Persistent conflict in Africa, the Middle East, and Ukraine, the consequences of climate change, and emerging technologies may pose heightened risks this year
This is the seventh edition of our annual “Top Ten Global Risks,” an exercise in foresight drawn from our forecasting experience at the U.S. intelligence community’s National Intelligence Council. In our previous forecast, we focused on the proliferation of small wars, food insecurity, developing-country debt, and growing climate-change impacts — an ongoing polycrisis, entangled events and developments linked to and cascading off each other — is emblematic of our times: The post-World War II global system that the U.S. engineered is unraveling. Amidst this disorder and strife, even more signs of distress will surface in 2024.
We have medium-to-high confidence in all the probabilities we have assigned to each of the risks given the “credible” to “high-quality” level of information that is available and used. As it is for intelligence estimates, a “high or medium confidence” judgment of the probability that we assigned to each risk still carries the possibility of it being wrong.
Increased conflict in Africa, tensions and conflict in the Middle East and in Ukraine, medium-term climate change catastrophes, as well as calamities from inadequately controlled transformational artificial intelligence (AI) and other emerging technologies, may pose heightened risks in 2024.
The Risks
Africa’s Second Lost Decade
Probability:
The confluence of numerous disruptive global trends unfortunately merges in Africa. With an intractable debt crisis, the drying up of capital flows, growing impacts of climate change, and major drought, conflict and political instability are now endemic across a large swathe of Africa — from the Sahel, including Mali, and Niger to Southern Sudan, Sudan and Ethiopia.
A precondition for Africa achieving a new development trajectory has pointed to the need for OECD nations to qualitatively ramp up G-20 efforts in the Common Framework — working with China — to relieve debt stress. But the recent breakdown in a debt agreement for Zambia augurs badly for any quick relief. China, along with other official creditors, forced the copper-rich African nation to suspend a deal of almost $4bn in dollar bonds that had received the IMF’s approval. As the world economy becomes increasingly fragmented, protectionist, and region-centric, Africa’s development will become more challenging, emblematic of the gap between industrialized and developing nations becoming more difficult to narrow. While the members of the global community need to view Africa as an essential part of their future and invest and trade with African countries more, these countries have some levers to attract more economic help. Diversifying trade with Asia would provide new opportunities that did not necessarily compete with current trade patterns focused on Europe and the Americas. But conflict, climate change, and a less friendly global environment steepen the curve for economic recovery and development.
Trump 2.0: Upending the United States’ “Internationalist” Role
Probability:
Former President Donald Trump has at least a 50-50 prospect of winning the 2024 election. His main theme would be revenge — and his reelection would most likely wreak havoc on U.S. democracy and further destabilize the world system. As Trump has said to his base supporters, “I am your retribution.” Though polls almost a year out from next November’s election are just snapshots in time, Trump is running neck and neck with President Joe Biden and is ahead in most key swing states.
Domestically, Trump’s authoritarian ambitions have become even more ambitious. Internationally, Trump aims to pursue his “anti-globalist” agenda, more unilateralist than isolationist. He would probably revoke U.S. climate pledges, and his advisors say he would scrap the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and boost fossil-fuel production.
Under a Trump presidency, the U.S. would probably end aid to Ukraine, renew ties to Moscow, and seek a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Ukraine over Kyiv’s head. Meanwhile, he might try to redo a failed deal with North Korean President Kim Jong Un on nuclear weapons.
Trump’s election could fuel a surge in populist nationalism in Europe. Already the recent electoral successes of far-right nativist parties in three nations (Netherlands, Slovakia, Italy) show an emerging popular drift in the direction of Hungary’s authoritarian regimes and changing the political landscape.
Should Trump come to power, the entire West might veer away from its longstanding internationalist path. He has hinted that he wants the U.S. to leave or reduce its role in NATO(e.g., suspend the U.S. commitment to Article 5 of the NATO Treaty) if demands for much greater European spending are not met and similarly try to pull U.S. troops out of South Korea and Japan if these countries do not agree to more burden sharing of the costs associated with stationing U.S. forces in Asia. More broadly, Trump has suggested imposing a 10% tariff on all imports; this step would foster a trade war and curb support for international institutions. Trump’s agenda could be mitigated if Democrats win back the House and/or keep the Senate. Alternatively, as unlikely as it seems, if former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley or Florida Governor Ron DeSantis were the GOP winning candidate, there would be more continuity and less radical change.
Stalemate Without a Ukrainian Breakthrough Next Year.
Probability:
2023 saw a disappointing Ukraine counteroffensive turn into a war of attrition with few gains or losses. Ukraine has been more successful in breaking Russia’s Black Sea blockade and attacking targets in Crimea and on Russian soil, but Putin’s war economy has expanded military production since the war began. The minor territorial gains have been coupled with waning US-EU support, fueled partly by the absence of a Ukrainian breakthrough, but also by growing U.S. Republican opposition to continued arms shipments.
