When former US Ambassador to Australia and Hillary Clinton supporter Jeffrey Bleich returned from visiting Canberra to his office in San Francisco last week, he began receiving emails from anxious American allies in Asia about the tightening US presidential election.
Donald Trump's poll numbers had risen in the wake of the FBI's shock disclosure that it was investigating freshly discovered emails linked to its lapsed probe of Mrs Clinton.
Governments across the Asia region, such as Australia, Japan, South Korea and Singapore, privately shudder at the prospect of the unpredictable, isolationist and trade protectionist policies of a president Trump.
"They're very anxious about what a Trump presidency would do to the US reputation in the world and what it would mean for critical relations with allies and our allies' relations with others," Mr Bleich told The Australian Financial Review.
Globally, governments and investors are bracing for Tuesday's election outcome. It could upend the US-led world order that has existed at least since the end of the Cold War and arguably since World War II finished.
The US stock market fell for the ninth straight day on Friday – the longest losing streak since 1980 – to track Mr Trump's gradual recovery in polls.
For Australians, the next commander-in-chief and leader of the free world could have major consequences.
Washington-based Andrew Shearer, a former national security adviser to prime ministers Tony Abbott and John Howard, said a Trump upset win would force Canberra to increase defence spending if the real estate mogul carries out threats to cut the US military presence in Japan and South Korea.
Continuing foreign policy
If Mrs Clinton hangs on she would largely persist with the Obama administration's "rebalance" to Asia that she was instrumental in driving as secretary of state, even though she has reversed her earlier support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. She would likely take a harder line against China than President Barack Obama.
Mrs Clinton represents a continuation of the mainstream American foreign policy of engagement and global leadership, including in Australia's neighbourhood.
A nationalist Mr Trump has blamed the US foreign policy tradition for wasting trillions of dollars on overseas wars and admonished trade agreements and immigration for costing American manufacturing jobs.
Jon Alterman, a former senior US diplomat who has advised Republicans and Democrats, said the election result will have "profound importance for the world".
"Americans focus on how it has profound importance for Americans, but I don't think many Americans think about the impact of the US elections on the rest of the world," he said.
Mrs Clinton, aiming to become the first female president, has a narrow lead in national polls and key swing states entering Tuesday's election.
In Asia, a president Clinton would likely try to engage cooperatively with China, but also take a more hawkish stance against Beijing assertiveness, foreign policy experts said.
China is Australia's largest trading partner.
'Expectations' on Australia
She would probably lean more on allies, including Australia, to push back against China's territorial claims in disputed waters in the South China Sea, where about $5 trillion of sea-borne trade transits annually.
"Australia will find itself having to stand up," said Mr Shearer, a senior advisor on Asia Pacific security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
"Issues like freedom of navigation issues where we've been given a bit of a pass by the Obama administration, when Clinton settles on a policy there will be a part for Australia to play and expectations on us."
He knows several of Mrs Clinton's foreign policy advisers.
Foreign policy experts are unsure whether to take at face value Mr Trump's threat to withdraw troops from Asia or to start a "trade war" with China.
It might be part of his famous bluffing style developed through his audacious real estate and TV career.
While Australia is not one of the "free-riding" nations Mr Trump has called out for not paying their fair share for US military protection, its regional security could be severely affected by a US retreat.
"If Trump really does undermine the US alliance with Japan, that is the most fundamental pillar of the US military presence in Asia and regional stability," Mr Shearer said.
"Damaging that pillar would potentially be very serious for Australia and we would be looking at spending more on defence."
Pressure on US relations
As a result, he said, "China would put us under more pressure" to decouple from the US-Australia alliance, such as the deal to position up to 2500 US marines in Darwin.
In his recently published book, The Pivot: The Future of American Statecraft in Asia, Mrs Clinton's top Asia policy confidant and architect of the Obama "pivot" to Asia, Kurt Campbell, writes that the US will "need to ensure that allies and partners do their fair share to make Asia safe, secure and prosperous – including by investing in defence capabilities".
Bill Burns, who is rumoured to be a frontrunner for a Clinton administration's coveted secretary of state role, and Jake Sullivan, favourite to be Mrs Clinton's national security adviser, are known to be big believers in alliances, including to tackle China.
Mr Bleich, who worked in the Bill Clinton administration and was ambassador in Canberra when Mrs Clinton was secretary of state, said she "loves Australia".
