Recent data on organized violence shows that conflicts between a state and one or more nonstate armed groups vastly outnumber interstate conflicts. As a result, argues former international affairs fellow Payton L. Knopf in a new CFR Working Paper, the State Department needs clear guidelines as to why, when, and how its diplomats should conduct outreach to these groups.

In this new memoranda series, four CFR fellows focus on crisis triggers, analyze where U.S. and Chinese interests converge and diverge, and present policy options for preventing such crises and mitigating the consequences.

With the U.S. military overstretched and Washington facing acute fiscal pressures, the United States must nurture effective international partnerships to help prevent and manage violent conflicts that threaten U.S. interests, concludes a new Council Special Report.

U.S. and Mexico Must Increase Cooperation to Confront Drug War, Argues CFR Report

“Few African countries are more important to U.S. interests than Angola. The second-largest oil producer in Africa, Angola’s success or failure in transitioning from nearly thirty years of war toward peace and democracy has implications for the stability of the U.S. oil supply as well as the stability of central and southern Africa,” finds a Council-sponsored Independent Commission in a report produced by the Center for Preventive Action, Toward an Angola Strategy: Prioritizing U.S.-Angola Relations.

“For policymakers everywhere, Nigeria should be the central African question. No country’s fate is so decisive for the continent. No other country across a range of issues has the power so thoroughly to shape outcomes elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa. If Nigeria works well, so might Africa. If the democratic experiment in Nigeria stalls, and development and governance stagnate, the rest of Africa suffers and loses hope,” concludes a new Council Special Report.

“Washington’s reaction to [Evo] Morales’ election, policies, and rhetoric has been to ‘wait and see,’” says a new Council Special Report. “Yet after nearly nine months in office, the Morales administration’s policy agenda has taken shape and, unfortunately, has exacerbated political, ethnic, and racial schisms in Bolivian society.”

Conflict in the Horn of Africa is escalating rapidly as power struggles within Somalia are exacerbated by military support that both Ethiopia and Eritrea give to the opposing parties there. Ethiopia backs the weak interim government; Eritrea sponsors the Islamic militants fighting to overthrow it. Because the United States has accused Somalia of harboring al-Qaeda suspects, “the Ethiopian-Eritrean proxy conflict increases the opportunities for terrorist infiltration of the Horn and East Africa and for ignition of a larger regional conflict,” warns a new Council Special Report.

“Chávez’s bark...is far worse than his bite,” says a new Council Special Report, which urges U.S. officials to “look beyond his blustery rhetoric…as long as Chávez does not take steps that fundamentally threaten essential U.S. interests in Latin America.” With polls showing Chávez strongly in the lead in the upcoming December 3 Venezuelan presidential election, the United States needs to prepare for another six-year term with the controversial leader.

Recent deadly clashes between Papuans and Indonesian police, protests against an American copper and gold mining company, and Australia’s controversial granting of asylum to a group of Papuan refugees have brought the issue of autonomy for the remote province of Papua to international attention.