DW News: A global battle of political systems
is underway. DW News: 2024's election bonanza kicked off
in January in Taiwan. Channel 4 News: Outside of Israel and Gaza,
we've seen attacks in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen just over the course of this weekend. DW News: 2023 was the hottest year on record. Scientists warned that this year could very
well be even hotter. New York Post: China's hackers are positioning
on American infrastructure... WION: The Kim Jong Un regime is showing off
its incr
easingly diverse nuclear... 60 Minutes: What's coming? Again, artificial intelligence. CNN: Migrants crossing the southern U.S. border
are once again reaching record levels… Global News: Stop the steal, stop the steal… The Economist: What else will the next 12
months bring? SIERRA: The country’s experts on foreign
policy and national security usually have a world of outside threats to keep them occupied. But this year a group of analysts surveyed
by CFR have sounded the biggest alarm about somet
hing bubbling up at home - political
violence around this year’s presidential election. They have also flagged the prospects of a
surge in migration at the southwest U.S. border as a leading concern. And while both are scenarios playing out,
rather unusually, on U.S. soil, they have consequences for the rest of the world. SIERRA: To help sort through these and other
worries, we turn to Paul Stares. Paul is a CFR senior fellow and director of
the Center for Preventive Action, which runs a yearly
survey of global threats and priorities. SIERRA: I’m Gabrielle Sierra and this is
Why It Matters. Today, what to worry about in 2024. Gabrielle SIERRA: So Paul, this isn’t the
first time that we’ve had you on Why It Matters, you joined us last year to go over
the top threats for 2023. But new year, new threats, so let’s kick
it off. What are the top concerns for 2024? Paul B. STARES: So In terms of the top priorities
this year or risks, the first is the likelihood of growing political polarizati
on in the United
States, which leads to potential acts of domestic terrorism, political violence, particularly
around the upcoming presidential election. The second concern was an expansion or escalation
of the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas. And the third ranked concern this year is
the surge in immigration toward the southwest border of the United States. And some are already moving in the direction
of what people were concerned or anticipated at the end of 2023. SIERRA: The
se top priorities are all high
impact, high probability contingencies - and having three of them on the report in one
year is unprecedented. So let's go through them one at a time, beginning
with domestic terrorism and political violence here in the United States. VICE News: Stop protecting tyrants MSNBC: We turn now to the 2024 presidential
race PBS NewsHour: You mention the issue of political
violence, the language is careless. TODAY: If you don’t fight like hell, you’re
not going to have a co
untry anymore. The Independent: I’m telling you, if Pence
caved, we’re going to drag [expletive] through the streets. [expletive] politicians are going to get dragged
through the streets. Times Radio: You know the risk of something
much much worse than January the 6 I think is quite high. SIERRA: Yikes. STARES: Yikes, indeed. So this is the first year that we have included
a domestic conflict related contingency. Prior years we've only ever included foreign
threats or overseas or foreign-sourced
concerns. But when we did the solicitation of what to
include, it was the overwhelming top concern in this year's preventive priorities survey. SIERRA: I mean it must have been really top
of mind if domestic issues rarely make the list. STARES: I think just the level of polarization
over the last four or five years has definitely increased in the United States. Obviously January 6th is in people's minds,
the storming of the Capitol in 2020. And a lot of people worry about how this growing
polar
ization could really lead to acts of political violence. And here I'm talking about potential assassination
of candidates, possible terrorist acts at the conventions, disruption of the voting
procedures, possibly again a sort of January 6th-like disruption of the counting and then
the actual outcome being properly accredited at the end of this whole process. So this could go on throughout essentially
2024, well into 2025. SIERRA: So what can we do about it? STARES: We could try to reduce the ris
k of
candidates, if not deliberately then inadvertently, inciting their supporters to engage in violence. We can take extra security precautions around
known events, the primaries obviously, and beef up the security for the candidates, beef
up the security around events like the conventions, polling stations and so on. SIERRA: We see how big of a deal this is for
us, but a domestic issue is at home, so why should anyone outside of the U.S. even care
about this? STARES: I think it's worth taking
a time out
just to think about what are the foreign policy implications of growing political violence
or polarization in the U.S.? And I think you can imagine there are several
concerns in the minds of foreign policy experts. Obviously they're concerned about the threat
to life and liberty at home, but I think they're probably also worried that foreign actors,
foreign adversaries could try to foment more divisions, more divisiveness within the U.S.