War is unpredictable, and 2024 could see greater Ukrainian successes, triggering new questions about Russia’s military sustainability. Washington was disappointed that Ukrainian forces disregarded U.S. advice on massing troops in the south, a move that could have severed the Russian line, threatening Russia’s control of Crimea, and delivering a psychological blow to Putin. Should 2024 be another disappointing year for the Ukrainians, Western pressure on Kyiv for cease-fire talks will most likely increase. Biden would reap a political benefit in his upcoming campaign by bringing an end to the fighting. Outside of a humiliating military defeat, however, it is unclear whether Putin would actually want cease-fire talks. If, as is all but certain, Putin is reelected in 2024, that could embolden him to extend and/or intensify the fighting.
In any event, Putin probably wants to wait for the possibility of a Trump presidency, in which case he might come under strong U.S. pressure to stop the fighting but could expect more favorable treatment in a peace deal. In the interim, Putin’s strategy might be centered on greatly intensifying drone and missile attacks on Ukrainian cities, infrastructure, and ports as well in an effort to destroy Ukraine as a functioning nation-state rather than taking more territory. It is unclear how the US/NATO would respond to such an approach.
The Ongoing Israel-Palestine Conflict
Probability:
The IDF may have destroyed Hamas’ military capabilities if the war extends into the new year, but the destruction of Gazan housing and infrastructure will leave most Palestinians homeless and a hotbed for new terrorists under Hamas. Arab states will be more wary of overtly partnering with the U.S.
Washington will struggle to find any takers for running Gaza, absent a demonstrated Israeli commitment to a two-state solution, which has proven elusive for 50 years.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is unlikely to survive postwar scrutiny: polls show most Israelis blame him for the war, with only 4% trusting him, and a November Israeli poll showed 76% want him to resign. But a strengthened conservative Israeli movement does not need him and will be even more hardline, making a two-state solution virtually unworkable. Outside pressure to restart serious negotiations that require concessions to Palestinians will fail. The anger, rage, and grief on both sides likely foreshadow a region that will remain a tinderbox, with settler violence against Palestinians on the West Bank or more Hamas attacks in Gaza or elsewhere finally igniting full-scale Hizballah attacks in northern Israel or attacks by other Iranian proxies elsewhere, including against soft Western targets.
One wildcard that could heighten the risk to the region would be a possible succession crisis and political instability in Iran if the 84-year-old Iranian Supreme Leader passes in 2024.”
A Global Gap on Climate Change
Probability:
On the world’s current course, temperatures will rise to 2.9C above preindustrial levels, according to the latest UN Emissions Gap Report. Temperatures have already risen 1.1C, close to the desired limit of 1.5C. There is only a 14% chance of keeping the temperature rise to 1.5C, according to the UN Emission Gap report, even if states meet their goals.
Rich countries first promised $100 billion a year for climate adaptation in poorer nations in 2009 at the Copenhagen Climate Summit. At that time, rich countries promised to deliver that amount by 2020, but in several years it was apparent that this deadline would be missed.
This historic fairness issue has become a rallying cause for the Global South, prompting the COP28 Dubai Summit to make the “loss-and-damage” fund as its first decision. COP28 host United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Germany both pledged $100m, while the United Kingdom pledged about $76 million; Japan $10 million, and the EU (including Germany) offered to contribute about $245 million. Washington was criticized for promising only $17.5 million by climate activists, but Republican legislators are likely to block any amount.
COP28 has nevertheless surprised many with the number of measures including a pledge to phase out fossil fuels, private sector commitments to eliminate methane emissions by 2050 under the Global Methane Pledge (both non-binding), and a new climate damage fund to aid developing states adapt to climate change. McKinsey consulting firm estimates that “the world faces a $41 trillion mitigation investment gap to 2030, with emerging markets facing a higher gap as a share of their GDP. In addition, an adaptation financing gap of $600 billion is required annually to 2050, which is 10–18 times greater than current flows.” COP28 made some headway in marshaling the needed capital for mitigation and adaptation, but there is still a long way to go. The sense of inequity felt by developing countries — many more of which are impacted by climate change than richer countries — is unlikely to dissipate. Most developing country representatives did not leave COP28 feeling in any way assured that the West “has their back” on meeting the demands of climate change.
Eurasian Entente: Increasing Alignment as Global Cooperation Fragments
Probability:
Attempts to dub the current global transition as one of authoritarianism vs democracy, or even to imagine the world as multipolar or bipolar fail to capture the complexity of the transformation of the geopolitical landscape. Many pivotal middle powers are now multi-aligned in pursuit of their interests, as Saudi Arabia’s thickening ties to China, Vietnam’s “comprehensive strategic partnerships” with the US and China, and India’s membership in the BRICS illustrate.
