By John Ubaldi, “Ubaldi Report”

Throughout the 2020 presidential campaign the race has been defined by the coronavirus and the economy, but virtually no discussion or debate has been leveled at the foreign policy challenges the next president will confront in 2021.

During the 2000 presidential contest between George W. Bush, and Al Gore there was no debate or any questions on how each candidate would deal with Al-Qaeda, since then the terror organization has consumed the attention of U.S. national security and three presidential administrations.

What unforeseen global crisis will confront the U.S. from which the next president will have to deal with?

Currently the United States is locked in a competitive arena with China, from which Beijing wants to upend the global economic system constructed by the United States in the waning days of World War II.  This system put in place during the Bretton Woods Conference which established the liberal economic order regarding trade, financing and monetary policy.

China’s goal is to upend this liberal economic order in favor of a system that runs through Beijing by which they can control the entire global economic system.

Will the U.S. continue its competitive policies toward China regarding to trade, and will the U.S. push back against Beijing’s theft of U.S. intellectual properties and other illegal acquisitions of American technology.

How will the U.S. respond to China’s Massive Belt Road Initiative from which its infrastructure investments in the economies in Asia and other regions of the globe places a massive debt trap for borrowing governments which they can never re-pay?

Sri Lanka is a case in point of being heavily indebted to China then forced to give up its port facilities to Beijing as collateral.

U.S. Attorney General William Barr speaking before the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum stated, “The People’s Republic of China is now engaged in an economic blitzkrieg—an aggressive, orchestrated, whole-of-government (indeed, whole-of-society) campaign to seize the commanding heights of the global economy and to surpass the United States as the world’s preeminent technological superpower.”

Do the United States political and the nation’s business leaders understand this threat?

Barr mentions that “Last year, Newsweek ran a cover story titled “How America’s Biggest Companies Made China Great Again.”  The article details how China’s communist leaders lured American business with the promise of market access, and then, having profited from American investment and know-how, turned increasingly hostile.  The PRC used tariffs and quotas to pressure American companies to give up their technology and form joint ventures with Chinese companies.  Regulators then discriminated against American firms, using tactics like holding up permits.  Yet few companies, even Fortune 500 giants, have been willing to bring a formal trade complaint for fear of angering Beijing.”

Does the U.S. understand this threat?

The one region of the world that has confounded every U.S. president since FDR, but especially in the last number of years is the Middle East. Far too long the national security community of both political parties viewed the Middle East through a delusional and naïve set of parameters hoping to turn the region into a western style system.

The greatest example is how the U.S. has dealt with Iran. Every president since Carter has believed that there are reformers in the Iranian government that would accommodate dialogue with less confrontation.  Each president has never understood that Iran only understands strength and force.  The latest example was the U.S. killing of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, instead of leading to more violence by Iran it shocked the leadership in Tehran.

How will America deal with Iran, Syria, Iraq and the rest of the Middle East, will the U.S. look at the region in what they hoped it to be instead of what is actually going on .

Only time will tell!

The area that is has been the most controversial is how the U.S. deals with Russia.  Ever since the 2016 election, Russia has occupied a bizarre nature on U.S. foreign policy with both Republicans and Democrats thinking they have understood the motivations of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Again, like the Middle East the U.S. fails to understand his true ambitions and national security experts consistently underestimate Putin’s true aims. Failure by the U.S. has allowed Putin to play a bad hand masterfully, while the U.S. plays an excellent hand badly.

Maybe this time the U.S. will do it differently!

Other regions of the globe will consistently challenge the U.S., such as Cuba, Venezuela and Africa, but one always has to be prepared for the unexpected crisis that no one expects.

One crisis that is under the radar is the ongoing conflict between India and China in the Himalayan mountain region which has the potential to draw in Beijing’s ally Pakistan and archenemy to India.

How the U.S. would deal with three countries with nuclear weapons and one would is unstable Pakistan who almost unleashed a nuclear war with India in the Kargil pass region in the disputed Kashmir area.

Expect the world to be more in chaos not less in the years moving forward!