pentagon, perhaps one of the most turbulent in its history.

Trump moved Miller from the National Counterterrorism Center to the Department of Defense to replace fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper. Trump announced Esper's firing via tweet, a decision that came less than 48 hours after the media began projecting Biden as the winner of the presidential election.

Miller, a former member of the Special Forces "Green Beret," was given an ambitious mission two months before Biden's inauguration: to be responsible for withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan, Syria and Somalia.

Miller was widely criticized for failing to approve the deployment of the National Guard after the pro-Trump riot on January 6, 2021, more than three hours after the Pentagon learned that the Capitol had been breached. Miller later said he was concerned that if active-duty U.S. troops were deployed, it would create "the greatest constitutional crisis since the Civil War." He also said Trump should be held accountable for inciting the riot, but he did not explicitly rule out working for Trump again.

"I felt like he did a great job," Trump told radio host Hugh Hewitt in a December 2023 interview, describing Miller's brief tenure at the Pentagon.

Stephen Miller became known for his hardline and highly controversial immigration policies during Trump's tenure. If Trump wins in November, he is widely expected to again rely heavily on Miller, who has already put forward some sweeping new proposals to overhaul U.S. policy and crack down on immigration.

As Trump's senior adviser and speechwriting director, Miller played a key role in shaping Trump's presidential agenda. He pushed for some of Trump's most controversial plans, including family separations under the "zero tolerance" policy and the so-called "Muslim ban," which prohibits people from several Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States and resettling refugees. In addition to pushing for cuts to refugee admissions, Miller reportedly suggested deploying the military to close the U.S. southern border., and proposed banning Chinese nationals from applying for student visas.

Miller is known for encouraging Trump to take tougher stances, even in some cases when other advisers reportedly advised the president to exercise restraint. In 2019, Miller was criticized for a batch of leaked emails, released by the legal advocacy group Southern Poverty Law Center, that showed him privately promoting white nationalist views. The emails were communications between Miller and the conservative news site Breitbart News dating back to 2015 and 2016.

Today, Miller spends much of his time fighting "woke corporations," even though he has no formal legal training. In 2021, he founded the America First Legal Foundation, a conservative legal advocacy group focused on challenging the actions of the Biden administration and private companies, including Kellogg and Starbucks. "America First Legal Foundation is holding American businesses accountable for illegally engaging in discriminatory hiring practices based on race and gender," Miller said.

Miller has pledged to overhaul U.S. immigration policy if Trump defeats Kamala Harris in November.According to the New York Times, in a possible second term, Washington will significantly expand its policies to crack down on immigration, including stopping the U.S. refugee program and re-implementing some form of a Muslim travel ban. Trump envisions conducting widespread raids in public places, implementing mass deportations, and building "massive holding facilities" to detain people awaiting deportation. Miller also said Trump is eager to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

"I don't care what happens in the world, if President Trump is re-elected, the border will be sealed, the military will be deployed, the National Guard will be activated, illegal immigrants will be deported," Miller told right-wing personality Charlie Kirk in a podcast interview earlier this year.

Donald Trump went through three national security advisers during his first two years in office before finally finding a suitable candidate: Robert O'Brien, who remained in the position until the end of Trump's presidency.

A Los Angeles lawyer, O'Brien initially served in the White House as a special envoy for hostage affairs. He helped secure the release of Americans imprisoned in Turkey and Yemen, and the Trump administration has made resolving the issue of Americans wrongfully detained abroad a priority.

More notably, O’Brien led the Trump administration’s lobbying of ally Sweden to release American rapper A$AP Rocky, who was convicted of assault, following a request from rapper Kanye West (now known as Ye), The New York Times reported.

As national security adviser, O'Brien, who had significantly less experience than his predecessor, maintained a low-key and loyal presence, avoiding major controversy during the remainder of the Trump administration.

After the 2020 presidential election, O'Brien became one of the first senior Trump officials to acknowledge Biden's victory, albeit grudgingly. "If the Biden-Harris combination is determined to be the winner, which is obviously the case now, we will ensure a very professional transition at the National Security Council, there is no doubt about that," he said at a virtual meeting of the Global Security Forum.

O'Brien maintains a close relationship with the former president and would likely be tapped for a senior position if Trump returns to the White House.