and through disinformation, social media, fake
news, they could sort of whip up even
further unrest and potential violence in the U.S. I think another concern is that if this were
to happen, the U.S. could be just distracted by this. And other actors might take advantage who
see the U.S. just got their hands full at home, and so they do things abroad again against
U.S. interests. Another probable concern is for many years,
the U.S. has been a big promoter of democracy and human rights around the world. We've advocated for peaceful elections
and
the orderly transfer of power, and it's going to be damn hard for the U.S. to advocate for
all those things if we essentially can't keep the peace at home. And so as I've argued in many respects, conflict
prevention is now going to have to begin at home if we want to try to be effective abroad. SIERRA: Yeah. Like how can we set an example, how could
we tell people how to run their country - STARES: Precisely. We've been doing this for years. We've encouraged international organizations
to de
velop handbooks to manage elections, and when we can't sort of do it in a peaceful,
orderly process, it really undercuts the credibility of the message, frankly. Sidenote, if you are interested in diving
further into how we got into this phase in the first place, there is a great book out
by two of my CFR colleagues, Jacob Ware and Bruce Hoffman. It’s called God, Guns, and Sedition: Far
Right Terrorism in America. Yes the title promises a lot and the book
delivers. You should check it out. SIERR
A: I get that this is very very scary
and it’s something we need to prevent, but I do still wonder how foreign policy experts
compared something like this to the great power threats on the list? STARES: It's really hard. Obviously, I don't think one can compare acts
of terrorism at home, certainly if it's relatively low level or random, and it's contained afterwards
with the possibility of escalation between the U.S. and China over Taiwan, which could
conceivably lead to major power conflict and
even the use of nuclear weapons. They're two quite different possibilities. But for the U.S. to be distracted at this
time for there to be major sort of violent divisions within the U.S., this could kind
of resonate in extremely unwelcome ways around the world. So I don't want to underestimate or underrate
the risk that comes from domestic terrorism and political violence in the U.S. because
it really is a serious threat. SIERRA: And so foreign policy experts think
one of the biggest threats in
the year ahead is actually at home. SIERRA: Let’s move on to the next of the
top three threats, the escalation of war in the Middle East. PBS NewsHour: The U.S. priority since the
October 7 Hamas terrorist attack has been preventing violence from expanding across
the region. CNN: New strikes on Iranian backed militants
far from Israel's borders, stoking fears that the United States is on the brink of a wider
war in the Middle East. WGN News: President Biden is vowing to respond
after an Iranian
-backed drone strike. WGN News: Three American troops killed and
at least thirty-four more injured today. TODAY: Today in this region, U.S. allies from
Bahrain to Egypt are warning of further instability while condemning what they're calling a terrorist
attack. SIERRA: Can you explain a bit more about this
idea of wider regional conflict? STARES: Yeah, so when the survey was sent
out back in November, the war between Israel and Hamas was pretty much contained to Gaza. And since late November of
2023, we've seen
there's definitely been an escalation, most notably by the Houthis in Yemen attacking
ships in international waters, the U.S. countering that with multiple rounds of strikes against
the Houthis. The Houthis have long-range missiles that
cannot only attack shipping but could even potentially reach Israel, I believe. And I think there was a case early in the
conflict in which one such missile was intercepted by Israel. So there's that dimension. There is the possibility of Hezboll
ah, which
is an Islamist militant group backed by Iran, conducting attacks across the border from
Lebanon into Israel and Israel striking back. And we've seen since November, that has started
to occur and there's been an uptick in violence there. We've also seen Israeli forces attacking targets
in Syria, which are believed to be against Iran-backed militant groups there. There's been no direct attack on Iran so much,
but we've seen Iran striking what they think are Israeli targets in northern Ir
aq. We've seen an uptick in Iranian-backed militants
attacking U.S. forces in Syria and Iraq and the U.S. retaliating. And perhaps most surprising of all, we saw
Iran striking targets in Pakistan and Pakistan striking back against targets in Iran. And so any one of these four or five, if you
will, vectors or trajectories of potential escalation could definitely get worse in the
coming months. And it's not hard to see how what was previously
a relatively contained conflict becomes a much wider re
gional conflagration. SIERRA: The PPS report lists threats in relation
to the United States. The Middle East is about 7,000 miles away,
right. But sometimes what happens there hits close
to home. In January, an Iran-backed group killed three
