2023: What’s the Worst That Could Happen?

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MSNBC: The global order is being utterly transformed.

 

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Marsh McLennan: If we are more adaptive, imaginative, and collaborative in our approaches to preparedness and resilience, we’ll be able to better anticipate and respond to emerging risks.

 

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TIME: We will not leave our future vulnerable to the whims of those who do not share our vision for a world that is free, open, prosperous, and secure.

 

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CNBC Television: We meet tonight at an inflection point. One of those moments that only a few generations ever face, where the direction we now take is gonna decide the course of this nation for decades to come.

 

Hey everyone, we’ve returned! We ended our last season of Why It Matters with an episode that looked back over 2022. This season, we’re starting out by looking ahead. It’s something think tanks spend a lot of time doing - scanning the horizon, searching for emerging threats, and thinking about how to prepare for them. Lucky for me, I work around a lot of people who are very good at this. 

 

In fact, every year the Council publishes a report called the Preventive Priorities Survey. It’s a little bit like those top ten lists you find all over the Internet, except instead of songs from the ‘90s it rates global threats to the United States. This year, there are thirty threats on the list, including seven so-called Tier 1 threats. 

 

For years, the survey was dominated by concerns about terrorism. But now the 9/11 era has receded into the rearview mirror, and we’re moving into a new phase, one that’s going to require entirely new strategies. 

 

I’m Gabrielle Sierra, and this is Why It Matters. Today, I speak with the author behind the survey, Paul Stares, about what we might face in 2023, and the nature of predictions in a turbulent world.

  

Paul STARES: So this is something that we've been doing now for fifteen years. The wonky name for it would be a crowdsource risk assessment, but essentially, it's a survey of several thousand American foreign policy experts. 

 

Aside from leading the PPS Report, Paul is the senior fellow in conflict prevention here at CFR. He also oversees an interactive tool called the Global Conflict Tracker. You should check it out.  

 

STARES: We develop a list of thirty contingencies, which are sort of potential scenarios related to ongoing conflicts, could they get worse? Or new conflicts, could they break out? And we ask each of the respondents of the survey to do two things: to rate the likelihood in the coming year, as well as the impact on U.S. foreign policy interests or national security interests. And we organize them into three tiers or levels of relative priority or importance. The idea being essentially that not all potential crises or conflicts are equally important-

 

Gabrielle SIERRA: Are created equal, sure.

 

STARES: ...and we should pick and choose and prioritize what we're doing. So, that's the survey.

 

SIERRA: And what's your batting average like?

 

STARES: So, it's actually pretty good, but I always have a mixed feeling saying that because that's more or less saying the world is getting more conflict prone, and it's like, "Oh, my god, the worst happened!" 

 

SIERRA: Do you feel like you accurately predicted some of the things that we saw this past year?

 

STARES: I think we had ten contingencies in the top tier. I think eight out of those ten all happened. The one we're always asked about is, "Did you anticipate Ukraine?" And our respondents gave an even chance. But because they also said if it were to happen this would be a pretty serious consequential high impact event. So, the combination meant that it became a tier one. So, if the goal here is really to flag potential sources of conflict that could be harmful to U.S. interests to make policymakers focus on them, we did the job.

 

SIERRA: And my last question about the survey itself before we move on to the threats: what ultimately is the end goal? How are these predictions used?

 

STARES: So, one of the recurring criticisms of U.S. foreign policy and crisis management is that we're too reactive. We get blindsided by events that we don't see coming or there was intelligence and we just neglected to take notice of it. And as a result, crisis hits, and we are suddenly scurrying around, our hair is on fire. What do we do? And we might react in a hasty fashion, possibly in a way that is actually ultimately counterproductive to our interests. So, the goal of this is to try to anticipate what could happen. And on the basis of that, you try to take some both preventive measures and precautionary measures. The idea of this survey is to try to help busy policymakers make choices between different demands. 

 

And the demands are pretty intense. I mean, as we said earlier, the PPS itself landed on 30 major contingencies, and there were dozens of others that didn’t make the cut.

 

We can’t cover them all in a single episode, so, in no particular order, we’re going to focus on the report’s Tier 1 threats. Each of these seven high-impact scenarios was determined to have at least a moderate chance of occurring in the next year. Buckle up. 

