The Risk Report for 2026

Gabrielle SIERRA: Hi Paul. 

Paul B. STARES: Hey Gabrielle. 

SIERRA: It's so nice to have you back on Why It Matters. 

STARES: I feel the same way. Always a pleasure to join you at this time of the year, and congratulations on your new baby. 

SIERRA: Oh, thank you. Thank you. For our listeners I just had my first baby and yes, I adore him and have completely forgotten what sleep is. 

Hi everyone! We are back in the studio recording a whole slate of episodes that will be coming to you in the new year. But... we couldn’t leave you hanging as this year comes to a close — and, as you well know, a LOT has happened. 

2025 saw a complete re-ordering of U.S. foreign policy. 

Since the second Trump administration took its place in the White House, there has been a pivot away from traditional alliances, renewed military intervention in the Middle East and Caribbean, and the implementation of a revamped national security strategy that raises questions about whether Washington will continue to play a lead role in mitigating global conflict.

Looking ahead to 2026, evolving global concerns are likely to play a defining role in U.S. foreign policy decisions. And so before the new year begins, we are closing out 2025 with a fan favorite guest and topic - our conflict prevention fellow Paul Stares discussing CFR’s Preventive Priorities Survey, which clues us all in to the top concerns foreign policy experts see on the horizon. I’m Gabrielle Sierra and this is Why It Matters. Let’s get into it. 

STARES: So every year for the last 18 years, we have been surveying leading American foreign policy experts and asking them to essentially assess both the likelihood and potential impact of 30 plausible conflict-related crises/contingencies for the coming year. And the whole idea is not just to try to ascertain which ones might be sneaking up on us and becoming a real threat down the road, but also helping U.S. foreign policy decision makers to decide where to focus their attention on those that are not just really likely, but also potentially very dangerous to U.S. interests. 

SIERRA: So the idea isn't just to freak us out, it's to actually let people know what they should focus on. 

STARES: Yeah, certainly in a rigorous, comprehensive way, you know, we have a habit of just looking around and choosing what is the most pressing issue in our inbox, and there could be other conflicts out there that are potentially more deserving of our attention. You know, there's only so much time and resources that busy policymakers can give to conflict prevention, and so you want to make sure that they're really focusing on the concerns that could be really harmful to U.S. interests. 

SIERRA: Okay let’s run down this list. What are the topline threats facing us in 2026?

STARES: Last year, as you may recall, Gabrielle, there was unprecedented anxiety amongst foreign policy experts. We polled, this was the first time in the 18 years that we had what we call a high combination of high likelihood, high impact contingencies, and there were five of them last year and there's five this year. So there's still this same level of anxiety. 28 out of the 30 contingencies that were surveyed are either judged to be moderately or high likelihood. That's just extraordinary. Only two of these potential conflict related crises around the world were ranked as low probability. So the world is still considered a very dangerous place and one where U.S. interests could be really harmed. Now in terms of sort of specific takeaways, if you look at the five high likelihood, high contingency, I was somewhat surprised that the top two ranked contingencies this year relate to the Middle East, specifically the potential for conflict in the West Bank between Israeli security forces and Palestinians. And number two, a renewed conflict in Gaza. These are arguably not front and center to U.S. national security interests, but respondents all felt these were probably the most pressing concerns for 2026. Below that was Ukraine, which I expected there to be more attention to the possibility of an escalation of the conflict between Ukraine and Russia. Perhaps those responding to the survey felt that the possibility of a peace agreement lessened the likelihood of this conflict worsening in 2026. We can only speculate. The latest addition to people's concerns is of course Venezuela and that entered in the top five this year. And there has been an increasing drumbeat of threats from the U.S. and military activities in both the Pacific and the Caribbean around so-called narco terrorists orchestrated by the Venezuelan government or supported by them at least. And so this is a top issue. As in previous years, there's a lot of concern about political violence and political instability in the U.S. This was a surprising addition a couple of years ago and it came out last year as well. This year. It's not just the likelihood that folks ascribe to this concern has gone up, it's now both a highly likelihood and high impact concern. So they're the top five concerns in this year's preventive priority survey. 

