January 16, 2024

Instability generated by nonstate armed actors and threats posed by illegal economies will grow in 2024, jeopardizing a wide range of U.S. interests as regional and global powers look to exploit them. Will Washington find a way to rebalance its preoccupation with great power competition by mounting an effective response toward nonstate armed actors and appropriately engaging in other countries’ important internal issues? An effective response requires a U.S. policy that does not neglect or distort internal developments as essentially driven by Russia and China’s machinations.

2023 dramatically showed how U.S. foreign policy had moved beyond the post-9/11 era and its focus on internal security developments and stabilization. Washington’s overwhelming prioritization of countering China and Russia translated into great power competition dominating the U.S. agenda around the world, including in Africa and Latin America, even as a myriad of nonstate armed actor threats escalated.

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