 

Contingency One.

 

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CNBC: Beijing - taking steps to increase its military pressure on Taiwan, carrying out now regular, amphibious assault exercises and military in-spy flights over the nation.

 

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BBC News: Taiwan is to extend compulsory military service from four months to one year to counter threats from China.

 

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CNBC: If something happens in Taiwan, we are in trouble.

 

An escalation over Taiwan. 

 

SIERRA: It kind of feels like Taiwan is the thing that gets talked about more often than anything else in our building. It’s this super complex situation with a lot of ins and outs. But I wanted to lead with the simplest question: are we looking at a possible war with China?

 

STARES: Could be. Last year was particularly scary because China upped the military exercises and missile tests in the vicinity of Taiwan. They were pretty mad at the U.S. suggesting that we would treat Taiwan as a treaty ally when it's not technically that, and we don't have what we would call official relations. But then, Speaker Pelosi visited and that seemed to signal that our attitudes to Taiwan's status have changed, and so China wanted to send a pretty strong signal. And so the number of military incursions into Taiwan's airspace increased. They started lobbing missiles within the vicinity of Taiwan. It was pretty intimidating. And you think, well, are they really going to attack? Probably not. But you think, well, there could be an accident, there could be some miscalculation, misunderstanding about what's going on. And so the risk of conflict definitely went up, and I think this is something that is truly serious, and if it were to happen, the implications would be enormous.

 

SIERRA: Wow. Okay. Well, that's the first one. We're only on one.

 

STARES: It doesn't really get better.

 

The Taiwan problem involves everything from the state of global democracy to the semiconductor business. While tensions eased a bit after the Trump years, the recent flare-up over a Chinese spy balloon shows just how quickly dynamics can change between the world’s two most powerful countries.

 

Let’s be clear here - a war between the United States and China could mean a conflict on a scale we have not seen since World War II.

 

For one thing, both sides have nukes. And even without that risk, a battle between superpowers could lead to mass casualties, chaos in the global economy, and humanitarian crises.

 

We’re actually going to break down the whole situation in another episode this season, so stay tuned. In the meantime, on we go. 

 

Contingency Two.

 

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CNN: The U.S. and its allies believe the Russians could mount a massive offensive once the spring comes. That’s why the Ukrainians are getting their forces ready even as they’re already fighting the Russians on several fronts in this country.

 

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ABC News: The war in Ukraine spilling over the border into Poland, a NATO ally of the U.S.

 

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ABC News: The reality is that Putin has said he’s prepared to use nuclear weapons, he has over 5,000 nuclear weapons at his disposal, and he’s already using the threat to prevent or deter the United States and NATO from getting more heavily involved in Ukraine.

 

The war in Ukraine gets worse.

 

STARES: So, foreign policy wonks, when they talk about escalation, they often make a distinction between vertical escalation, an intensity of the conflict and what kind of weapons are used. And so, there was a lot of concern last year about the possible use of nuclear weapons by Russia, tactical nuclear weapons, battlefield nuclear weapons, which sound like not such a big deal, but it is a big deal. Thousands of people could still die-

 

SIERRA: Absolutely.

 

STARES: ...and radioactive, environmental and so on. And it could escalate even further from that. So, that's one kind of escalation. The other one is called horizontal escalation, which means that it could spread geographically. And here, the concern was that Russia might choose to distract the U.S. and NATO and put pressure on, say, the Baltic states, and the war could spread there or into Belarus, which neighbors Ukraine, or there'd be some kind of accident. And there was, actually. There was a missile that hit Poland, and instead of this war being contained to Ukraine, it actually spreads and becomes a much bigger deal.

 

As a side note, the missile that hit Poland last November turned out to be part of Ukraine’s own air defense - and as a result, NATO escalation was averted. But the incident does show how precarious things can get in the fog of war. 

 

If Russia were to attack a NATO member this year, Article 5 of NATO’s treaty would compel the other allies to act – pulling the U.S. directly into the fray. As antagonism continues to mount in 2023, the chance for the conflict to escalate remains very real.

 

Contingency three.