Americans at a military base in Jordan. So, in what other ways might this directly
affect the United States? STARES: In several ways. One is it's distracted the U.S. in its support
for Ukraine against Russia. There's not only the attention that policymakers
can give to countries that are under attack, but the level of support: military, diplomatic
is also affected. And I think the U.S. has become increasingly
distracted by trying to tamp down the possibility of escalation. They've deployed carrier battle groups to
the Eastern Mediterranean. As I say, they've already ramped up some strikes
against threats to their forces in Syria and Iraq. So it's a big distraction there. There's always the possibility that the war
will resonate domestically. We've
seen some extent in terms of level of
protests in the U.S. against Israeli actions in Gaza, and that's a source of concern and
can become a kind of issue in the presidential campaign. It's a source of tension with allies too. Several U.S. allies have been quite critical
of Israeli actions in Gaza. And so that becomes a tension there. Again an unwelcome development at this time. SIERRA: What steps could help avoid the worst
outcomes for an escalating Israeli-Palestinian conflict? STARES: Well, de
finitely you have to think
about this in all its dimensions. There's obviously the efforts to try to deter
further escalation militarily by either the Houthis, and we're seeing that trying to degrade
the Houthis capacity to attack shipping. We've seen U.S. military force being used
as a warning to Iran to again try to control their proxy forces in Lebanon and Iraq. So there's the military dimension. There's the diplomatic angle too, and you've
seen U.S. officials going to the region on a regular
basis trying to broker a ceasefire
in Gaza, engaging with Gulf countries and Egypt to try to sort of bring the fighting
to an end, to see the hostages released from Hamas. And you've seen efforts also to try to stabilize
international markets so they're not roiled in a really destabilizing way by the conflict
there. So there are multiple ways we can try to contain
this, to deescalate, look for off ramps, try to encourage some of the key countries involved
here to show restraint and look for a d
iplomatic solution rather than escalate in a really
harmful way. SIERRA: Moving on to big threat number three
and bringing it back home: a migration crisis on the southwest U.S. border. TODAY: The crisis at the border? Unrelenting with thousands arriving daily
from California to Arizona and Texas. NBC News: Tonight, customs and border protection
overwhelmed by an unprecedented number of migrants crossing the southern border. FOX 26 Houston: Many lawmakers are now calling
it a war against fentany
l, and they believe it starts right here at the border impacting
families hundreds of miles away. ABC News: President Biden and Donald Trump
both there late today, just demonstrating how significant this issue is with the presidential
election this November. STARES: Throughout 2023, we saw a substantial
increase in the number of migrants reaching the southern border of the U.S. Reports that
as many as 2.3-2.4 million migrants arrived in the U.S. in an unregulated fashion in 2023. The end of the
year, something like 10,000
were crossing the border every day. It's an extraordinary number. They were coming from a lot of different places:
obviously Central America and Mexico. A lot of it's driven by economic hardship
there, political corruption, criminal violence, but also from beyond Central America and Mexico. A lot of them were coming through the Darién
Gap, this part of the Central American Isthmus, from Venezuela, where the situation remains
pretty dire there. Ecuador, where there's b
een a lot of instability
in recent months because of criminal violence. Haiti is another source of a lot of migrants. And so these have been surging through Mexico
onto the southwest border. What I understand is that since early January
2024, things have declined a little bit, but probably still around 2-3000 a day, which
is still an awful lot of people. It's become a major political football if
you will. Republicans are holding up support for Ukraine
and Israel until the administration adopts c
ertain measures to strengthen, harden the
border. And that problem has not yet been resolved. So there's a lot of angles here that I think
people are worried about. SIERRA: Much like the first threat on our
list, this one takes place here at home, but it isn’t as cut and dry to understand. The migration crisis encompasses a complex
number of threats, which, taken together, are potentially highly destabilizing. SIERRA: According to foreign policy experts,
these threats include the vast suffering
of the migrants themselves, deepening instability
in source countries, the potential for deadly drugs to slip through the border, and a rapidly
escalating border crisis that could involve the U.S. military - all of which cultivate
a deepening of the intense political divisiveness we have seen emerge in the U.S. surrounding
immigration. SIERRA: How could this pose a security threat
to the United States? What separates it from like a traditional
immigration issue? STARES: I like to say that migrat
ion, per
se, should not be considered a national security threat. I think unregulated borders, open borders,