SIERRA: So, let's talk about a few of them. You mentioned the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as top priorities. Why do you think these took the top spot over some other conflicts in the report?

STARES: It's a good question. I think there's longstanding interest among U.S. citizens about conflict in the Middle East, particularly the conflicts that threaten Israel. In fact, six of the Middle East rate ranked conflicts all relate to Israel in some respect. So there's this abiding concern about Israel's security. Remember also that the conflict in Gaza was supposed to have been settled by the Trump administration. So it's somewhat surprising that people have very little confidence that that ceasefire agreement is going to stick 

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/lduYlzaNGrU 

Donald TRUMP: It’s gonna be handled toughly and properly. 

Reporter: Is the ceasefire still in place?

TRUMP: Yeah it is.

STARES: And there's high expectation that it won't. And I think that's frankly justified. Peace has not come to the Gaza Strip. There's still fighting ongoing and there's been violence in the West Bank too. So I think it's quite legitimate for respondents to the survey to be concerned about these two conflicts that are ongoing in the Middle East.

SIERRA: Let's talk about the ongoing war in Ukraine. I know you mentioned that that's also a tier one priority even though maybe lower than you had thought it might be. I mean it seems like there's potential for more dialogue on a peace plan in the future. So why did experts rank this priority so high? Why did you feel like it should be so high? 

STARES: Well, it's obviously an ongoing conflict. It's one that has cost a huge number of lives, upwards of around a million Russian casualties killed and wounded, which is just extraordinary. I think the best estimates for Ukraine is around four or 500,000 people killed and wounded again, just an extraordinary number. And until relatively recently, it would've been unimaginable to think that any country could sustain that level of casualties and still be in the fight. But here we are, they're still fighting, war is going on and it could get a lot worse. The potential for this conflict, I think to escalate is very apparent. We're seeing an increasing number of strikes against each side's critical infrastructure against their capital cities. 

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/PxA-l5rS4GQ 

CNN: The latest Russian assault on Ukraine’s capital targeted residential buildings…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKD7ag6JLjI

CNN: Russia's war in Ukraine is increasingly blowing up in Moscow…

STARES: We're seeing related sort of provocations by Russia to NATO members to kind of intimidate them about the conflict. So to me that's a pretty toxic combination there. And this is a conflict that could easily draw the U.S. indirectly because of the importance of Ukraine to Western European security as well as the various NATO commitments that the U.S. has made to countries that are close by. So the potential for escalation is clearly there. So I think all of the above is why this warrants the attention it's gotten in this year's survey. Now, it's possible that the Trump administration's efforts to broker a ceasefire agreement in the coming months will succeed. 

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/rRIDYDUKGbM

Reuters/Donald TRUMP: So we’ve been speaking to President Putin and we’ve been speaking to Ukrainian leaders including Zelensky, President Zelensky…

STARES: I think we should all give credit to this administration for trying to bring peace to Ukraine, but there are huge stumbling blocks in the way of that. The Russians don't seem to be very keen to compromise on what they believe are their core red lines. And the same goes for Ukraine too. And so it's been a very frustrating experience for the Trump administration to try to find some kind of compromise or at least some agreement that will minimally settle or lead to an acceptable ceasefire for both sides.

SIERRA: I've heard you say that one of the most interesting aspects of the PPS report is what's not in it, and this year there is a tier one priority that wasn't on the list at all last year, as you mentioned, that the U.S. is very likely to direct strikes on Venezuela in an attempt to target transnational crime groups. Is it strange to see something like this sort of crop up out of nowhere? 

STARES: Well, in the absence of what President Trump and his senior administration officials have said, and the fact that various allegedly drug carrying boats have been destroyed and people killed on that level, it's arguably not surprising. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZ-vspP68NE 

PBS NewsHour: President Trump announced late today that the United States has sunk a boat after it left Venezuela carrying drugs. It is the first known military strike in the region since President Trump ordered an increased military presence in the Caribbean.

STARES: But when you look at the whole universe of potential areas to worry about in the world and levels of human suffering, this is relatively minor in comparison, but again speaks to the apprehension that many American foreign policy experts have about the precedence that's being set by this administration in what it's doing, as well as the possibility that we might be thinking about ground operations in Venezuela and what that might lead to too. And so these are worrying things and so yeah, on one level it's surprising to see Venezuela up there, but on another it's not given what's been happening recently. 