 

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TODAY: This morning we’re learning more about an alarming rise in cyberattacks targeting key U.S. institutions.

 

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TODAY: This morning, a new urgent warning from the federal government about the rising cyber threat against the nation’s schools.

 

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SkyNews Australia: The majority of cybersecurity experts and four in five business leaders fear a catastrophic cyber event is likely in the next two years.

 

A cyber attack on critical U.S. infrastructure. 

 

STARES: Yeah. This is always tough to evaluate because there are no warning signs of this potentially happening, and we've had states meddle in our political system. Remember back in 2016, was it, when Russia was found to be meddling and running an influence campaign in the U.S. Here, the primary concern is that a bunch of hackers, possibly with the support of a government, and we often finger Russia or Iran, or North Korea, could disable critical networks used for banking, used for healthcare, transportation, our energy system. They may have even embedded certain software in the system already. There's a big fear that they could just activate it and suddenly everything goes down. You won't be able to get money out of your ATM, you won't be able to get an appointment at a hospital. Your power goes out. And so, there's this latent fear. People just feel that we are exposed to that as an open society and there are plenty of smart people who can do bad things to us. 

 

SIERRA: And that we're not prepared. 

 

STARES: I think in certain sectors we've gotten better. I think our banking is more resistant now. We have backup systems. I think our energy is more protected now. But I still think there are other areas. And frankly, these systems are so complicated and intertwined, we actually don't know until the worst happens how meddling in one area or interference in one area could somehow spread in this cascade. And so, yeah, we can think we can self-contain this. But it could spread.

 

Unlike the first two contingencies, a major cyberattack doesn’t necessarily point to war between superpowers, in fact one of the many unknowns surrounding this contingency is whether or not it could lead to real-world conflict. And that’s the thing, there’s no playbook when it comes to major cyberattacks on infrastructure. It's all still really new. We don’t know when or where it might happen, how far the problem could spread, and how much economic and human damage it might cause.

 

Contingency four.

 

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Good Morning America: Federal officials have reported a record number of encounters on the U.S.-Mexico border in the last year, and there are new concerns that it could soon increase.

 

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CBC News: Gunfire, flames, chaos as a crack down on a drug cartel spilled into the streets throughout Sinaloa.

 

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NBC News: Growing unrest in Peru, after violent protests erupted over the weekend.

 

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MSNBC: For many families in Central America it is a choice between migration and starvation.

 

Escalating unrest and violence in Latin America, fueling a surge in migration to the United States.

 

STARES: The fear here is that, and it has different components, that instability, political instability, drug related violence, gang violence in Mexico, could essentially create another surge of migrants toward the southwest border and put pressure on us. I'm not sure, it means necessarily intervention, but it's just something that people perceive to be a real source of concern. And we've seen the president was down in Mexico recently. Vice President Harris also has been working on this, and I think it's a general understanding that until the situation is stabilized there, they're just going to keep coming to America. The other interesting aspect is that Central America has become - Mexico - is more vulnerable to serious weather-related events and that can also cause migrants to head north too.

 

In 2022, there were 2.38 million encounters with undocumented immigrants at the U.S.-Mexico border. This broke the previous annual record by nearly 1 million. 

 

As Paul said, if unrest continues across Latin America, people are going to keep arriving at the border. And as the surge in crossings continues to stretch our immigration infrastructure to its limits, the humanitarian crisis could worsen. At the same time, it would exacerbate political conflict over immigration in the United States.

 

Contingency Five.

 

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ABC News: Resistance is growing inside Russia against the war in Ukraine.

 

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NBC News: Protests, tonight, across Russia.

 

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Guardian News: *chanting* “No to war.”

 

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NBC News: In more than fifty cities, Vladimir Putin - unbound.

 

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CNN: The Russian economy is deteriorating. There are more and more dead bodies coming to Russia.

 

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CNN: The attitude of people in Russia is fear.

 

Civil unrest in Russia due to the decreasing popularity of the war in Ukraine.