In a June 2023 article in Foreign Affairs, O’Brien outlined the contours of Trump’s future foreign policy:"Trumpism: restoring peace through strength." The article points out that China is the main focus, and O'Brien called for a tough stance in the Indo-Pacific region, including deploying the entire Marine Corps to the region and moving a US aircraft carrier from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

O'Brien also advocated that the United States should resume nuclear weapons testing, which it has not conducted since 1992. "Washington must test the reliability and safety of new nuclear weapons in the real world, rather than relying solely on computer models," he wrote.

Kash Patel rose quickly during the Trump presidency, rising from an obscure House Intelligence Committee staffer to acting Defense Secretary’s chief of staff despite having no military background. As an aide to then-House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, Patel played a key role in questioning allegations that the Trump team had inappropriate contacts with Russian government officials during the campaign.

Patel was reportedly the lead author of a controversial 2018 memo alleging that law enforcement officials acted improperly in seeking warrants to monitor the communications of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page. While Democrats decried the release of the document as a partisan attack on the justice system, courts later found that some of the surveillance warrants against Page were indeed without probable cause.

After serving as senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council, Patel moved to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in 2020 as senior adviser to the Director of National Intelligence, where he played a key role in the former president's attack on the intelligence community and pushed for the declassification of documents related to the investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election.

In the final days of the Trump administration, the former president considered firing CIA Deputy Director Vaughn Bishop and replacing him with Patel, according to Axios. If then-CIA Director Gina Haspel resigned in protest — as she threatened to do — Patel or another Trump ally reportedly could have been tapped to lead the sprawling intelligence agency.

If Trump returns to the White House, Patel is likely to hold an important senior position in the new administration.In a December 2023 appearance on Steve Bannon's podcast, Patel said a second Trump administration would target and prosecute journalists. "Yes, we will hold accountable those who lied in the press, those who helped Joe Biden rig the presidential election - we will hold you accountable. Whether it's criminal or civil, we'll figure it out," he said.

Patel also wrote a children's book called The Plot Against the King, which recreated the Russian investigation as a revisionist fairy tale, in which Patel appears as a wizard who tells the kingdom that King Donald "is not working with the Russians".

Mike Pompeo was one of the few Cabinet officials who maintained a good relationship with the tough and unpredictable President Trump throughout his term.Trump picked Pompeo from a relatively unknown Kansas congressman to be his first CIA director. During his tenure as head of the top U.S. intelligence agency, Pompeo dabbled in foreign affairs, traveling secretly to North Korea to pave the way for direct talks between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

When Trump fired his first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, in 2018, he announced Pompeo as his replacement. Pompeo joined the State Department vowing to restore “vitality” to the diplomatic corps after the Tillerson era, a promise that brought relief to some longtime diplomats but irritated others. During his time at the State Department, Pompeo was careful to ensure he remained relevant in Trump’s inner circle, even if that put him at odds with a troubled diplomatic corps — during Trump’s first impeachment hearings, for example, and amid other scandals involving harassment, mismanagement and oversight investigations of Trump appointees at the State Department.

Pompeo was born in California and is the first graduate of the United States Military Academy (West Point). He served in the US Army and received a law degree from Harvard Law School. In the 1990s, he moved to Kansas and subsequently served as a congressman for Kansas' 4th District from 2011 to 2017 before joining the Trump administration. After Trump stepped down, Pompeo did not condemn the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, or Trump's obviously false claims of election fraud, as other senior Trump administration officials did.

Pompeo briefly considered a run for president but dropped out early after failing to raise as much national profile as other Republican contenders, such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis or former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. In June 2023, he formed a new private equity firm with veteran financiers aimed at backing mid-sized technology companies.

Pompeo remains close to Trump and his inner circle, and many Republican insiders believe that if Trump is re-elected president, Pompeo would be one of the top choices for a senior administration position, such as secretary of defense.

Pompeo is one of the staunchest supporters of Ukraine in the Trump circle. He visited Kyiv in early April 2023 and told Fox News that providing weapons to Ukraine was the "most cost-effective way forward." Many European officials believe that Pompeo's appointment to a senior cabinet position is good news for Ukraine and NATO, but bad news for Russia.

Pompeo is a staunch hawk and one of the main drivers of Trump's withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal. He was also the architect of the former president's tough stance on China, which now has broad bipartisan support.