SIERRA: It's interesting. It feels like the top priorities really sort of run the gamut in terms of what our involvement would be, whether it's directly or indirectly, this is boots on the ground that's pretty direct. 

STARES: Absolutely. And even if it's not boots on the ground, but we are maybe attacking targets in Venezuela, that's a huge escalation in American involvement in the hemisphere. And it seems to run counter frankly to what we expected from this administration, which was sort of recalibration of U.S. military commitments and use of force around the world after what, 20 plus years of the global war on terror. So that's also surprising.

SIERRA: So unlike Venezuela, there are threats that remain on your survey year after year. What are some other reasons? A topic remains a tier one priority for multiple years in a row? 

STARES: I think two enduring factors. There's direct threats to the homeland. The potential for a massive cyber attack on the U.S. has been what we call one of our hardy perennials for many years. And it's very hard to assess the likelihood of that, but I don't think it's easily dismissed. We know that we are constantly under cyber attack from various adversaries interfering with our communications and data sets and so on. This year there was a slight tweak in that concern. We felt that there was sort of rising apprehension about how AI might be used to facilitate a cyber attack. And so that was introduced this year. Not surprisingly, it was very high. North Korea has also been another hardy perennial. Again, we don't know the real intentions of the leadership in Pyongyang, but we do know that they've developed nuclear weapons and long range delivery systems, which could also threaten the U.S. if we were ever in a conflict with them. I think the other factor that really drives how people respond is whether an ally is threatened by the conflict. I mentioned Israel being a high concern here, and while Israel is not a formal ally like a NATO ally, it's more or less treated as such. And so other allies being potentially threatened as is always likely to get a high response from those filling out the survey. 

SIERRA: I’d actually like to come back to your comment on AI because I want to ask, how does that figure in this year’s survey? 

STARES: AI is certainly a growing concern and while there's been a lot of attention about AI going rogue and somehow we'll be in a kind of terminator world of AI machines.

SIERRA: That one didn't make it on the list? I'm shocked.

STARES: Not this year, but the one that probably worries me the most is how AI could help design extremely dangerous new pathogens that could overcome our biological or biodefense preparations. And that's I think worrying a lot of security analysts today. 

SIERRA: Cool. I'll go ahead and add that one to my list. I'll write it on the side of your official list to be worried about too. So going back to last year's report, what foreign policy priorities did the survey get right for 2025? And I'll point out, and you have said this to me before, getting something right on this list, while it proves that you are all looking in the right direction, it's not necessarily something to be celebrated. So I know that's a mixed bag. 

STARES: Yeah, so it definitely causes mixed emotions because on the one hand you want validation that this is a valuable exercise, and it points to concerns that subsequent events prove to be true. But obviously you don't want to take pride in being right about something so awful. So it does cause mixed emotions. I think if I recall correctly, of the top 10 or so tier one concerns in 2025, I would say probably nine or so of them turned out to happen. We saw Ukraine, we saw Iran-Israel, that flared up in 2025, a deterioration in Haiti. You know, there are many things you can point to and say yes, while we may not have called it in exactly the way events turned out, we were close enough in terms of what the area of concern really was. But as you say, I have real mixed emotions sort of beating my chest about the survey respondents being right in their assessment of the risks. 

SIERRA: Truly, I totally understand that. Well, one of the priorities that dropped from tier one to tier two is U.S. military action on our southern border. What do you think this says about the current administration and its priorities? What changed? 

STARES: So I think their initial efforts to bolster the border and enact various initiatives to discourage illegal immigration into the states has had that effect. The numbers entering the southern border has, by all accounts plummeted over the last nine or ten months, whereas the attention of the administration in this hemisphere is still on the illicit drug trade, primarily fentanyl coming in initially from China, the precursor chemicals being then processed in Mexico, that's still a huge issue. I think earlier this year, if I'm not mistaken, President Trump did indicate that he might be willing to consider military action against illicit drug traffickers in Mexico. He certainly, as we've discussed, directed military action against other suppliers from the region. And so that I think is now the primary focus of this administration and less on illicit migration, which has really fallen in the last eight, nine months. 