can be definitely considered a security concern if you don't know who's coming across. The influx of fentanyl, that's been a big
concern. It's causing a lot of deaths in the U.S. So there's definitely that angle. I think it's broadly this concern that it's
hard to just assimilate a lot of people all at once. And that creates sort of societal stresses,
resentment amongst locals, it burdens
social security networks and so on, and health facilities. And overall, that is probably, I think the
biggest concern here rather than a kind of traditional national security threat. SIERRA: It seems like this problem is causing
a lot of debate both in D.C. and in our own neighborhoods at home, right. It seems like a really hard problem to fix,
so can we do anything about it? STARES: You know there's the immediate effort
to try to reduce the places along the border where immigrants are coming i
n a completely
unregulated, sometimes in an unsafe way. Sometimes migrants die getting across the
border and you obviously want to reduce that happening. So efforts to try to, if you will, harden
the border, increase the level of law enforcement so that you're not overwhelmed in any one
place. I think the effort that the Biden administration
has been trying to focus on in recent months is more sort of upstream efforts to try to
encourage the transit countries to dissuade migrants to improve thei
r border security
so that they are not becoming a magnet for migrants and trying to sort of say, reduce
the flow through Central America. So I think there's lots of ways to do it,
but ultimately it's trying to improve the conditions in the principal source countries
like Venezuela and Central America, the so-called northern triangle countries, which have been
racked by criminal violence and so on. If people feel that they have a future there,
they're obviously less likely to come into the U.S. a
nd that I think is the only real
solution here. SIERRA: What feels like is missing is anything
related to climate. We’re coming off the warmest year on record,
and coverage of fires and floods and drought seemed constant. So is climate just not on the list at all? STARES: So climate is indirectly included. I think many of the contingencies include
at least implicitly the possibility that either severe weather events or droughts or water
shortages or fights over access to water could become a rea
l source of conflict. And so there's several places where that is
definitely, I think, an issue - in the Horn of Africa, in the Sahel, maybe even parts
of Asia too. So while it's not specifically mentioned in
most contingencies, that is definitely part of the mix. There's no question about that. And we're seeing more and more I think concern
over the impact of climate change as a driver or an accelerant, if you will, of conflict. It's just very hard to assess the likelihood
of specific climate r
elated events and how they would trigger violent conflict. That's always been really difficult to predict
in a precise way. SIERRA: Overall, is there anything on there
that you would like to draw more attention to or were even surprised by? STARES: I think there's a sort of macro observation
this year that really caught my attention. We've never seen this level of anxiety or
foreboding about a year in advance. Three of the thirty contingencies were judged
to be high likelihood and high impact, a
nd we've never had that. Even last year, I think there wasn't what
we call a high-high, a high likelihood high impact, but this year we had three - unprecedented,
never happened before. And of the thirty contingencies, only two
were considered low probability. Again, pretty scary stuff when you think about
it that so many people are really worried about the direction of the world and particularly
conflict trends in the world. Something I think I mentioned last year this
time was that the countri
es that were uppermost in the minds of many U.S. foreign policy experts
sort of related to, if you will, the kind of post 9/11 agenda. These were countries where the U.S. city either
sent troops to fight in or were worried about instability there and drawing in troops down
the road. And for many years after 9/11, these parts
of the world dominated our concerns about the world. And Afghanistan was up there, Iraq obviously,
Pakistan, political instability in Pakistan, the possibility of war betwee
n India and Pakistan. These dominated how the U.S. foreign policy
community, what their principal concerns were. This year, when you look at what's in the
lowest tier, many of those same countries are now considered tier three risks where
the impact is now considered low. They're still worried about this happening,
but thinking that if it were to happen, the impact on the U.S. wouldn't be so great. So Afghanistan is there, Somalia where there
are still U.S. forces, Libya, and as I say, India and
Pakistan, and political instability
in Pakistan, low impact. When you think about it, Pakistan is a nuclear-armed
state and anytime you begin to worry about political instability in a nuclear-armed state,
frankly you should be, I think, a little more concerned than people seem to believe in or
they either didn't understand the implications here. So that was, I thought, the biggest surprise. I'm always worried moreover that because of
