The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a U.S. think tank, has released a new report that predicts the likelihood of potential conflicts around the world in 2021. For the first time, the report ranks a serious crisis between the United States and China over Taiwan as the highest level of potential global conflict.
The report argues that while attention is focused on a series of pressing domestic crises that the new Biden administration will have to deal with, U.S. policymakers should not ignore the risk of a serious international conflict.
“Since 2008, the Center for Preventive Action, a division of the Institute for Foreign Relations, has published an annual report based on its preventive priorities for the coming year to anticipate and assess potential conflicts or crises that could erupt or escalate.
For the past 13 years, the Center has surveyed hundreds of U.S. foreign policy experts each fall, asking them to list 30 potential global crisis or conflict factors for the next 12 months, assessing their probability of occurrence and potential impact on U.S. interests. The risk assessment scale was divided into three levels based on the probability of occurrence and the degree of impact on interests.
The 2021 Preparedness Priorities Survey report offers several important insights.
First, concerns about North Korea’s further development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles are the most important contingency of the year. Experts view this as both a high probability and a high impact risk. The Biden transition team has been observed to have made little statement on the threat posed by North Korea, although North Korean leader Kim Jong Un appears intent on challenging the new U.S. administration. At the 8th Party Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea, which concluded on January 12, Kim Jong-un declared that he would “vigorously push forward the nuclear power building that has been started long ago” and called the U.S. “the biggest enemy” of North Korea.
Secondly, in 2021, for the first time, a serious crisis between the U.S. and China over Taiwan has been raised to a level 1 risk. The “U.S.-China crisis over Taiwan” was first listed in the report in 2019 and then classified as a Level 2 risk for the second consecutive year. However, as the confrontation between the U.S. and China intensifies, experts predict that China will intensify pressure on Taiwan at the political and economic levels, leading to a serious crisis between the U.S. and China, thus raising the second level of risk to the first level, which is expected to have a medium probability of occurring this year and a “high” degree of impact on U.S. interests.
Third, China and India are assessed as Level 2 risk due to military conflict along the disputed border between the two countries, which may reflect high concerns about the growing risk of military confrontation between major powers.
However, the experts surveyed believe that the potential risk of an armed standoff between the U.S. and China in the South China Sea in 2021 has decreased, from Tier 1 to Tier 2. This assessment became the only event among the report’s list of 30 potential crisis or conflict factors that had a reduced chance of occurring.
In addition, in addition to a serious crisis between the U.S. and China over Taiwan, other Tier 1 risks with a medium chance of serious impact include an armed standoff between Iran and the U.S. (or a U.S. ally), a cyber attack that severely cripples U.S. critical infrastructure, a rise in military tensions due to Russian intervention or intimidation of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members, and a terrorist attack resulting in mass casualties on U.S. soil.
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