 

STARES: This is a new one this year, and I think it comes from the sense that Russia's policy aggression toward Ukraine is really unsustainable and it's going to be a kind of blowback amongst the public about people dying, the effect of Western sanctions on people, and that there's going to be more and more demonstrations and pressure for change. It could also be more of a top-down kind of development, being that the people around President Putin also come to the same conclusion that this is not in Russia's interest or their own personal interest and just decide that he has to go. That can be done peacefully. Like “Here's the door of Vladimir, go through it,” or it could be something more violent - and Russia's had both in the past. And as a result, there could be a change in the leadership of Russia. Of course, that could be a good thing. And as much as it might lead to the end of the war in Ukraine and possibly a better relationship with the West, could also be a bad thing because the leader of Russia, like the President of the United States, is in control of nuclear weapons. Who has the finger on the button in this situation could lead to someone that is even worse than Putin, more nationalistic, more aggressive. So, it could go in different ways here, which I think makes people very nervous.

 

Over the course of the war with Ukraine, Putin has clamped down on unrest, detaining thousands of people and causing tens of thousands of others to flee the country. All in all, he has effectively stifled media coverage and controlled the narrative. But as the war drags on, Putin has no guarantee that he will be able to maintain this control. He could also find himself in the middle of a power struggle among Moscow elites, including military hawks who feel the Russian campaign hasn’t gone far enough. The outlook is uncertain, and the stakes are incredibly high.

 

Contingency Six.

 

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CNBC Television: North Korea launched a powerful ballistic missile over Japan, one that’s capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. 

 

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TODAY: It appears to be North Korea’s most powerful missiles yet.

 

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Reuters: The North state media quoted Kim as saying his country needed to “secure overwhelming military power.”

 

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Arirang News: A senior U.S. intelligence advisor says the North will continue to build on its nuclear leverage this year, with more provocations and the testing of new weapons.

 

A crisis stemming from North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

 

STARES: North Korea has been developing nuclear weapons for many, many years, and they've tested I think six weapons now. And so, they have a weapons capability. They've also been developing delivery systems, missiles primarily. What has alarmed a lot of Americans is that it's not just short range or medium range missiles, it's long range, intercontinental range that can hit the United States. And that has a couple of implications. One, obviously we are now at risk of being attacked if someone crazy in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea decides to do that. It also means that our deterrent relationship with South Korea and Japan is also now in doubt because people think, are we really going to risk Los Angeles to defend Seoul, the capital of South Korea or Tokyo? And that could be used to coerce us. Or some accident might happen. They're launching these missiles with incredible regularity and flying over Japan. What happened if one went off course?

 

SIERRA: Yeah. It's pretty scary.

 

STARES: Would war happen? Maybe. Maybe not. I wouldn't count against it. People would say, "Hey, enough. We’ve got to deal with this guy and we're off to the races with a potential new war in Northeast Asia."

 

Even though North Korea’s nuclear capabilities may feel like old news, the continuing threat has driven neighboring countries in East Asia to up their defense spending. Japan has begun rapidly remilitarizing and South Korea is beginning to consider developing nuclear weapons themselves, after years of refusing to do so. 

 

To paraphrase a guest on our first-ever episode: the world may have grown jaded about the nuclear threat, but the weapons are still there. For the curious, we’ll be doing an episode on just that subject later this season. 

 

Contingency Seven.

 

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CBS Mornings: Conflict between Iran and Israel dramatically escalated overnight.

 

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CBS News: Israel is reportedly behind a drone strike on an Iranian military plant over the weekend.

 

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WION: Iranian media claims that the country has increased its enrichment of uranium to 60%.

 

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WION: The United States and Israel are holding their most significant military exercises to date. 

 

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CNN: And among its target audiences for the messaging is Iran.

 

A military confrontation between Israel and Iran over its nuclear weapons program.