SIERRA: Well, speaking of, the current administration has released a new national security strategy calling President Trump the ‘President of Peace,’ saying he's secured “unprecedented peace in eight conflicts throughout the world over the course of just eight months of his second term.” So it's all solved. We can all just head home. I think that's good. Does the PPS report align with these statements? 

STARES: Not at all. At a macro level, the notion that somehow as implied in the national security strategy that as a result of President Trump's mediation efforts that the level of conflict is going down in the world and a corner has been turned, it couldn't be further from the truth. There are more armed conflicts in the world today than I think at any time since the end of the second World War. One very disturbing statistic I think from 2025 is that nine capital cities were attacked by other states in 2025.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/fk6NTQD3CEo  

MS NOW: …A barrage of strikes on the Syrian capital of Damascus this morning… 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cY5krhFMJCU 

CNN: …Deadly overnight strikes on the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDQO7_JK6Ww 

Face the Nation: …senior Hamas leaders in the capital of Doha, it is the first strike…

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/8uOFJy6qFDQ 

CNN: So we’re in the area of, sort of, North Central Tehran…

STARES: It's just extraordinary that we're supposed to be in an era where there is very little interstate conflict and most of the conflict in the world is occurring within state borders, ie: civil conflicts. But we've seen this real uptick in the last year or so in terms of interstate conflict and the norm that we thought was pretty strong about you not attacking your adversaries’ capital cities is also eroding, but nine cities in 2025 is pretty extraordinary. One other, I think, reason to challenge this notion of President Trump as the ‘President of Peace,’ and to be clear, I do want to give credit to this administration for trying to address various conflicts and to mediate them. There's nothing wrong with that. And while we can question his motives and that it's maybe primarily driven by his desire to be a Nobel Peace Prize winner, but nevertheless, this administration has been active. But the notion or the assertion that eight conflicts, raging conflicts as the president described it in the national security strategy, have been settled, again, the word used in the document, is frankly very far from the truth.
 

The conflicts highlighted in the recent National Security Strategy seem unrelated on the surface, but they share a revealing common thread: many involve countries sitting atop vast reserves of critical minerals or energy resources. How these conflicts unfold will be instrumental in shaping Trump’s “America First” agenda which puts securing critical supply chains and materials as a top priority.

STARES: Two out of the eight refer to tensions between Kosovo and Serbia and Egypt and Ethiopia. They are not active conflicts. So the notion that the president somehow acted to bring fighting to an end is preposterous. Another conflict in the eight, which the president claims to have brought to an end between Armenia and Azerbaijan, that conflict was settled, or at least the fighting had stopped before the Trump administration came into office. Basically, this administration presided over a peace signing treaty. Not insignificant, I don't want to dismiss the value of it, but the notion that he brought it to an end is just basically not true. We have three other conflicts that were essentially interstate conflicts between India and Pakistan, between Iran and Israel and between Cambodia and Thailand. Between India and Pakistan, yes, the president, I think, may have played an active role in mediating it, but the conflict is certainly not over. Between Iran and Israel, most experts in the region think that's going to ignite again anytime soon. In fact, that's why it's one of the top ranked concerns in this year's survey. And between Cambodia and Thailand, Thailand started attacking Cambodia again, so that clearly cannot be included in the top eight. And then the final two are between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda and the ongoing conflict in Gaza. And I stress ongoing because in neither case does anybody believe that the fighting has stopped. So this list of eight conflicts in eight months just doesn't hold up to the facts.

SIERRA: Playing a little fast and loose with that list.

STARES: No kidding, no kidding.

SIERRA: So one of the goals of the Center for Preventive Action and the PPS report is to help policymakers come up with practical strategies to prevent and mitigate conflict around the world. So after analyzing this year's report, how you say we're doing on the prevention part, maybe even compared to five years ago or a decade ago.

