CFR Preventive Priorities Survey 2026 | Global Conflict Risk

Understanding the CFR Preventive Priorities Survey 2026

The Council on Foreign Relations’ Center for Preventive Action has published its eighteenth annual Preventive Priorities Survey, evaluating 30 ongoing and potential conflicts that could affect U.S. national interests in 2026. Authored by Paul B. Stares, the General John W. Vessey Senior Fellow for Conflict Prevention, this year’s survey arrives at a moment of extraordinary global instability — with armed conflicts at their highest level since the end of World War II.

The survey’s central purpose is deceptively simple: help U.S. policymakers avoid being blindsided by conflict-related crises that divert attention, drain resources, and in worst cases lead to military interventions that cost American lives. As the report notes, the United States is “uniquely exposed to the growing risk of armed conflict” because no other power maintains as many allies and security commitments worldwide. The 2026 edition surveyed approximately 15,000 U.S. government officials, foreign policy experts, and academics, with roughly 620 responding.

What makes this year’s survey particularly significant is the geopolitical context. The second Trump administration has simultaneously pursued diplomatic solutions to ongoing conflicts — in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Gaza, Ukraine, and between India and Pakistan — while engaging in what the report calls “unnecessarily destabilizing behavior,” specifically threatening force against several countries including allies in the Western Hemisphere. For those tracking how geopolitical risk reshapes global strategy, the CFR survey remains an essential annual reference.

Methodology Behind the Global Conflict Risk Assessment

The survey methodology operates in three carefully designed stages. First, in October 2025, the Center for Preventive Action crowdsourced potential conflict scenarios through social media platforms and consultation with CFR’s in-house regional experts, narrowing possibilities down to 30 contingencies deemed both plausible within the next 12 months and potentially harmful to U.S. interests.

Second, in November 2025, these 30 scenarios were distributed to approximately 15,000 recipients — government officials, foreign policy experts, and academics — yielding roughly 620 responses. Each respondent assessed every contingency along two dimensions: the likelihood of occurrence (low, moderate, or high) and the potential impact on U.S. interests (low, moderate, or high). Impact is defined across three tiers: high impact means the contingency directly threatens the U.S. homeland, a defense treaty ally, or a vital strategic interest likely to trigger military response; moderate impact indirectly threatens the homeland or affects a strategically important non-ally; low impact affects a country of limited strategic importance but could have severe humanitarian consequences.

Third, results are scored and plotted on a risk assessment matrix, with contingencies sorted into three priority tiers. Tier I represents the highest-priority risks requiring the most urgent policy attention. Importantly, the survey evaluates discrete political and military contingencies rather than broad trends like climate change or demographic shifts, which are too difficult to judge over a 12-month timeframe. This year introduced a new feature: respondents were asked to identify promising opportunities for conflict prevention and resolution, not just risks.

Tier I High Priority Conflicts Threatening U.S. Interests

The 2026 survey identifies nine Tier I conflicts — the most urgent threats to U.S. national interests. These divide into two subcategories based on the intersection of likelihood and impact. Five contingencies rank as both high likelihood and high impact: increased Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the West Bank over settlement construction and Palestinian political rights; renewed fighting in the Gaza Strip deepening the humanitarian crisis; intensification of the Russia-Ukraine war through expanding attacks on critical infrastructure; U.S. military operations against transnational criminal groups escalating to direct strikes in Venezuela; and growing political violence and popular unrest within the United States itself.

Four additional Tier I contingencies are assessed as moderate likelihood but high impact: renewed armed conflict between Iran and Israel driven by Iranian nuclear reconstitution efforts; armed clashes between Russia and NATO member countries precipitated by Russian provocations; a highly disruptive AI-enabled cyberattack on U.S. critical infrastructure; and a resumption of North Korean nuclear weapons tests triggering armed confrontation. The inclusion of AI-enabled cyberattacks as a Tier I risk reflects the rapidly evolving threat landscape where technology amplifies conflict potential in unprecedented ways.

A critical overarching pattern emerges from the Tier I list: the contingencies span every major geographic region — the Middle East, Eastern Europe, the Indo-Pacific, the Western Hemisphere, and the United States itself — suggesting that conflict risk has become genuinely global rather than concentrated in traditional hotspots.

