Five Takeaways From CFR’s 2026 Conflict Risk Assessment

Once a year, the Center for Preventive Action (CPA) at the Council on Foreign Relations compiles a list of potential conflict-related threats ranked by relative priority for U.S. prevention and management efforts. In October, CPA asked the public which concerns to include in the list. It then asked experts in November to assess the likelihood of thirty specific scenarios—or contingencies—and their potential impact on U.S. national security interests. The results of the Preventive Priorities Survey (PPS) are published in a report that aims to sensitize policymakers and the public to emerging and escalating threats to U.S. security and international stability. 

The latest PPS—CPA’s eighteenth—comes at a time of rapid change for the international system, an escalation in global conflict, and a shift in the very nature of U.S. security interests. Here are five takeaways from the 2026 report.

With the number of conflicts at its highest since World War II, the world faces increased chaos and disorder.

Traditional norms on nonaggression are rapidly degrading. 2025 saw a continued resurgence in interstate conflicts, ranging from long-running disputes—such as India and Pakistan’s conflict over Kashmir, which escalated again in April, and Cambodia and Thailand’s century-old territorial dispute, which flared up in July and recently resumed—to the precedent-breaking direct conflict between the United States, Iran, and Israel in June. Nine capital cities were targeted in air strikes by state actors, including: Beirut, Lebanon; Damascus, Syria; Doha, Qatar; Kabul, Afghanistan; Kyiv, Ukraine; Moscow, Russia; Sanaa, Yemen; Tehran, Iran; and Tel Aviv, Israel. 

As cases of interstate violence rose this year, fragile states and internal conflicts, especially those marked by atrocities, received little attention. An escalation of the ongoing civil war in Sudan, including the potential for further mass atrocities, was deemed the most likely scenario to occur in the whole survey. Still, experts ranked the conflict in Sudan as having a low impact on U.S. interests. Similarly, a renewal of violence in South Sudan and heightened insurgencies in the Sahel were deemed highly or moderately likely and judged as low impact.

Moreover, experts see military provocations by the major powers—namely the United States, China, and Russia—as likely in 2026. Six contingencies identify either China, Russia, or the United States as the principal aggressors, and all six were judged by experts to be in the top two tiers of relative priority. Three such scenarios—an intensification of the Russia-Ukraine war, U.S. strikes inside Venezuela, and a cross-strait crisis between China and Taiwan—were considered to have a 50 percent chance or higher of occurring in 2026 with a high impact on U.S. interests.

Experts are anxious about the future as new flash points emerge and old conflicts rage on.

While the Trump administration claims major successes in settling various ongoing conflicts, respondents were generally skeptical about the outlook for peace. Experts judged that twenty-eight of the thirty scenarios have a 50 percent chance or higher of occurring within the next twelve months. More than half of them were also deemed to have a high or moderate impact on U.S. interests.

Experts identified five of the contingencies that they deemed both highly likely to occur and with a high impact on U.S. interests, tying 2025’s record. They included:

• Increased conflict between Israeli security forces and Palestinians in the West Bank over Israeli settlement construction, Palestinian political rights, and the war in Gaza;
• Renewed fighting in the Gaza Strip, triggered by increasing clashes between Hamas militants and Israeli security forces, deepens the humanitarian crisis and exacerbates regional instability;
• An intensification of the Russia-Ukraine war, caused by expanding attacks on each side’s critical infrastructure and population centers;
• U.S. military operations targeting transnational criminal groups escalate to direct strikes in Venezuela, destabilizing the Maduro government;
• Growing political violence and popular unrest in the United States, exacerbated by heightened political antagonism and domestic security deployments.

The only two low-likelihood contingencies—U.S. military strikes in Mexico and an armed confrontation in the South China Sea—are considered to have a high impact on U.S. interests, if they materialize.

The results of the survey indicate that experts not only believe it is likely that the world will become increasingly violent over the next twelve months, but that U.S. interests will be under threat in more instances than not. 

Experts shared broad concern about President Trump’s move on Venezuela, but had mixed reactions to the administration’s overall shift toward the Western Hemisphere.

The survey includes a record number of conflicts in Latin America. In part, this reflects the Trump administration’s renewed focus on the Western Hemisphere. As the administration’s recently released National Security Strategy emphasizes, curbing mass migration and combating organized crime in the Americas are among the top U.S. national security priorities. 

The most prominent new contingency in the Western Hemisphere is the possible escalation of the United States’ confrontation with Venezuela. The United States has conducted at least twenty-five strikes on alleged drug smuggling boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean since September, and it has significantly scaled up its military presence in the region. Coupled with ongoing speculation that Trump is seeking to topple the Maduro regime, it is unsurprising that experts ranked an escalation of U.S. military operations to include direct strikes in Venezuela as one of the principal preventive concerns in 2026.

However, experts did not afford the same level of concern for the other four conflicts identified in the region, despite their inherent connection to the administration’s stated priorities. Worsening violence among gangs, security forces, and other armed groups in Haiti was deemed highly likely to occur in the next twelve months, but with low impact on U.S. interests—a change from the 2025 survey, in which Haiti was considered moderately impactful. Conflict between the United States and Mexico, revised in this year’s survey to focus on the possibility of U.S. strikes targeting transnational drug cartels, notably fell from its typical position as a top-tier priority based on a low likelihood rating. Meanwhile, increasing criminal violence and instability in countries central to the international drug trade—Colombia and Ecuador—were relegated to the “Other Noted Concerns” list and the lowest tier of relative priority, respectively. 

Experts demonstrated low confidence in the durability of the Trump administration’s peace efforts.

Experts deemed conflicts in which the Trump administration has intervened as moderately or highly likely to resume in 2026, issuing an early vote of no confidence in Trump’s peacemaking approach. Renewed fighting in the Gaza Strip between Israel and Hamas and an intensification of the Russia-Ukraine war—both considered to be highly likely to occur in the next twelve months despite ongoing U.S.-led peace efforts—were among the top three concerns for experts. As mentioned previously, the Sudan contingency, for which Trump announced the United States would initiate a renewed effort to end in November, was judged to be the most likely scenario to occur in the whole survey.

On the India-Pakistan border and in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), places where the president has also taken credit for peace settlements, conflicts were given a moderate chance of resurging in the November survey, and indeed, fighting in the DRC has resumed. Renewed armed conflict between Iran and Israel was also considered moderately likely to occur, despite the administration’s intervention in June.

Despite not ranking in the top thirty scenarios to warrant inclusion in the survey, experts still highlighted border conflicts between Armenia and Azerbaijan and Cambodia and Thailand as conflicts of potential concern, another two instances where the president claimed successful mediation. The persistence of these territorial disputes and interstate conflicts underscore the challenge of negotiating lasting settlements.

The United States can expend more resources and exert greater influence to address international conflict.

Although the Trump administration has said it aspires to achieve global stability, it has also engaged in destabilizing behavior and eliminated elements of the U.S. government tasked with anticipating risk and preventing international conflict. In an increasingly dangerous world and with a diminishing capacity to manage threats, the PPS aims to help U.S. policymakers focus their time and resources where they can make the most significant impact. For the first time this year, surveyed experts were asked to identify where the United States has the best opportunities to proactively address the risks of conflict breakout or escalation.

Respondents suggested dozens of contingencies. Many noted that the United States has exceptional influence to manage conflicts and potential conflicts in Ukraine, the Palestinian territories, the Taiwan Strait, and the Korean Peninsula. Experts also noted four places where the time is ripe for peacemaking efforts and the United States has a unique capacity to bolster those efforts: Sudan, Syria, Haiti, and the DRC.