 

STARES: Iran is known to be interested in developing a nuclear weapons capability. It says it doesn't intend to do that, but it's clearly developing the means to do that. And there's some evidence that it's been researching how to actually weaponize nuclear energy and this makes people very nervous for the same reason we are nervous about nuclear weapons in the hands of the North Koreans. How might the Iranians use this? I'm not saying actually attack someone with nuclear weapons, but again, using that to coerce or intimidate. And the country most affected and most concerned in the region is Israel. And there's been a speculation in the past that Israel would never allow Iran to go nuclear and that they would destroy the nuclear facilities and do everything to prevent Iran from acquiring that capability. And for the last, I don't know, five, six years, there's been this kind of secret war in which Israel has targeted Iranian scientists and trying to deny them the know-how, if you will, to slow down their program. And then, that puts the U.S. in a difficult situation. Do we support Israel in that? I think the chances are that we would because it's not in our interest either. But we are talking about, potentially, a very big attack on Iran that could spread. Iran could retaliate in places like Lebanon, on the Israeli border, in Syria, elsewhere. You know, Iran is already providing Russia with drones to help them in the war in Ukraine. So, the potential for Iran to do a lot of mischief, not only in the region but outside is very high. So, things are coming to a head. There were hopes that the JCPOA, this is the Iran nuclear deal, would be renegotiated after President Trump withdrew from it for reasons we don't quite understand. But that has so far not succeeded. And later this year, the agreement, more of an informal agreement over restraining Iran's missile systems also comes to an end and that could be another reason for a crisis. So, a lot of concern about a potential Israel-Iran crisis in the region.

 

SIERRA: Well, Iran's been in the news over this last year because of internal unrest. Do you think that the government will be distracted or switch its focus?

 

STARES: Great question. There's been a lot of unrest. Many Iran watchers think this is the end of the regime. I'm not quite as optimistic of that. But if the momentum of these protests increase that will put pressure on the regime, that could create internal stresses in the regime, and it could collapse. It could make them even more hard line and they begin to use extreme force. But it could also, maybe, conduct activities outside of Iran designed to distract or to create a crisis that would somehow undermine the protestors and they would feel that they have to, to use a term, “rally around the flag.” So all those things are possible.

 

And there you have your top seven, rounded out by the threat of war with Iran over its nuclear program. Yikes.

 

With threats like these, it’s no wonder that Paul has developed such a zen-like demeanor, given that he has to think about this stuff every single day. 

 

As is the case with Taiwan and several others, many of these crises seem to have the potential to pull the United States into conflict overseas. Not with rogue terrorist groups, or weak states, but with powerful countries, many of whom wield nuclear weapons. 

 

SIERRA: Do you see any themes that jump out to you across these top threats? 

 

STARES: I think the most interesting takeaway from this year's survey was not on the survey. For the first time in fifteen years, there wasn't a 9/11 contingency, a mass casualty terrorist attack against the U.S. And for many years after 9/11, we were so preoccupied with the terrorist threat. But this year, that wasn't even proposed to be included in the survey, yet let alone in the survey. And many of the other places around the world that preoccupied us after 9/11 for twenty years: Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, terrorist activity in parts of Africa. Until relatively recently, these were the top concerns of the U.S. foreign policy statute. They're nowhere to be seen, or rather they're really low down now in terms of priorities. So, it's why I think that the 9/11 era is now over. And so, to me that is probably one of the big takeaways.

 

SIERRA: So now, I guess I have to ask, what era are we currently in?

 

STARES: Well, most foreign policy experts call it the new era of great power competition. 

 

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PolicyED: Great power competition.

 

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Forbes Breaking News: Great power competition.

 

STARES: That's the term you hear all the time in Washington, it's the buzzword. GPC, Great Power Competition is the acronym. Sometimes people just talk about strategic rivalry with major powers. But great power competition is what we seem to be moving into.

 

The term Great Power Competition, or GPC, can seem a bit wonky, but it’s actually pretty simple. For many decades after World War II, a lot of experts thought that we may have finally left behind the part of human history where powerful, highly developed nations fought wars with each other. That notion seems to be changing, and conflict and war between powerful countries is back on the table. Think of places like the U.S., China, Russia, European powers, India, etc.

 

STARES: The big question is, "Is it going to be the last time?" I.e. the Cold War? And people say, "Well, if it's like the last one, we can deal with that through military deterrence, through diplomacy, arms control, things like that." Other people say, "No, actually, it may not be like the last time because there are more players now on the scene.” And so, this is a more complex era, and you could also see considerable shifts in the relative standing of the major powers. And that traditionally has been associated with a lot of instability, rising power, people get worried about it, but you also have declining powers. And here, obviously, people think of Russia becoming like a rogue state and being a source of tension and conflict. So, we could be in a very different era to the Cold War. The other big question I think your listeners would be interested in is, "If tensions are rising amongst the major powers, how are we going to cooperate on these other big issues?"

