The Foreign Policy Challenges That Will Fill Up President Trump’s Inbox

As a general philosophy, we should expect the pragmatic, antitrade and somewhat isolationist themes of the campaign to become the core elements of President Donald Trump’s foreign policy. Discussions will return of abandoning NATO, building a “big, beautiful wall” on the Mexican border, working more closely with Russian President Vladimir Putin and even allowing nuclear weapons for Japan, Korea, and Saudi Arabia. But what are the specific issues that will land first on President Trump’s desk in January?

On top of the pile will be Russia. Only Russia retains a sufficiently powerful nuclear arsenal to destroy a significant portion of the U.S. with a single attack. Russia will continue to push the U.S. in Ukraine, Crimea, Syria and in the cybersphere, despite the Russian President’s stated affinity for Trump. President Trump should confront where he must and cooperate where he can, all the while seeking a transactional, pragmatic relationship with Russia.

A close second challenge will be creating a plan for dealing with the unpredictable, dangerous—if still largely rational—leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Un. With a growing nuclear arsenal and a restive political class, Kim frequently points out his ability to threaten U.S. allies South Korea and Japan. He is also quickly developing the ability to launch a ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead that could reach the West Coast of the U.S. President Trump will need Chinese cooperation, aggressive cyberforces, high-tech missile defense and a closely coordinated plan with our South Korean allies.

Third in the stack will be relations with China, both tactically and strategically. On the tactical level, growing Chinese aggression in the South China Sea and in the cybersphere will be significant irritants in the relationship between the world’s two biggest powers. On the other hand, there is still room for strategic cooperation over time in everything from humanitarian operations to medical diplomacy to climate control. The key will be maintaining open lines of communication to the Chinese while consolidating existing U.S. alliances in the region. The U.S. relationship with India will be crucial in balancing China in the broad Indo-Pacific theater.

In the Middle East, President Trump will face a series of difficult decisions in the campaign to defeat the Islamic State and find a path forward in Syria. The campaign to take Raqqa, the capital of ISIS, will hopefully be wrapping up by January. This means the fight will shift to defeating global terrorist strikes, tracking jihadist returnees to Europe and shutting down cybercriminal income streams. In terms of Syria, it means finding a way to cooperate with Russia while negotiating an eventual departure of Bashar Assad.

Moving beyond the geographic issues, President Trump will need to amp up the U.S. government’s game on cybersecurity. It seems increasingly evident that a major cyberevent is coming. As the 9/11 commission pointed out, the fall of the Twin Towers was not a failure of ­intelligence—­it was a failure of imagination. The President needs to devote significant attention and human capital to craft a workable, private-­public partnership that creates real security for the nation in cyber.

Other key security challenges will certainly arrive in the President’s inbox: Afghanistan and the Taliban insurgency; Pakistan, with its nuclear arsenal, virulent terrorist movements and erratic governance structure; and Venezuela’s potential meltdown in the face of an utterly failed economy.

The good news is that the President-elect has broad executive experience, a businessman’s direct approach to dealing with turbulence and a distinctive style of negotiations in which he reposes plenty of confidence. The bad news is that the challenges are worrisomely real, nearly intractable and full of contradictions. Buckle up.

Stavridis was the 16th Supreme Allied Commander at NATO and is dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University