Conflict Prevention

The Center for Preventive Action’s Global Conflict Tracker is an interactive guide to ongoing conflicts around the world of concern to the United States.

The following interview is with Fatma El Mehdi, one of eight negotiators in the Western Sahara peace process and a leader in the Sahrawi community.

On June 9, following a closed-door meeting, the Northern Elders Forum (NEF) issued a public statement that the Igbo-dominated southeast should be allowed to secede from the Federal Republic of Nigeria if it was necessary to avoid a civil war. NEF spokesman Hakeem Baba-Ahmed said “the Forum has arrived at the difficult conclusion that if support for secession among the Igbo is as widespread as it is being made to look, and Igbo leadership appears to be in support of it, then the country should be advised not to stand in the way.” His statement continued that secession was not in the best interest of the Igbos or of Nigerians. Rather, all should work to rebuild Nigeria. But, blocking secession “will not help a country already burdened with failures on its knees to fight another war to keep the Igbo in Nigeria.” The statement also suggested that northerners subject to harassment in the southeast should return to the north. There was no reference to secessionist sentiment in Yorubaland, in southwest Nigeria, to which former President Olusegun Obasanjo has referred. The former president said that Yoruba secession, too, would be unwise, but that maintaining unity should not come “at any cost.” Though there is no specific reference to it, clearly animating the NEF statement is the memory of Nigeria’s 1967-70 civil war, successfully fought by Nigerian nationalists to keep Igbo-dominated Biafra in the federation; it left up to two million dead. It, too, involved massive population movements, with Igbos fleeing to the south a northern pogrom and fewer northerners leaving the southeast. In the civil war, northern elites strongly supported the nationalists. Current Igbo disgruntlement has its roots in defeat in the civil war and the belief that they are marginalized from the upper reaches of the Nigerian state. (There has never been an Igbo president of Nigeria.) Such feelings of marginalization are exacerbated by Nigeria’s nationwide epidemic of violence and economic malaise. The NEF, for its part, has responded to rising insecurity in Nigeria by calling for President Buhari to resign or to be impeached. Resignation or impeachment is a reversal of the NEF’s support of Muhammadu Buhari’s presidential candidacy in 2015. It should be noted that the NEF statement in support of allowing secession had two caveats: that there be widespread support for it among the Igbo but also among their “leadership” (not further defined). While secessionist advocates will argue to the contrary, prima facie evidence for both either way is thin. Do the views of the NEF matter? How representative is it of northern elite opinion? Buhari’s Special Adviser on Media Femi Adesina responded to its June 9 statement by dismissing the NEF as “a mere irritant” that hardly exists beyond its convener, Ango Abdullahi—a distinguished, former vice chancellor (president) of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. According to Adesina, the former vice chancellor is a general with no troops. Indeed, the influence of the NEF is hard to judge. But, its public statements attract widespread media attention. As with former President Obasanjo’s comments on Yoruba separatism, at the very least the NEF statements is an indication that rising insecurity is leading at least some of Nigeria’s elites to rethink the basis of the Nigerian state—and of the consequences of its civil war.

Any doubts about the bipartisan consensus in Washington around the need to compete with China in Africa were erased in the early months of 2021, when senior Biden administration appointees like U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield took pains to agree with Republican Senators about the threat that China’s activities in Africa pose to U.S. interests, an argument that has since been reiterated by USAID Administrator Samantha Power and Secretary of State Blinken. Clearly, everyone was on the same page; the United States cannot be complacent about China’s decades-long, multifaceted campaign for access and influence on the African continent. Major powers’ interests in Africa encompass everything from concerns about geostrategic maritime chokepoints to the continent’s greater integration into the global economy, the promise and the peril of Africa’s demographic transformation, and the power of Africa’s voice and vote in global forums. While Africa need not be a theater for conflict, real tensions will persist as external powers compete not just for access to resources, but for African support for preferred governance norms and technology regimes that will shape the international order in the decades to come. But one can acknowledge that reality, find ways to mitigate U.S.-China tension, and compete more effectively and successfully without adopting major power rivalry as the primary lens through which to understand U.S. engagement in the region. That approach misunderstands African desires, and U.S. policy is unlikely to be very successful without reckoning with partners’ priorities. As diverse as African interests are, some generalizations hold true. African states seek security, prosperity, and influence in the international system commensurate with the reality that by 2050, one-quarter of the world’s population will be African. They want multiple partners and options, not a forced choice in some binary geopolitical tussle. In addition to blinding Washington to African interests, a tunnel vision focus on U.S.-China rivalry ignores the potential of U.S. relations with African states. In a narrow quest to avoid losing ground to others, the United States misses a chance to think big about the upside of Africa’s growing importance on the international stage, and to envision the possibilities of a future in which vibrant, stable African states are partners in reforming the rules-based international order in the interest of tackling global problems and advancing shared norms. Working to prevent one outcome—total Chinese political and economic dominance in Africa—is absolutely essential.  But it cannot be permitted to preclude a more strategic focus on the kind of partnerships we wish to develop, and cannot be allowed to obscure opportunities to make that vision reality. Click here to read "Major Power Rivalry in Africa" by Michelle Gavin, the fifth discussion paper in the Center for Preventive Action (CPA)'s Managing Global Disorder series.

