Donald Trump’s stunning election victory will provoke immediate tensions across several continents, and force Republican foreign policy elites to make quick decisions about whether to work for a man most strongly opposed as unqualified, according to foreign policy experts and GOP insiders.

The mere fact of Trump’s election will produce political instability in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Latin America, experts say, as world leaders scramble to prepare for potentially radical shifts in American foreign policy and brace for global financial panic.


Republicans were uncertain late Tuesday night about whether Trump would turn to seasoned insiders for top State Department, Pentagon and national security council jobs, particularly after dozens publicly vowed they would never work for him. But some held out hope that Trump would draw from a pool of experienced professionals rather than outsiders with little understanding of a newly-roiled world.

“I very much hope lots of my conservative colleagues will join the administration,” said Kori Schake, a Republican who has worked in the White House, State Department and Pentagon. “It's one thing to keep from helping Trump get elected, and another thing to make the best of it when voters have already elected him.” (Schake herself has said for months that she would “never” work for Trump.)

Given his often ambiguous and conflicting statements, Trump's victory has triggered huge anxiety and uncertainty among U.S. allies worldwide, analysts said, and foreign governments will be watching his early statements and appointments wuth hawk-like attention.

"Given the unclear and at times inconsistent messages on foreign policy and the Middle East--Pence is for safe zones in Syria, Trump is against--there is an early need for the president-elect to clarify his key principles in foreign policy," said Dennis Ross, who served at the White House and State Depatment under several presidents of both parties. "His appointments may offer early signals of what will guide a Trump approach to foreign policy in general and the Middle East in particular."

In Tehran, Iranian officials will have to discuss whether and how they will restart their dormant nuclear program if Trump follows through on his vow to scrap the July 2015 agreement painstakingly brokered by President Barack Obama.

That agreement was already under pressure in the run-up to Iranian elections early next year and Trump’s victory could deal a blow to moderate supporters of Obama’s signature foreign-policy agreement.

“I don't actually think he'll rip up the deal, but I also didn't think he would win this election,” a senior Obama administration official said late Tuesday night.

A Trump win “clearly puts back on the table a credible threat of military force and the use of severe economic sanctions,” said Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a firm opponent of the nuclear agreement. “It however runs the risk of isolating the United States if Iran can successfully flip the Europeans against the Trump administration. But the utter unpredictability of a Trump administration could make Iran's Supreme Leader and his Revolutionary Guards very cautious about nuclear and regional escalation.”

Russia experts predict that Russian President Vladimir Putin will aggressively pursue his country’s military campaign in Syria with little fear that a President Trump would counter him there as Hillary Clinton might have. Trump says he wants to cooperate with Moscow in Syria and elsewhere, and has expressed no interest in the kind of U.S. military action, like a no-fly zone, that Clinton proposed there. Even before Tuesday’s vote, Russian forces were already reportedly preparing to join a new offensive against rebels in the Syria city of Aleppo.

Experts say nationalist politics could flare in Eastern Europe and the Baltic states along Russia’s border, creating dangerous instability in the region. Trump has suggested he might not come to the defense of the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia—all NATO members—if they are not contributing enough to the alliance’s budget.

Those countries view NATO as their only hope against against a Russia they consider a real and present danger to their territories. The government of the Baltic state of Estonia was already on the brink of collapse this week and the effects of a perceived loss of U.S. and NATO deterrence against Putin could ripple through the region, stoking anti-Russian nationalism—which in turn could provoke Moscow or provide Putin with a pretext for action.

But while many observers fear that Putin could move fast to invade the Baltics, which he considers a rightful part of Russia, some experts believe that the Russian leader will avoid creating an early crisis that could be cast as a test of Putin’s strength, instead working slowly with Trump to first weaken the NATO alliance.

China will prepare for economic combat with a president-elect who has vowed stiff new tariffs—but will also relish the already-apparent fear of its top regional rivals, Japan and South Korea, both of whom rely on a U.S. nuclear umbrella Trump has questioned in a break with decades of American doctrine. According to the South Korean Yonhap News Agency, the country’s president was convening a national security council session to discuss the impact of the presidential election.

And Trump’s win will rock the U.S. southern border, where an already unpopular Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto faces popular fury for his summer meeting with Trump in Mexico City—the president-elect’s only foreign trip during the campaign—while the peso craters over Trump’s threats to restrict trade with the country.

Against this tableau of crisis, Republican foreign policy elites who consider Trump repellent and unqualified will continue a debate begun in a whisper during the campaign–about whether and how they might mitigate his most dangerous impulses. While dozens of experienced Republican foreign policy insiders vowed never to work for Trump, others kept their silence, calculating that a president with no foreign policy experience will require seasoned advisors to guide him.

Insiders in both parties cited Stephen Hadley, a former national security advisor to George W. Bush, as one of the most senior GOP foreign policy hands to hold his tongue about Trump, and say he could be a top choice for a senior national security post.

“Steve Hadley would be a genuinely superb Secretary of Defense,” Schake said.

Foreign policy veterans may be in especially high demand at the State Department, where career foreign service officers have talked for months about whether they could serve under a President Donald Trump—a debate many considered academic but which now presents them with a grueling choice between their values and their country.

The prospect of mass resignations “is a real thing,” according to one career diplomat who has had several such conversations with State Department colleagues.

Eliot Cohen, an influential Republican who served as counsellor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and who vehemently opposed Trump, urged longtime diplomatic and national security professionals not to quit in disgust.

"Career people, I think, have an obligation to serve faithfully, and not least to ensure that the principles and letter of our Constitutional system of government are respected," Cohen said.