In this fragmenting world, a plethora of new alignments is being created that do not yet rise to the level of alliances. The most ominous is what we are calling the Eurasian entente, a loose, transactional group encompassing two nuclear and veto-wielding UN Security Council members, Russia and China, along with one current and one soon-to-be nuclear power, North Korea and Iran. The alignment, held together by opposition to US power, does not yet equate to an alliance – but is nevertheless worrying.
Beijing has dropped the “no-limits” designation for its partnership with Moscow, but Russia and China are increasingly collaborating on a strategy to counter the U.S., North Korea and Iran, long pariahs, are using new transactional inter-action to align more with Sino-Russian interests. Iranian drones have proven to be important for Russia’s war against Ukraine, and North Korea is providing more arms after Kim Jong Un’s visit to Russia. Moreover, Russian missile technology aided North Korea’s first successful satellite launch in November. Beijing seeks to build a Sino-centric alternative global order and benefits in multiple ways from a solid partnership with its Eurasian neighbors.
A congressionally mandated commission is already calling for an increase in U.S. nuclear arms to counter the Sino-Russian alignment. Ties among all four countries vary, but for Washington, which has underestimated the strength of the Russo-China bond and often fantasized about a renewed split between Moscow and Beijing, the expansion of that alignment is not good news, ensuring even more strategic fragmentation and the potential for greater conflict.
Taiwan Elections Disrupt an Uncertain Sino-US Balance
Probability:
Whether the opposition or the ruling DPP wins Taiwan’s wide-open January 24 presidential elections, the results are likely to impact the cross-Straits predicament and US-China relations writ large. The DPP candidate, Lai Ching-te, in contrast to the more cautious current president, Tsai Ing-wen, is an outspoken, more overtly pro-independence leader, though he has said he would continue Tsai’s cross-Strait policies.
China, which has in recent months stepped up already menacing military activity toward Taiwan (which will probably persist to the January elections), would most likely overreact to another DPP victory and raise its military, digital, and economic coercion to a new level. Since Taiwan began holding direct presidential elections in 1996, Beijing has pursued heavy-handed intimidation and coercive pressure during election seasons, though on each occasion this tactic has backfired, with Beijing’s favored candidates losing.
After tortured efforts, the opposition candidates failed to unite behind one ticket, making it a three-way race. Absent a unified opposition, the DPP will be the probable victor, per current polling. Opposition candidates favor renewed cross-Straits dialogue and would most likely pursue significant political, social, and economic interaction with Beijing.
Meanwhile, US-China tensions have eased slightly following the November Biden-Xi Summit designed to put a floor under the relationship through 2024. Nevertheless, if implementation of Chinese commitments on stopping fentanyl precursors, AI cooperation, and military-to-military talks falter, all bets are off. Beijing has not reduced its assertive maritime actions in the South China Sea nor near Taiwan. Biden reaffirmed the United States’ “One-China” policy based on three foundational communiques and the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act. Growing support for arming and defending Taiwan in Congress, high-level visits, stepped-up military aid, and pending legislation deepening US-Taiwan ties have raised fears in Beijing that Biden is pursuing a “One-China, One-Taiwan” policy.
A Lai presidency would most likely reinforce these trends and reignite the US-China confrontation, possibly sparking an elevated action-reaction cycle, and could undo the modest gains of the recent Biden-Xi Summit. A Lai presidency could be constrained if opposition parties win the legislature. On the other hand, a victory by either opposition candidate would upend the Washington narrative, now focused on how to best prepare the U.S. and Taiwan for an impending conflict. In either outcome, China-bashing rhetoric will continue to escalate as the U.S. 2024 presidential election campaign unfolds. This could become a volatile blend, escalating a downward cycle of US-China confrontation, even more so if Trump gets elected.
A Third Nuclear Era
Probability:
The memory of nuclear crises such as the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis has faded. The post-Cold War framework for strategic stability has unraveled in direct proportion to heightened US-Russia tensions, and the Ukraine war has all but severed these ties, effectively nullifying the 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe and 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaties.
Moreover, on the first anniversary of its Ukraine invasion, Moscow declared it was suspending participation in the New Start accord that limits the U.S. and Russia to 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads and expires in 2026. Putin signed a law withdrawing Russia from the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
North Korea is building a formidable second-strike capability and new missile capacity with Russia’s help, and there are prospective chains of proliferation in the Greater Middle East if Iran attains a nuclear weapons capability and in Northeast Asia in response to North Korea’s capabilities.
The new nuclear “security dilemma” action-reaction rivalry is particularly troubling: The U.S., Russia, and China are all modernizing and expanding their nuclear weapons capabilities. For the U.S., this is creating a “three-body problem” — a new challenge of how to deter Russia and new nuclear peer China simultaneously. The U.S. is replacing and modernizing all three legs of its nuclear triad, including new short-range nuclear sea-launched cruise missiles, in an effort that could cost over $1.5 trillion over the next 30 years.