"She sees it not only as an invaluable partner, but at this time in history a crucial country in the world."
In China, Mrs Clinton is not well liked by the Communist Party of China. In 2010, she was among the first to warn against their territorial grab in the South China Sea.
Her first lady speech in 1995, "Women's Rights Are Human Rights", implying that China mistreated females, offended many Chinese and was a very public international humiliation for the government.
'Tough dealings with China'
China's The Global Times in 2013 referred to the outgoing secretary of state as "the most hated American politician among Chinese internet users" and blamed her for "severely sabotaging China's bilateral relations with its neighbouring countries".
When she announced her presidential candidacy last year, an article on the People's Daily Overseas Edition's social message app, WeChat, critiqued her "historically tough dealings with China" and portrayed her as anti-Chinese.
Former foreign affairs minister Bob Carr, who dealt with Mrs Clinton when she was secretary of state, said: "She worked the region very hard and no Australian has any complaint about her attention to us or the region to our north.
"She had a reputation for being direct, even feisty, with the Chinese.
"Although she will need China's co-operation if she adopts a more interventionist posture in the Middle East and grapples with North Korea," Mr Carr said.
If Mr Trump wins the election the rest of the world, including governments and investors, will be hit with huge uncertainty.
Instead of depending on the US, Mr Trump has suggested Japan and South Korea could acquire nuclear weapons to protect themselves against North Korea and China, in breach of US anti-nuclear proliferation policy.
'A period of adjustment' to Trump
Mr Alterman, the Zbigniew Brzezinski chair in global security and geostrategy at the CSIS in Washington, said Mr Trump was not necessarily anti-engagement, but felt the world had taken advantage of America's generosity.
"There would be a period of adjustment to understand how his administration will work," he said.
"Traditionally almost everything the president says is considered, massaged and intentional."
When presidents go off script, such as when President Obama uttered his infamous "red line" threat to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, it has "real consequences", Mr Alterman said.
Critics of Mr Obama say his refusal to launch military action against Mr Assad after his regime killed 1400 men, women and children in a sarin gas attack in 2013, emboldened Russia and China to be more aggressive in eastern Ukraine and the South China Sea.
Unconventionally for a potential commander-in-chief, Mr Trump has a propensity to say and tweet things than instantly come to mind.
"People will have to figure out does that mean anything," Mr Alterman said.
US rivals China and Russia would be revelling in the domestic turmoil Mr Trump has created through the election.
"China would see a Trump victory as the United States succumbing to its demons of rash actions and as a strategic opportunity," said Mr Alterman, who has spoken to senior Chinese officials
"If the United States is going to push people away, China will work to increase its power and deepen its relationships."
Russia's position in Europe
Mr Trump has spoken of his admiration for the "strength" Russian president Vladimir Putin, sensationally encouraging Russia to hack the email accounts of Democratic Party operatives.
The Republican has threatened to withdraw from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization alliance unless partners contribute their fair share, an unprecedented move that would strengthen Russia's position in Europe.
Mrs Clinton is circumspect of Mr Putin, having attempted a "reset" with Russia in 2009, before Mr Putin returned to presidential power in 2012 and upended the deal and later invading Crimea.
Mr Trump's foreign policy advisers are not well recognised by the foreign policy establishment.
Diplomats in Washington have been scrambling to better understand his policies and his team.
Michael Flynn, a retired US army lieutenant general who served as the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, is the most decorated.
In September, Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop met former congressman Mike Rogers, a national security adviser on Mr Trump's transition planning team.
Ms Bishop said recently that US engagement under Mrs Clinton would continue, but warned of the risks of a Trump presidency.
"She sees the US as having a global leadership role," Ms Bishop said last week. "Candidate Donald Trump does not."
Mrs Clinton and her top advisers, including the favourite to be her defence secretary, Michèle Flournoy, campaign chairman John Podesta, Dr Campbell and Mr Sullivan, are well known to the Turnbull government.
As reported in March, Australia's Ambassador to the US, Joe Hockey, was told by a senior Trump adviser that the US-Australia alliance was a "special relationship".
In preparation for a potential Trump administration, Mr Hockey has built relations with Mr Trump's advisers, including New Jersey governor Chris Christie and Senator Jeff Sessions.