STARES: I think overall not great and the outlook is also not looking very promising. The administration's focus is very much on trying to address ongoing conflicts, and I liken that to a homeowner with a leaky roof going around with buckets or pails to collect the water without fixing the roof. And this administration does not seem very interested in what I call, kind of, upstream prevention - trying to prevent conflict from breaking out in the first place. And in fact, what has alarmed many of us in this field is that this administration has systematically dismantled the very instruments of the U.S. government devoted to that kind of upstream prevention. We've seen the USAID, the development assistance arm of the U.S. government dismantled. We've seen the conflict prevention and stabilization bureau at the State Department dismantled. The U.S. Institute of Peace, although that's now been renamed the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace, but it's not doing the kind of things that it was doing before. They don't seem to be particularly interested in the parts of the U.S. intelligence community that provides them with sort of longer range information about incipient instability around the world. So it's not encouraging that they don’t have a coherent, over-the-horizon approach to dealing with conflict other than thinking that somehow, somehow peace can come through strength.

SIERRA: You spoke to this a little bit, but what does the 2026 PPS say about our world as we look ahead? Do you feel like some of these priorities are a case of expect the worst, hope for the best? 

STARES: I think that the sources of stability that we thought were kind of the bedrock foundation of a more stable orderly world are eroding. The norms that state actors and other actors used to observe, which again, I think helped produce a more peaceful world, they are fraying. The international institutions that we established and had a great and considerable role in influencing over the last 50 plus years, they are growing weaker. And so the level of confidence, I think in the future about this world not becoming more disorderly, conflict prone, I think that is all being evident in the results of this survey. Certainly over the last two, three years. And perhaps one of the most worrisome elements here is the fact that many respondents believe that the level of violence will go up in the United States. The notion that we would include the U.S. in the survey two or three years ago would've been inconceivable. But here we are three years now, I think, where the potential for extremism, violent extremism, political instability in the U.S. is front and center of the survey respondents. We just simply could not ignore it when people said, you've got to include this in the survey. And so what does that say about the world? That the major power at the center of this international order is also vulnerable to violence and growing instability. It's very worrisome to me and I think worrisome to everybody who took the survey.

SIERRA: Well, I like you, Paul, but I'm just waiting for the day that you're out of a job and there is no more Preventative Priorities Survey needed and you could just go on vacation.

STARES: Amen to that. 

SIERRA: As someone who just had a baby, I want to end with hope. As we look forward to 2026. What do you see as hopeful notes or events and occurrences that are likely to happen that could or would contribute to the greater good of our world? 

STARES: I wish I could be more optimistic about the future. It's possible that this administration, and particularly President Trump will like the feeling of these peace agreements and mediating ceasefire agreements between states. We may get something in Ukraine sorted out in the next 12 months, I'm not highly optimistic of that, but it's possible there will be a breakthrough. And so all that may give us some modicum of hope that the worst had not happened. But I have to say I'm not super confident about where the world is headed at the moment and that we are actively alienating allies and partners who in normal times we would be working closely with to deal with these challenges is yet another body blow to peace and stability in the world, and I just find those actions to be gratuitous. It's like they basically amount to strategic self-harm in terms of why would we want to antagonize the very countries and partnerships that would be critical to peacemaking? It beggars belief as far as I'm concerned. 

SIERRA: I feel like we say this every year, so I don’t want it to lose anything, but hope that next year you and I can hop on here and just talk about the weather or our favorite types of food and not have to go through this. But I do very much appreciate you running us through it. It's just so important for everyone to know, and so I thank you for that. 

STARES: Thank you, Gabrielle, and happy new year and a peaceful new year, hopefully, to you too.

SIERRA: Yes, you as well.

Thanks for tuning in to Why It Matters.

This show is a production of the Council on Foreign Relations. You can follow us on instagram or on X at @CFR_org. If you ever have any questions or suggestions or just want to chat with us, we say it every time but really, truly, email us at [email protected]. I promise you, we will get back to you and we really like hearing from you.

This episode was produced by Molly McAnany, who always rocks the coolest boots in the studio, and me, Gabrielle Sierra who is very excited to be back with her crew. Our sound designer is Markus Zakaria, reporting from our Florida bureau. Special thanks to the person always behind the camera, our video engineer Justin Schuster. Robert McMahon is our Managing Editor and fearless leader, and our theme music is composed by the very awesome, Ceiri Torjussen.

For Why It Matters, this is Gabrielle Sierra signing off. See you next year!