Vladimir Putin’s threats to use short-range nuclear weapons in Ukraine underscore that the threshold for employing nuclear weapons could be lowered. Russia’s doctrine of “escalate to de-escalate” suggests that limited nuclear wars might occur, leading some U.S. analysts to consider the possibility. Emerging technologies — AI, offensive cyber, and anti-satellite weapons — are creating new vulnerabilities for nuclear powers, shrinking decision times, and stoking fears of first strikes – even as arms control efforts seem far off. Talks with China on committing to humans in control of nuclear weapons are a modestly encouraging step.
AI Possibilities
Probability:
The fear that AI and its physical expression — robots— could soon be smarter than humans has divided Silicon Valley, with the Godfather of AI, Geoffrey Hinton, and dozens of other leading AI developers warning of “the risk of extinction,” and most dramatically at OpenAI, which created Chatbot GPT, now fully on the side of speeding up AI development and promoting the opportunities.
Large language models (LLMs) of generative AI are exponentially improving a wide range of capabilities as Chat GPT4, Google, Meta, Microsoft, dozens of startups, and China race ahead. In 2024 Open AI will release a more powerful CHAT GPT5; it could be a watershed year determining whether governments can surmount the governance deficit. President Biden’s recent executive order imposing regulations for safe and secure development and use of AI, as well as the UK’s Bletchley Declaration,1 The declaration was signed by 28 nations, including the U.S., China, the EU, and Japan, at a November 2023 international meeting in the UK. with its vague commitments to cooperate on AI safety, are modest, but promising steps.
No congressional legislation exists on AI standards, safety, and accountability, nor on digital privacy and data protection. Leading AI nations have separate regulatory regimes reflecting growing global fragmentation: the EU has produced, though not yet adopted, the most comprehensive legal framework for AI on top of equally thorough digital privacy legislation to protect the public from unwanted algorithms. It also has a Digital Markets Act aimed at Big Tech.
China has published generative AI services regulations, following earlier restrictive digital commerce and data-protection laws. AI is increasing exponentially, yet global safety and accountability norms are still elusive. But regulation alone would not contain AI. As Mustafa Suleyman, an AI pioneer and the founder of Deep Mind, fears, containing AI may be all but impossible. Suleyman argues in a new book, The Coming Wave, that regulation must be paired with adequate systematic research on AI safety, of which there is relatively little: We need to know why and how mistakes are made by AI, whether governments can stress-test AI systems and access and correct flawed systems, and whether there is a solely human-controlled off-switch. We agree.
Certainty or Moral Absolutism: Undermining Global Cooperation
Probability:
All the risks discussed above are, to use former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s term, “known unknowns: discernable events or trends whose trajectories we can assess.” But one intangible driver of many of these trends has not been adequately considered: certainty or moral absolutism.
This mindset views issues through a Manichean us-versus-them, good-versus-evil lens and tends toward intolerance and identity politics. This approach is marked by what psychologists call “cognitive bias,” a proclivity to filter all events through a rigid, religious-like belief or set of beliefs and animating behavior, to wit: Putinism, “Xi Jinping thought,” Christian nationalism, “woke” progressivism, radical Islam, far-left and far-right anti-Semitism, U.S. exceptionalism and its perpetual primacy, and a “civilizing mission” ethos.
This mindset also tends to cling to outmoded assumptions, leading to what social scientists call “path dependence”: relying on past decisions and actions to achieve goals rather than evaluating current conditions and trends. Such black-and-white idees fixe can result in tragic outcomes — if not World War III. This trend is fueling internal polarization in the United States as well as global fragmentation. A balance of interests can be negotiated; absolute faith, not so much.
“There is,” warned theologian and political philosopher Reinhold Niebuhr, “the illusion of ‘managing history,’” explaining that “modern man lacks the humility to accept the fact that the whole drama of history is enacted in a frame of meaning too large for human comprehension or management.” As the late Henry Kissinger admonished, “History presents unambiguous alternatives only in the rarest of circumstances.”
Mathew Burrows is the Program Lead of the Stimson Center’s Strategic Foresight Hub and a Distinguished Fellow at its Reimagining US Grand Strategy program.
Robert A. Manning is a Distinguished Fellow at the Stimson Center in both the Strategic Foresight Hub and the Reimagining US Grand Strategy program.
Notes
1
The declaration was signed by 28 nations, including the U.S., China, the EU, and Japan, at a November 2023 international meeting in the UK.
Top Ten Global Risks for 2024
By Mathew Burrows • Robert A. Manning
Grand Strategy
Originally published in Foreign Policy
Introduction
This is the seventh edition of our annual “Top Ten Global Risks,” an exercise in foresight drawn from our forecasting experience at the U.S. intelligence community’s National Intelligence Council. In our previous forecast, we focused on the proliferation of small wars, food insecurity, developing-country debt, and growing climate-change impacts — an ongoing polycrisis, entangled events and developments linked to and cascading off each other — is emblematic of our times: The post-World War II global system that the U.S. engineered is unraveling. Amidst this disorder and strife, even more signs of distress will surface in 2024.