the concern given to these tier-one conflicts or potential co
nflicts, some really terrible
humanitarian threats don't get the attention. They tend to sort of now fall down the pecking
order in terms of things we worry about. But the situation in Sudan, for instance,
it’s been terrible this last year. I think the latest UN reports probably puts
10-15,000 died in Darfur or in Southern Sudan alone. That's a terrible situation. In Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, again,
there's been a lot of fighting, a lot of refugees displaced, and these sort of slip down
our
consciousness about what is going on. And South Sudan, the Sahel, this area of Sub-Saharan
Africa in the western part of Africa, is again very unstable. It's had a lot of coups in the last 12, 24
months. These places, most foreign policy experts
in the U.S. kind of go, "huh, well if it happens, it happens. Not much we can do about it." And so I do worry about that. SIERRA: Last year saw conflicts worsen around
the world. Chances are this list has probably not left
you feeling upbeat. But not
all is lost. In fact, some countries improved their relationships
this year - potentially making the world safer. DW News: U.S. President Joe Biden says he's
made real progress in talks with China's leader Xi Jinping… They announced new cooperation in areas including
narcotics, AI, and avoiding military misunderstandings. CGTN Global Watch: Armenia and Azerbaijan
have been able to agree on the basic principles for a peace treaty. The treaty includes mutual recognition of
territorial integrity a
nd sovereignty. Reuters: Historical foes Greece and Turkey
hope to usher in a new era of closer ties… They agree to pursue good neighborly relations
and work on obstacles that have kept them apart. STARES: There hasn't been all doom and gloom
last year, and maybe it's easy to get fixated with everything that's deteriorated and increased
concerns around the world, and I think that's generally justified. But I think there were some silver linings,
if you will, relations between the U.S. and China
improved somewhat at the end of 2023. There's an agreement to reestablish military-to-military
channels to possibly deal with crises if they happen. So that's welcome. U.S. and China is going to try to do something
about this fentanyl drug crisis as well. So that's good. You saw China, by the way, playing a positive
role in brokering peace between, or rapprochement probably, between Saudi Arabia and Iran last
year, a sign of potential Chinese involvement in sort of global security issues. So tha
t I think is encouraging. You have Armenia and Azerbaijan, they've reached
some kind of peace agreement. Now, admittedly, that came after this horrible
attack by Azerbaijan on this enclave in Azerbaijan known as Nagorno-Karabakh, and some 50,000
refugees were sort of expelled toward Armenia. Terrible thing, but the situation doesn't
look to be as bad as it once looked like it would become. Finally, Greece and Turkey began to talk,
and the relations between those two countries are seemingly impro
ving. Last year it was in the survey as a potential
flashpoint in the Eastern Mediterranean. Yet in recent months, we've seen the leaders
of those two countries begin to talk and possibly move in a more peaceful direction. So, some glimmers of hope there, and we can
hope that something happens this coming year, which will also, as I say, improve matters
in different parts of the world. SIERRA: Always worth taking a moment to honor
the positives. Perhaps, you could do a sister survey that
is the
positive prediction survey and next year we can go through that. STARES: Wouldn't that be great? SIERRA: It would be lovely. Well, thank you so much, Paul. You know, obviously our policymakers have
their work cut out for them, and we as well have to do our part at the ballot box, but
I appreciate you walking us through the next year. STARES: It's been great. Thank you so much for having me on the show
again and look forward to seeing you next time. SIERRA: For resources used in this episode
and
more information, visit CFR.org/whyitmatters and take a look at the show notes. If you ever have any questions or suggestions
or just want to chat with us, email at whyitmatters@cfr.org or you can hit us up on Twitter at @CFR_org. SIERRA: Why It Matters is a production of
the Council on Foreign Relations. The opinions expressed on the show are solely
that of the guests, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. SIERRA: This episode was produced by Asher
Ross, Molly
McAnany, Noah Berman and me, Gabrielle Sierra. Our sound designer is Markus Zakaria. Our interns this semester are Olivia Green
and Meher Bhatia. Robert McMahon is our Managing Editor, and
Doug Halsey is our Chief Digital Officer. Extra help for this episode was provided by
Mariel Ferragamo. Our theme music is composed by Ceiri Torjussen. SIERRA: You can subscribe to the show on Apple
Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your audio. For Why It Matters, this is Gabrielle Sierra
signing
Comments
More people need to watch/listen to non-partisan podcasts like these...thanks CFR
What to worry about in 2024? CFR fear mongering would be my #1!!
its simple on't rig a elecetino and respect the laws of the land and there will be no need for freedom fighting