1) Trump does not care about the Asian concept of "face," as was indicated by the Bob Dole - Brokered call with the President of Taiwan. China, which has been attempting to provoke U.S. responses to various Pacific Ocean "war game" maneuvers for years, needs to respond. This article today is a good example of the kind of saber rattling that will occur. The problem with saber rattling is that there are sabers involved. Our attack will be through copyright enforcement and trade. Theirs will be with military threat and provocation. Which will blink or blow up first?
2) Trump has nominated David Friedman as US Ambassador to Israel, and (as predicted here in this blog in November), they will move the US Embassy to Jerusalem. The main offices and secure infrastructure is in Tel Aviv, of course, so this will be a symbolic move. It will, however, give the Palestinians a wedge issue to declare at the least that the US is not "an honest broker" between them and the Israelis. At the most, it will give the extremists an excuse to declare US citizens in Israel legitimate targets. That said, Jerusalem is and has been the capital of Israel for quite some time, and that would be a legitimate reason to put an embassy there.
3) Russia. With the nomination of a multi-billion dollar oil tycoon CEO as Secretary of State, it is clear that Russia will have a free ride so long as the business deals flow. It is probably convenient for Trump that Russia has crushed Aleppo on Obama's watch, so his inevitable support of Putin won't be attached to that humanitarian disaster. Putin and Trump get to reset the relationship without any pressing conflicts - except, in theory the Ukraine, which Trump won't care about as long as the oil and gas pipelines there stay open. Russian taking them over would guarantee that, so good luck to the Ukraine.
4) Iran. It is not clear that Trump has analyzed the Russia-Iran-China connections. His anti-China, anti-Iran, pro-Russia tendencies will not be compatible with his "end the Iran nuclear deal" policy goal. By the US pulling out of the deal, the deal is cancelled by all parties. They may choose to remain in the deal, in which case it is the US banking infrastructure that would be handcuffed by embargo, not Iran. Russia and China would be more than happy to fill in the void. With Bankers and Billionaires running the government, that would be bad for business. It is hard to imagine it coming to that, so Iran will likely be allowed to continue as under Obama and the current deal.
The realpolitik of International Politics will be in flux, and its developments will be interesting to watch, to be sure.
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