We have medium-to-high confidence in all the probabilities we have assigned to each of the risks given the “credible” to “high-quality” level of information that is available and used. As it is for intelligence estimates, a “high or medium confidence” judgment of the probability that we assigned to each risk still carries the possibility of it being wrong.
Increased conflict in Africa, tensions and conflict in the Middle East and in Ukraine, medium-term climate change catastrophes, as well as calamities from inadequately controlled transformational artificial intelligence (AI) and other emerging technologies, may pose heightened risks in 2024.
The Risks
Africa’s Second Lost Decade
Probability:
The confluence of numerous disruptive global trends unfortunately merges in Africa. With an intractable debt crisis, the drying up of capital flows, growing impacts of climate change, and major drought, conflict and political instability are now endemic across a large swathe of Africa — from the Sahel, including Mali, and Niger to Southern Sudan, Sudan and Ethiopia.
By 2050, a quarter of the world’s population will be African, with a projected one billion in their prime working-age years of 25-59, a “doubling of its share of world population workforce from 12% to 23%,” according to the chief of the UN’s population estimates. Absent more economic growth and greater job opportunities, the risk of Africa’s demographic bounty becoming a liability for the region as well as the world will continue to grow.
Africa saw spectacular economic growth between the mid-1990s and mid-2010, when per capita growth was 40%. Even before the pandemic, however, many developing countries, not just African ones, experienced slowing growth. Debt ballooned with the pandemic’s increased health costs, becoming now a major impediment to Africa’s growth. According to the World Bank, 21 African states are facing debt distress or the risk of it. The continent’s public debt has tripled since 2010 to $645 billion, with annual servicing of the debt amounting to about 25% of Africa’s GDP.
A precondition for Africa achieving a new development trajectory has pointed to the need for OECD nations to qualitatively ramp up G-20 efforts in the Common Framework — working with China — to relieve debt stress. But the recent breakdown in a debt agreement for Zambia augurs badly for any quick relief. China, along with other official creditors, forced the copper-rich African nation to suspend a deal of almost $4bn in dollar bonds that had received the IMF’s approval. As the world economy becomes increasingly fragmented, protectionist, and region-centric, Africa’s development will become more challenging, emblematic of the gap between industrialized and developing nations becoming more difficult to narrow. While the members of the global community need to view Africa as an essential part of their future and invest and trade with African countries more, these countries have some levers to attract more economic help. Diversifying trade with Asia would provide new opportunities that did not necessarily compete with current trade patterns focused on Europe and the Americas. But conflict, climate change, and a less friendly global environment steepen the curve for economic recovery and development.
Trump 2.0: Upending the United States’ “Internationalist” Role
Probability:
Former President Donald Trump has at least a 50-50 prospect of winning the 2024 election. His main theme would be revenge — and his reelection would most likely wreak havoc on U.S. democracy and further destabilize the world system. As Trump has said to his base supporters, “I am your retribution.” Though polls almost a year out from next November’s election are just snapshots in time, Trump is running neck and neck with President Joe Biden and is ahead in most key swing states.
Domestically, Trump’s authoritarian ambitions have become even more ambitious. Internationally, Trump aims to pursue his “anti-globalist” agenda, more unilateralist than isolationist. He would probably revoke U.S. climate pledges, and his advisors say he would scrap the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and boost fossil-fuel production.
Under a Trump presidency, the U.S. would probably end aid to Ukraine, renew ties to Moscow, and seek a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Ukraine over Kyiv’s head. Meanwhile, he might try to redo a failed deal with North Korean President Kim Jong Un on nuclear weapons.
Trump’s election could fuel a surge in populist nationalism in Europe. Already the recent electoral successes of far-right nativist parties in three nations (Netherlands, Slovakia, Italy) show an emerging popular drift in the direction of Hungary’s authoritarian regimes and changing the political landscape.
Should Trump come to power, the entire West might veer away from its longstanding internationalist path. He has hinted that he wants the U.S. to leave or reduce its role in NATO(e.g., suspend the U.S. commitment to Article 5 of the NATO Treaty) if demands for much greater European spending are not met and similarly try to pull U.S. troops out of South Korea and Japan if these countries do not agree to more burden sharing of the costs associated with stationing U.S. forces in Asia. More broadly, Trump has suggested imposing a 10% tariff on all imports; this step would foster a trade war and curb support for international institutions. Trump’s agenda could be mitigated if Democrats win back the House and/or keep the Senate. Alternatively, as unlikely as it seems, if former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley or Florida Governor Ron DeSantis were the GOP winning candidate, there would be more continuity and less radical change.
Stalemate Without a Ukrainian Breakthrough Next Year.
