Preventive Action Update

October 14, 2025

Dear Colleague,

The Center for Preventive Action needs your help compiling its eighteenth annual Preventive Priorities Survey (PPS) for 2026. The PPS ranks emerging and escalating conflicts and sources of instability around the world based on their likelihood of occurring and their potential harm to U.S. national interests. We are asking you to share the conflicts that you are worried about in 2026 , so we can include them in this year’s survey. Please submit your responses by Sunday, October 26.

Later this year, foreign policy experts will rank some of your suggestions by their likelihood and potential harm to the United States. The findings will be published in a report this December.

Residents at the site of an apartment building hit during Russian drone and missile strikes in Kyiv, Ukraine, on August 28, 2025. (Reuters)

Below are examples of contingencies from the 2025 PPS:

• Direct military confrontation between Iran and Israel, triggered by Iran’s support for militant groups in the region and continued nuclear weapons development
• Militant activity and repression in Indian-administered Kashmir provoke renewed tensions between India and Pakistan and a breakdown of cease-fire commitments
• Protracted ethnic and political conflict in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo over territory and natural resources leads to worsening humanitarian conditions and regional tensions
• Major Russian military gains in Ukraine, including the widespread destruction of critical infrastructure, and decreasing foreign assistance to Kyiv lead to a cease-fire favorable to Moscow

I look forward to reading your suggestions. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Dr. Paul B. Stares
General John W. Vessey Senior Fellow for Conflict Prevention and Director of the Center for Preventive Action
Council on Foreign Relations

About The Center for Preventive Action

The Center for Preventive Action (CPA) aims to help policymakers devise timely and practical strategies to prevent and mitigate armed conflict around the world, especially in places where U.S. interests are most at risk. Geopolitical friction among the major powers is intensifying, creating serious risks of armed conflict, while the effects of climate change and other threats to international peace and security are evolving in new and destabilizing ways. CPA’s work is focused on trying to anticipate how and where those challenges could arise, and which are more deserving of attention than others, so that policymakers can prioritize and craft sensible preventive measures.

Paul B. Stares

General John W. Vessey Senior Fellow for Conflict Prevention and Director of the Center for Preventive Action

Natalie Caloca
Assistant Director, Center for Preventive Action

Molly Carlough
Program Coordinator, Center for Preventive Action

Research Associate, Counterterrorism and Homeland Security

Abigail McGowan
Global Conflict Analyst, Center for Preventive Action

Council on Foreign Relations

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