The Middle East Conflict Nexus: Gaza, West Bank, and Iran

The Middle East dominates the 2026 Preventive Priorities Survey, with multiple interconnected conflicts occupying the highest priority tier. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict appears twice in Tier I — both as escalating violence in the West Bank over settlement construction and as renewed fighting in the Gaza Strip — reflecting the assessment that these represent distinct but reinforcing risk vectors.

The Gaza contingency centers on increasing clashes between Hamas militants and Israeli security forces deepening the humanitarian crisis and exacerbating regional instability. The West Bank dimension focuses on Israeli settlement construction and Palestinian political rights — a slower-burning but structurally destabilizing dynamic. Together, these scenarios describe a conflict environment where escalation in one theater feeds instability in the other.

Iran-Israel tensions rank as moderate likelihood but high impact, driven specifically by Iranian efforts to reconstitute its nuclear program following the degradation of its regional proxy network. The survey also places Lebanon (Tier II) at risk from failed Hezbollah disarmament efforts and continued Israeli military strikes, alongside Syria’s growing sectarian violence and ISIS resurgence. Yemen’s Houthi attacks on Israel and international shipping round out the Middle Eastern risk matrix, demonstrating how a single region can generate cascading threats affecting global trade, energy markets, and great power competition simultaneously.

Russia-Ukraine War Escalation and NATO Confrontation Risks

The Russia-Ukraine conflict remains a top-tier concern, with the survey assessing an intensification of the war through expanding attacks on each side’s critical infrastructure and population centers as both high likelihood and high impact. This reflects the war’s evolution from primarily a ground campaign to an increasingly integrated conflict involving energy infrastructure targeting, drone warfare, and potential escalation to unconventional capabilities.

Perhaps more alarming is the separate Tier I assessment of armed clashes between Russia and one or more NATO member countries, precipitated by increasing Russian provocations toward European states. This contingency sits at moderate likelihood but high impact — meaning experts assess a meaningful probability that the Russia-Ukraine conflict could expand beyond bilateral boundaries to directly involve NATO allies, potentially triggering collective defense commitments under Article 5.

The juxtaposition of these two assessments reveals a troubling escalation ladder: the ongoing war creates conditions where miscalculation, provocation, or deliberate testing of NATO resolve could rapidly transform a regional conflict into a broader European security crisis. The report’s context section notes that the Trump administration has sought to end the Ukraine conflict while simultaneously creating uncertainty about U.S. commitment to NATO allies through destabilizing rhetoric and policy signals.

AI-Enabled Cyberattacks and Emerging Technology Threats

The emergence of AI-enabled cyberattacks on U.S. critical infrastructure as a Tier I threat represents one of the most significant developments in the 2026 survey. Classified as moderate likelihood but high impact, this contingency reflects growing expert consensus that artificial intelligence is fundamentally transforming the cyber threat landscape — enabling more sophisticated, harder-to-detect, and potentially more destructive attacks on power grids, financial systems, healthcare networks, and military command structures.

The phrasing is deliberate: the survey specifies attacks by “a state or nonstate entity,” acknowledging that AI democratizes offensive cyber capabilities beyond the traditional state-actor monopoly. Nation-states with advanced AI programs — including China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea — represent the most capable threats, but the proliferation of AI tools means that smaller actors and even sophisticated criminal organizations could mount attacks with strategic-level impact.

This assessment aligns with broader trends in technology and security research showing that offensive AI capabilities are advancing faster than defensive countermeasures. The U.S. critical infrastructure’s dependence on interconnected digital systems — many running legacy software with known vulnerabilities — creates an attack surface that AI can exploit at machine speed, potentially causing cascading failures across sectors before human defenders can respond.

Asia-Pacific Flashpoints: Taiwan Strait and Korean Peninsula

The Asia-Pacific region features two Tier I contingencies that could reshape global security architecture. Intensified Chinese military, economic, and political pressure on Taiwan precipitating a severe cross-strait crisis is assessed as moderate likelihood but high impact — reflecting both the persistent structural tension and the catastrophic consequences of escalation involving the United States and regional powers.

The North Korean contingency focuses specifically on a resumption of nuclear weapons tests heightening tensions on the Korean Peninsula and triggering armed confrontation involving regional powers and the United States. This scenario captures the persistent risk that North Korea’s nuclear program poses, particularly as diplomatic channels have narrowed and Pyongyang continues to advance its missile capabilities.