Probability:
2023 saw a disappointing Ukraine counteroffensive turn into a war of attrition with few gains or losses. Ukraine has been more successful in breaking Russia’s Black Sea blockade and attacking targets in Crimea and on Russian soil, but Putin’s war economy has expanded military production since the war began. The minor territorial gains have been coupled with waning US-EU support, fueled partly by the absence of a Ukrainian breakthrough, but also by growing U.S. Republican opposition to continued arms shipments.
War is unpredictable, and 2024 could see greater Ukrainian successes, triggering new questions about Russia’s military sustainability. Washington was disappointed that Ukrainian forces disregarded U.S. advice on massing troops in the south, a move that could have severed the Russian line, threatening Russia’s control of Crimea, and delivering a psychological blow to Putin. Should 2024 be another disappointing year for the Ukrainians, Western pressure on Kyiv for cease-fire talks will most likely increase. Biden would reap a political benefit in his upcoming campaign by bringing an end to the fighting. Outside of a humiliating military defeat, however, it is unclear whether Putin would actually want cease-fire talks. If, as is all but certain, Putin is reelected in 2024, that could embolden him to extend and/or intensify the fighting.
In any event, Putin probably wants to wait for the possibility of a Trump presidency, in which case he might come under strong U.S. pressure to stop the fighting but could expect more favorable treatment in a peace deal. In the interim, Putin’s strategy might be centered on greatly intensifying drone and missile attacks on Ukrainian cities, infrastructure, and ports as well in an effort to destroy Ukraine as a functioning nation-state rather than taking more territory. It is unclear how the US/NATO would respond to such an approach.
The Ongoing Israel-Palestine Conflict
Probability:
The IDF may have destroyed Hamas’ military capabilities if the war extends into the new year, but the destruction of Gazan housing and infrastructure will leave most Palestinians homeless and a hotbed for new terrorists under Hamas. Arab states will be more wary of overtly partnering with the U.S.
Washington will struggle to find any takers for running Gaza, absent a demonstrated Israeli commitment to a two-state solution, which has proven elusive for 50 years.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is unlikely to survive postwar scrutiny: polls show most Israelis blame him for the war, with only 4% trusting him, and a November Israeli poll showed 76% want him to resign. But a strengthened conservative Israeli movement does not need him and will be even more hardline, making a two-state solution virtually unworkable. Outside pressure to restart serious negotiations that require concessions to Palestinians will fail. The anger, rage, and grief on both sides likely foreshadow a region that will remain a tinderbox, with settler violence against Palestinians on the West Bank or more Hamas attacks in Gaza or elsewhere finally igniting full-scale Hizballah attacks in northern Israel or attacks by other Iranian proxies elsewhere, including against soft Western targets.
One wildcard that could heighten the risk to the region would be a possible succession crisis and political instability in Iran if the 84-year-old Iranian Supreme Leader passes in 2024.”
A Global Gap on Climate Change
Probability:
On the world’s current course, temperatures will rise to 2.9C above preindustrial levels, according to the latest UN Emissions Gap Report. Temperatures have already risen 1.1C, close to the desired limit of 1.5C. There is only a 14% chance of keeping the temperature rise to 1.5C, according to the UN Emission Gap report, even if states meet their goals.
Although G-7 leaders set new collective targets for renewables last April, the UN report nevertheless shows that inequalities remain high: The richest 10% of the world’s population accounted for nearly half of emissions in 2021, while the poorest 50%, contributed only 12% of total emissions; historical emissions are even more unbalanced.
Rich countries first promised $100 billion a year for climate adaptation in poorer nations in 2009 at the Copenhagen Climate Summit. At that time, rich countries promised to deliver that amount by 2020, but in several years it was apparent that this deadline would be missed.
This historic fairness issue has become a rallying cause for the Global South, prompting the COP28 Dubai Summit to make the “loss-and-damage” fund as its first decision. COP28 host United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Germany both pledged $100m, while the United Kingdom pledged about $76 million; Japan $10 million, and the EU (including Germany) offered to contribute about $245 million. Washington was criticized for promising only $17.5 million by climate activists, but Republican legislators are likely to block any amount.
COP28 has nevertheless surprised many with the number of measures including a pledge to phase out fossil fuels, private sector commitments to eliminate methane emissions by 2050 under the Global Methane Pledge (both non-binding), and a new climate damage fund to aid developing states adapt to climate change. McKinsey consulting firm estimates that “the world faces a $41 trillion mitigation investment gap to 2030, with emerging markets facing a higher gap as a share of their GDP. In addition, an adaptation financing gap of $600 billion is required annually to 2050, which is 10–18 times greater than current flows.” COP28 made some headway in marshaling the needed capital for mitigation and adaptation, but there is still a long way to go. The sense of inequity felt by developing countries — many more of which are impacted by climate change than richer countries — is unlikely to dissipate. Most developing country representatives did not leave COP28 feeling in any way assured that the West “has their back” on meeting the demands of climate change.
