Mr. Netanyahu is calling it “history’s greatest comeback.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Mr. Trump’s victory was “impressive,” and the coming Trump administration can help bring about a “just peace” in the Ukraine-Russia war. South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol says the U.S.-South Korea relationship “will shine brighter” with Mr. Trump in office.

Across the world on Wednesday, heads of state wasted no time making pledges to work with the incoming president. Some seemed eager for new U.S. leadership at a time of raging wars in Europe and the Middle East, and as the geopolitical alignment of U.S. adversaries including China, Russia, Iran and North Korea grows stronger.

China itself is striking a cautious tone. Despite a history of tense relations with Mr. Trump during his first term and assertions by U.S. intelligence during recent months that Beijing-backed operatives have engaged in cyber and disinformation campaigns aimed at sowing confusion and discord among U.S. voters, Chinese leaders have publicly tried to strike a neutral tone toward the American presidential contest.

“China hopes for peaceful and stable coexistence with the U.S. on the basis of mutual benefits and respect,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told a regular news briefing in Beijing Wednesday. The vote, she said, was a domestic political issue, and China “respects any choice of the American people.”

China’s ruling Communist Party seized on the U.S. election as a chance to promote propaganda that portrays American society as failing and American democracy as dysfunctional.

Timed to run as millions of Americans headed to the polls on Election Day, the official Chinese Communist Party news wire service Xinhua ran essays highlighting what it described as eight problems in the U.S. election cycle. The essays claimed to reveal the “truth about American democracy,” such as high inflation, poor health care, increased violent crime, a substandard education system, restrictions on abortion rights, energy fracking, high housing costs and the challenge of immigration.

National Security Correspondent Bill Gertz takes a deeper look at the Chinese state-media claims, while also examining assertions by U.S. intelligence analysts that both Russia and Iran have engaged in digital disinformation campaigns targeting the U.S. electorate — Moscow in support of Mr. Trump, the Republican nominee, and Tehran preferring Democratic rival Vice President Kamala Harris.

In May, the FBI said China was following methods used by Russia to influence the election through the creation of fake social media accounts that “push narratives and sow divisiveness.”

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s recent provocations have turned the Korean peninsula into one of the most dangerous places on the planet and a potential flash point in a world war-style conflict. And it’s time for the U.S. to draw a line in the sand and make clear to the North Korean dictator that firing on Seoul would mean the immediate end of his regime.

That was the argument Tuesday from former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who told “The Washington Brief” virtual forum hosted by The Washington Times Foundation that Mr. Kim right now calculates that he has a “relatively low risk of losing anything” and is, therefore, willing to take wild military and geopolitical gambles without grasping the potential consequences to his region and the world.

North Korea in recent weeks has dispatched as many as 12,000 of its troops to fight alongside Russia in its war against Ukraine, and just last week Mr. Kim supervised a flight test of the country’s newest intercontinental ballistic missile, which is designed to reach the U.S. mainland. North Korea followed up that ICBM launch with the firing of multiple short-range ballistic missiles toward its eastern sea late Monday night, just hours before the American presidential election began.

It’s “disappointing” that so many Western political and thought leaders subscribe to the doctrine that “our enemies just have ‘grievances’ that we must ‘address,’” writes Threat Status opinion contributor Clifford D. May, who heads the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank in Washington.

“They think that peace, like cheese, can be processed,” he writes, emphasizing how the current state of the world finds Russian President Vladimir Putin believing he can win in Ukraine, Chinese President Xi Jinping vowing to conquer Taiwan, and Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei aiming to eradicate Israel.

“The quaint notion that there are ‘no military solutions,’ only ‘diplomatic solutions,’ doesn’t stand up to scrutiny,” Mr. May argues. “It’s after the military defeat of an enemy that diplomats can be most useful, building political structures atop the rubble. That’s how World War II ended. The mistake too many diplomats make is to regard negotiations as an end rather than a means. That inclination is reinforced when they are rewarded for concluding flawed agreement based on attempts to appease sworn enemies.”

China’s ongoing dual-carrier operation marks yet another indicator of its navy’s growing capability, according to retired U.S. Navy Capt. Carl O. Schuster.

“Although such operations are comparatively routine for the American, British and French navies, they are a new forward step for the People’s Liberation Army Navy and reflect Beijing’s intention to become a major maritime power,” writes Mr. Schuster.

“Skeptics and threat deflators will assert legitimately that this first-time activity represents how much farther the Chinese navy must go to reach its goal,” he writes. “Still, realists recognize that with China, today’s advances have more to do with tomorrow’s intentions than today’s state of play. China’s military tends to advance incrementally but inexorably forward.”

• Nov. 7 — Navigating the Geoeconomic Shifts in the South Caucasus, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

• Nov. 7 — First in War, First in Peace: Building Post-Conflict Stability and Democracy, U.S. Institute of Peace

• Nov. 8-10 — IISS Prague Defense Summit 2024, International Institute for Strategic Studies

• Nov. 11 — Veterans Day Ceremony & Wreath Presentation, Korean War Veterans Memorial Foundation

• Nov. 12 — America’s Foreign Policy Future: A Post-Election Analysis, Stimson Center

• Nov. 13 — Competing with China on Critical Minerals, Hudson Institute