FOREIGN POLICY CHALLENGES FOR THE NEXT U.S. PRESIDENT

The next president will confront  disruptive events that no one sees coming as well as also face some certainties, and foes that will test their resolve not long after they move into the Oval Office.

1. North Korea: The North Koreans are certainly going to challenge the next administration. The isolated Asian nation poses one of the toughest challenges for the next administration. It will require the next administration to take decisive steps, such as sanctioning Chinese companies that do business with North Korea or changing its policy on missile defense. A tougher stance on North Korea will likely roil China, Pyongyang's protector and ally, so that it would become much more like a Cold War with China in the region.
2. China: China is set to be a challenge for the next President. Increasingly, Beijing is using its military to assert claims to contested areas of the South China Sea that the US insists should remain open to international navigation and be peacefully resolved. The next President will have to deal with a China that is intent on challenging US leadership of the global order, along with institutions like the G20. The next President's challenge will be to find areas of common ground while dealing with Beijing's assertiveness. China's muscle-flexing is part of a larger shift to a multipolar construct where countries like China, Russia see themselves as important if not dominant players in this world scene.
3. South Korea and South East Asia: The next President will also have to reinvigorate relations with core allies like South Korea, and in places do some repair work, as in the case of the Philippines, whose fiery President Rodrigo Duterte seems to be orienting his country away from Washington and toward Beijing.
4. Russia: Tensions between Washington and Moscow have intensified as Putin has pushed back hard against US power globally over the last eight years. Putin has walked away from arms control and non-proliferation treaties with the US, threatened the tactical use of nuclear weapons and put new ICBMs and nuclear capable missiles in Kaliningrad, right beside Washington's NATO allies Poland and Lithuania. As tensions have risen, channels of communication have broken down. Among the risks the next President faces is the prospect that frozen conflicts in places like Georgia, Ukraine and Moldova could become shooting wars.
5. Middle East: Russia has also been wooing traditional US allies in the Middle East, courting Egypt and Turkey at a time when Washington's relationships in the region have been badly strained. Some Arab states -- Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen -- have fragmented, while others like Egypt are dysfunctional. Transnational terror groups such as ISIS, Ansar al-Sham and al Qaeda are feeding on the power vacuums. Meanwhile, Iran continues its support for terrorist groups across the region. In short, the next President will inherit a mess in the Middle East. Moreover, in the last eight years, US relationships in the region have changed profoundly and will require rebuilding. Authoritarian leaders, both friendly and adversarial, with whom the US has worked have either been purged or become enemies.
6. Israel: Personal animosity between President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have strained US-Israel ties.
7. Turkey: Relations with NATO ally Turkey have frayed, too. Most recently, the government has accused a US resident of planning a July coup attempt and wants Washington to extradite him. So far, the US has declined to do so, adding to the frustration Turkey already feels about the US-backed campaign to oust ISIS from neighboring Iraq. Turkey remains vehemently opposed to US cooperation with Kurdish groups in Syria that Ankara says are linked to terrorists but Washington sees the Kurdes as the most effective fighting force on the ground. At this point, the US lacks its traditional friends and the traditional adversaries are gone as well.
8. Kurdes: The Kurdish question will be one of many facing the next President when it comes to Syria, where a civil war of more than five years has killed close to a half-million and created one of the worst humanitarian crisis of modern time. More than 11 million people have been forced to flee their homes, with more than 4 million straining neighboring countries like Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon and fueling a migrant crisis in Europe. The chaos has fueled ISIS' rise and paved the way for Russian military intervention in support of the regime.
9. Syria: Syria will be a difficult test for the incoming President. The US will have to make some hard choices about who it’s  going to support in Syria.If the U.S. supports the Kurds, this alienates the Turks. If the U.S. supports the Turks and rebels, the U.S. might have to escalate with Russia and pull the rug out underneath the Kurds.
10. ISIS: The next President will also have to confront the threat of ISIS and other extremist groups that have made Syria their incubator. They will require the US to be in the business of suppressing these extremist movements for a long time to come. The history of ISIS is one of resilience and flexibility. When the terror group is eventually expelled from its current strongholds in Iraq and Syria, it will probably morph into something else or other similar extremist groups will be spawned.
11. Cyberwar, Cybercrime, Cyberespionnage: Transnational threat and others will require the 45th US President to work in close cooperation with other nations. One of the most pressing issues will be the thicket of questions surrounding aggressive acts in cyberspace by state and non-state actors. Those challenges are so new that the next President will have to work, in part with other countries, to define terms. The questions will be, is it cyberwar, cybercrime or cyberespionage and how do you respond? What's a proportional response? This complex of issues will be on the front burner for national security . Those are all novel questions.