Eurasian Entente: Increasing Alignment as Global Cooperation Fragments
Probability:
Attempts to dub the current global transition as one of authoritarianism vs democracy, or even to imagine the world as multipolar or bipolar fail to capture the complexity of the transformation of the geopolitical landscape. Many pivotal middle powers are now multi-aligned in pursuit of their interests, as Saudi Arabia’s thickening ties to China, Vietnam’s “comprehensive strategic partnerships” with the US and China, and India’s membership in the BRICS illustrate.
In this fragmenting world, a plethora of new alignments is being created that do not yet rise to the level of alliances. The most ominous is what we are calling the Eurasian entente, a loose, transactional group encompassing two nuclear and veto-wielding UN Security Council members, Russia and China, along with one current and one soon-to-be nuclear power, North Korea and Iran. The alignment, held together by opposition to US power, does not yet equate to an alliance – but is nevertheless worrying.
Beijing has dropped the “no-limits” designation for its partnership with Moscow, but Russia and China are increasingly collaborating on a strategy to counter the U.S., North Korea and Iran, long pariahs, are using new transactional inter-action to align more with Sino-Russian interests. Iranian drones have proven to be important for Russia’s war against Ukraine, and North Korea is providing more arms after Kim Jong Un’s visit to Russia. Moreover, Russian missile technology aided North Korea’s first successful satellite launch in November. Beijing seeks to build a Sino-centric alternative global order and benefits in multiple ways from a solid partnership with its Eurasian neighbors.
A congressionally mandated commission is already calling for an increase in U.S. nuclear arms to counter the Sino-Russian alignment. Ties among all four countries vary, but for Washington, which has underestimated the strength of the Russo-China bond and often fantasized about a renewed split between Moscow and Beijing, the expansion of that alignment is not good news, ensuring even more strategic fragmentation and the potential for greater conflict.
Taiwan Elections Disrupt an Uncertain Sino-US Balance
Probability:
Whether the opposition or the ruling DPP wins Taiwan’s wide-open January 24 presidential elections, the results are likely to impact the cross-Straits predicament and US-China relations writ large. The DPP candidate, Lai Ching-te, in contrast to the more cautious current president, Tsai Ing-wen, is an outspoken, more overtly pro-independence leader, though he has said he would continue Tsai’s cross-Strait policies.
China, which has in recent months stepped up already menacing military activity toward Taiwan (which will probably persist to the January elections), would most likely overreact to another DPP victory and raise its military, digital, and economic coercion to a new level. Since Taiwan began holding direct presidential elections in 1996, Beijing has pursued heavy-handed intimidation and coercive pressure during election seasons, though on each occasion this tactic has backfired, with Beijing’s favored candidates losing.
After tortured efforts, the opposition candidates failed to unite behind one ticket, making it a three-way race. Absent a unified opposition, the DPP will be the probable victor, per current polling. Opposition candidates favor renewed cross-Straits dialogue and would most likely pursue significant political, social, and economic interaction with Beijing.
Meanwhile, US-China tensions have eased slightly following the November Biden-Xi Summit designed to put a floor under the relationship through 2024. Nevertheless, if implementation of Chinese commitments on stopping fentanyl precursors, AI cooperation, and military-to-military talks falter, all bets are off. Beijing has not reduced its assertive maritime actions in the South China Sea nor near Taiwan. Biden reaffirmed the United States’ “One-China” policy based on three foundational communiques and the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act. Growing support for arming and defending Taiwan in Congress, high-level visits, stepped-up military aid, and pending legislation deepening US-Taiwan ties have raised fears in Beijing that Biden is pursuing a “One-China, One-Taiwan” policy.
A Lai presidency would most likely reinforce these trends and reignite the US-China confrontation, possibly sparking an elevated action-reaction cycle, and could undo the modest gains of the recent Biden-Xi Summit. A Lai presidency could be constrained if opposition parties win the legislature. On the other hand, a victory by either opposition candidate would upend the Washington narrative, now focused on how to best prepare the U.S. and Taiwan for an impending conflict. In either outcome, China-bashing rhetoric will continue to escalate as the U.S. 2024 presidential election campaign unfolds. This could become a volatile blend, escalating a downward cycle of US-China confrontation, even more so if Trump gets elected.
A Third Nuclear Era
Probability:
The memory of nuclear crises such as the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis has faded. The post-Cold War framework for strategic stability has unraveled in direct proportion to heightened US-Russia tensions, and the Ukraine war has all but severed these ties, effectively nullifying the 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe and 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaties.
Moreover, on the first anniversary of its Ukraine invasion, Moscow declared it was suspending participation in the New Start accord that limits the U.S. and Russia to 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads and expires in 2026. Putin signed a law withdrawing Russia from the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
North Korea is building a formidable second-strike capability and new missile capacity with Russia’s help, and there are prospective chains of proliferation in the Greater Middle East if Iran attains a nuclear weapons capability and in Northeast Asia in response to North Korea’s capabilities.
