How Trump 2.0 May Deal With Global Flashpoints

DEEP DIVE – As Donald Trump prepares to return to the White House, the U.S. faces an unusually broad set of global security challenges: wars in Europe and the Middle East, neither of which look likely to end before Inauguration Day; a tense relationship with China and the possibility of conflict over Taiwan; and an increasingly potent and coordinated group of adversaries – what many have called an “axis of authoritarians” – working to counter the U.S. and the West. Also in the mix are foreign disinformation campaigns, cyberattacks against the U.S., and a threat of terrorism which has risen to “a whole other level,” as FBI Director Christopher Wray has put it, inspired largely by Israel’s war in Gaza.

 “The global security challenges that the U.S. faces…we haven’t seen anything quite like this since World War II,” General Jack Keane, a Cipher Brief expert and former Vice Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, said at a security conference earlier this year.