The South China Sea also appears in Tier II as a separate risk vector, where aggressive Chinese actions toward the Philippines could lead to armed confrontation involving China, the United States, and U.S. allies. Together, these three Asia-Pacific contingencies paint a picture of a region where multiple flashpoints could escalate simultaneously, overwhelming diplomatic capacity and military planning. The interconnected nature of these risks — where a crisis in one theater could embolden actors in another — makes the Asia-Pacific arguably the most dangerous region for great power conflict.

Tier II and III Conflicts Across Africa and Latin America

Africa dominates the lower priority tiers with conflicts spanning the continent. In Tier II, Sudan’s civil war leads to further mass atrocities and spillover violence, while Somalia faces increased Al-Shabaab territorial control following the withdrawal of U.S. security assistance. South Sudan’s election delays risk renewed fighting between armed ethnic and political factions.

Tier III encompasses a broad array of African conflicts: growing insurgencies across the Sahel region, particularly in Mali; heightened Islamist terrorism in northeastern Nigeria; armed clashes between Ethiopian military and Eritrea-backed militias; intensified conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo involving Rwanda-backed militias; the insurgency in northern Mozambique; and political unrest in Cameroon. These conflicts, while individually assessed as lower priority for U.S. interests, collectively represent a continent-wide pattern of instability with severe humanitarian implications.

Latin America features prominently across tiers. Beyond the Tier I Venezuela contingency, potential U.S. military strikes in Mexico over drug trafficking rank as Tier II (low likelihood, high impact), while Ecuador’s rising criminal violence and Haiti’s armed group escalation represent persistent fragility. Myanmar’s accelerating state collapse and Bangladesh’s political-religious violence add Southeast Asian dimensions to the global conflict map.

The report also catalogs “Other Noted Concerns” suggested by respondents, including Chinese and Russian military activities in the Arctic, renewed Armenia-Azerbaijan hostilities, China-Japan tensions over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, instability in Colombia linked to Venezuelan criminal violence, and ethnic violence in the western Balkans.

U.S. Domestic Political Violence as a Conflict Risk

Perhaps the most striking inclusion in the Tier I list is growing political violence and popular unrest within the United States itself — rated as both high likelihood and high impact. The survey describes this contingency as “exacerbated by heightened political antagonism and domestic security deployments,” suggesting that domestic polarization has reached a threshold where foreign policy experts view internal instability as a top-tier national security concern.

This assessment is remarkable for several reasons. First, it places domestic political violence alongside conventional interstate conflicts like the Russia-Ukraine war and the Taiwan Strait crisis — contexts traditionally considered far more dangerous. Second, it reflects the judgment of foreign policy professionals — not domestic political analysts — suggesting that U.S. internal instability is now viewed as having direct implications for America’s ability to project power, honor commitments, and maintain deterrence globally.

The report’s broader context reinforces this concern: the Trump administration’s systematic dismantling of government elements dedicated to strategic foresight, conflict prevention, and peace-building — described as “both counterproductive and shortsighted” — removes the institutional infrastructure designed to manage exactly these kinds of escalatory dynamics. For organizations monitoring geopolitical developments, the domestic dimension adds an entirely new layer of uncertainty to strategic planning.

Opportunities for Conflict Prevention and Resolution

A notable innovation in the 2026 survey is the inclusion of a section asking respondents to identify promising opportunities for both averting and managing conflict. This represents a deliberate shift from pure risk assessment toward actionable prevention — reflecting the Center for Preventive Action’s founding mission that effective early intervention can prevent crises from escalating.

The survey’s findings regarding the dismantling of U.S. conflict prevention infrastructure carry particular urgency. The report explicitly states that the administration has “systematically dismantled the very elements of the U.S. government dedicated to strategic foresight, conflict prevention, and peace-building without replacing them with anything better,” while related funding has been slashed. This institutional degradation occurs precisely when the number of armed conflicts globally has reached post-World War II highs and an increasing proportion are interstate conflicts — reversing a post-Cold War trend toward primarily intrastate violence.

The CFR’s Global Conflict Tracker provides continuously updated assessments to complement the annual survey’s snapshot. For policymakers, researchers, and strategic planners, the 2026 Preventive Priorities Survey delivers a clear message: the global conflict landscape is more dangerous, more interconnected, and more demanding of proactive management than at any point in recent memory — and the institutions designed to address these risks are being weakened rather than strengthened.