The new nuclear “security dilemma” action-reaction rivalry is particularly troubling: The U.S., Russia, and China are all modernizing and expanding their nuclear weapons capabilities. For the U.S., this is creating a “three-body problem” — a new challenge of how to deter Russia and new nuclear peer China simultaneously. The U.S. is replacing and modernizing all three legs of its nuclear triad, including new short-range nuclear sea-launched cruise missiles, in an effort that could cost over $1.5 trillion over the next 30 years.
Vladimir Putin’s threats to use short-range nuclear weapons in Ukraine underscore that the threshold for employing nuclear weapons could be lowered. Russia’s doctrine of “escalate to de-escalate” suggests that limited nuclear wars might occur, leading some U.S. analysts to consider the possibility. Emerging technologies — AI, offensive cyber, and anti-satellite weapons — are creating new vulnerabilities for nuclear powers, shrinking decision times, and stoking fears of first strikes – even as arms control efforts seem far off. Talks with China on committing to humans in control of nuclear weapons are a modestly encouraging step.
AI Possibilities
Probability:
The fear that AI and its physical expression — robots— could soon be smarter than humans has divided Silicon Valley, with the Godfather of AI, Geoffrey Hinton, and dozens of other leading AI developers warning of “the risk of extinction,” and most dramatically at OpenAI, which created Chatbot GPT, now fully on the side of speeding up AI development and promoting the opportunities.
Large language models (LLMs) of generative AI are exponentially improving a wide range of capabilities as Chat GPT4, Google, Meta, Microsoft, dozens of startups, and China race ahead. In 2024 Open AI will release a more powerful CHAT GPT5; it could be a watershed year determining whether governments can surmount the governance deficit. President Biden’s recent executive order imposing regulations for safe and secure development and use of AI, as well as the UK’s Bletchley Declaration,1 The declaration was signed by 28 nations, including the U.S., China, the EU, and Japan, at a November 2023 international meeting in the UK. with its vague commitments to cooperate on AI safety, are modest, but promising steps.
No congressional legislation exists on AI standards, safety, and accountability, nor on digital privacy and data protection. Leading AI nations have separate regulatory regimes reflecting growing global fragmentation: the EU has produced, though not yet adopted, the most comprehensive legal framework for AI on top of equally thorough digital privacy legislation to protect the public from unwanted algorithms. It also has a Digital Markets Act aimed at Big Tech.
China has published generative AI services regulations, following earlier restrictive digital commerce and data-protection laws. AI is increasing exponentially, yet global safety and accountability norms are still elusive. But regulation alone would not contain AI. As Mustafa Suleyman, an AI pioneer and the founder of Deep Mind, fears, containing AI may be all but impossible. Suleyman argues in a new book, The Coming Wave, that regulation must be paired with adequate systematic research on AI safety, of which there is relatively little: We need to know why and how mistakes are made by AI, whether governments can stress-test AI systems and access and correct flawed systems, and whether there is a solely human-controlled off-switch. We agree.
Certainty or Moral Absolutism: Undermining Global Cooperation
Probability:
All the risks discussed above are, to use former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s term, “known unknowns: discernable events or trends whose trajectories we can assess.” But one intangible driver of many of these trends has not been adequately considered: certainty or moral absolutism.
This mindset views issues through a Manichean us-versus-them, good-versus-evil lens and tends toward intolerance and identity politics. This approach is marked by what psychologists call “cognitive bias,” a proclivity to filter all events through a rigid, religious-like belief or set of beliefs and animating behavior, to wit: Putinism, “Xi Jinping thought,” Christian nationalism, “woke” progressivism, radical Islam, far-left and far-right anti-Semitism, U.S. exceptionalism and its perpetual primacy, and a “civilizing mission” ethos.
This mindset also tends to cling to outmoded assumptions, leading to what social scientists call “path dependence”: relying on past decisions and actions to achieve goals rather than evaluating current conditions and trends. Such black-and-white idees fixe can result in tragic outcomes — if not World War III. This trend is fueling internal polarization in the United States as well as global fragmentation. A balance of interests can be negotiated; absolute faith, not so much.
“There is,” warned theologian and political philosopher Reinhold Niebuhr, “the illusion of ‘managing history,’” explaining that “modern man lacks the humility to accept the fact that the whole drama of history is enacted in a frame of meaning too large for human comprehension or management.” As the late Henry Kissinger admonished, “History presents unambiguous alternatives only in the rarest of circumstances.”
Mathew Burrows is the Program Lead of the Stimson Center’s Strategic Foresight Hub and a Distinguished Fellow at its Reimagining US Grand Strategy program.
Robert A. Manning is a Distinguished Fellow at the Stimson Center in both the Strategic Foresight Hub and the Reimagining US Grand Strategy program.
Notes
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