 

SIERRA: You're jumping to my...

 

STARES: Climate, another pandemic, runaway artificial intelligence. There's all kinds of horrific scenarios that you can dream up, right? Biodiversity loss, collapse of the ocean systems. I think this is probably one thing that everybody agrees on, is that you can only deal with these problems through broad international cooperation. And unless the major powers are leading the way, that's going to be hard. So, on the one hand you see increasing friction, competition, rivalry, even conflict, yet the world needs more cooperation. So, how are we going to reconcile that? And that I think is probably one of the biggest questions moving forward.

 

SIERRA: What role do you think that climate change did play on the survey, and what you're looking towards over the next year?

 

STARES: It's really interesting this year because in previous years, we always got questions saying, "Why aren't you assessing climate change?" And I'd say, "I would love to do that, but it's really difficult to define a discrete series of events in which something related to the climate, a hurricane or a drought or some severe weather event causes conflict. And it's just too simplistic a relationship." But at the same time, it's clear that the environment, climate change is now having an effect on the risk of conflict. It's what is sometimes called a risk magnifier or a stressor. And so, this year, I think probably for the first time we saw three or four of the contingencies explicitly referring to climate-related or environmental-related factors as a contributor to conflict. And that ain't gonna go away. We're going to see more of that in the coming years and particularly in Africa, which is probably the most vulnerable, maybe in South Asia with water and typhoons, Southeast Asia, and Central America. And this could be, as you say, one of the defining concerns of our age, but to deal with that, we're going to need cooperation amongst the major powers. So, at the same time, we're at loggerheads over Ukraine and Taiwan. Can we compartmentalize things, ring fence them, how are we going to do this?

 

SIERRA: I was going to say no, I don't think so. I mean, I think exactly that, there's this focusing on great power competition. Do you think there is a risk of overlooking things like, let's say, climate change or even problems that are building in other areas of the world?

 

STARES: I think there's definitely a risk that there's such bipartisan pressure to be tough on Russia and China and we know why, we understand why that is. No one can excuse what Russia's done in Ukraine or the intimidating aggressive tactics of Beijing. But at the same time, we've got to figure out a way to, you either compartmentalize things, you come to some understanding that there are certain existential problems, life-or-death issues that we have to deal with and we're going to put the other stuff to the side and focus on this. And to some people, the need to do this is so strong that it will happen. I'm less optimistic because human nature can be frankly self-defeating and irrational. And so, I'm not totally sure that we will strike that bargain and separate these things. So I hope I'm wrong, but-

 

SIERRA: Yes. Break the streak.

 

STARES: Human nature is not always so rational and benign, so- 

 

SIERRA: Well, hopefully when we speak to you next season, everything on your list will be amiss and if not, at least we're better prepared for what's to come this year.

 

STARES: Amen.

 

SIERRA: Thank you for joining us, Paul.

 

STARES: You're very welcome.

 

Forecasting is an inexact science, but it’s also a necessary one, especially when it comes to international relations. It pays to be aware, and it pays to have a plan. 

 

But the PPS is only a snapshot of the risks as they exist now. And if there's one thing we've learned in recent years, it's that global conditions can shift rapidly. Whatever happens, we'll be here, watching right alongside you.

 

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 [email protected] or you can hit us up on Twitter at @CFR_org.

 

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. 

 

The show is produced by Asher Ross and me, Gabrielle Sierra. Our sound designer is Markus Zakaria. Our associate podcast producer is Molly McAnany. Our interns this semester are Emily Pace and Rebecca Rottenberg.

 

Robert McMahon is our Managing Editor, and Doug Halsey is our Chief Digital Officer. Extra help for this episode was provided by Noah Berman and Kali Robinson.

 

Our theme music is composed by Ceiri Torjussen. We’d also like to thank Richard Haass, Jeff Reinke and our co-creator Jeremy Sherlick.

 

You can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your audio. 

 

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