The United States has a strong interest in avoiding a costly and potentially destabilizing strategic arms race among the major powers. Painstakingly negotiated arms control agreements of the kind pursued during the Cold War may seem like the way to accomplish this goal but there are formidable challenges to pursuing this approach. The next wave of arms control will occur amidst profound geopolitical flux, as the world adjusts to the end of U.S. primacy and rebuilds in the wake of COVID-19. Triangular asymmetries in the U.S., Chinese, and Russian nuclear postures and strategies exist within a multipolar nuclear order that also includes states such as India, North Korea, and Pakistan. Progressive military modernization and technological innovation demonstrates that a strategic arms control regime that focuses exclusively on nuclear forces will prove progressively less stabilizing over time. The development and military deployment of cyber, artificial intelligence (AI), hypersonics, and space-based capabilities by the United States, China, and Russia, may destabilize arms control efforts. Within the United States, partisan polarization hampers foreign policy and forecasts difficulties for future arms control agreements. Diverging partisan views on the nature of U.S. interests and the best methods to achieve national security objectives presents barriers to treaty ratification. Political polarization and inconsistency inject greater volatility into U.S. foreign policy and undermines the United States’ credibility as a counterparty in arms control negotiations. For all of these reasons, the traditional model of bilateral, treaty-based nuclear arms control will be hard, if not impossible, to enact and pursue. Trilateral stability requires constructing a regime of reciprocal restraints and incremental measures that will benefit immediate strategic stability, while also laying the groundwork for more dramatic future progress. A new paper for the series on series on managing global disorder argues that the United States should expand its conception of nuclear arms control to include a broader array of reciprocal restraints. In particular, the Biden administration should regulate intensifying rivalry through a series of incremental steps, including beginning negotiations to shore up the U.S.-Russia strategic arms control regime, building new habits of cooperation on strategic stability issues, establishing dialogues that can foster the development of norms and guardrails to prevent destabilizing applications of emerging technologies, and considering unilateral measures to enhance strategic stability.

The geopolitical implications of India’s tragedy won't be lost on the Biden administration

What idea—or set of ideas—will drive national security policy under the Biden administration? The Trump administration defined great power competition as the organizing principle of U.S. national security policy, framing U.S.-China in terms of strategic competition. The Biden administration’s early statements and actions indicate it has accepted this frame—but that policies toward China will differ substantially from its predecessors. Even if the Biden administration adopts a less overtly confrontational approach toward China, the risks of conflict are real and growing. The U.S.-China relationship is currently precarious, and competition is intensifying: in particular, it is assuming an overtly ideological dimension, which will only accentuate distrust and deepen the interest-based competition on both sides. Several immediate conflicts—including Taiwan and maritime disputes—could also escalate. These issues exist against the background of an accelerating arms race between the U.S. and Chinese militaries in the western Pacific. The United States' core challenge is to deter a range of Chinese behaviors but also avoid catastrophic conflict—while still advancing U.S. economic interests. Conflict prevention is only becoming more essential to U.S.-China relations as competition becomes the defining frame for U.S. policy. In a new paper for the series on series on managing global disorder, Evan S. Medeiros—Penner Family Chair in Asian Studies at Georgetown University—dives into how Washington might revitalize existing tools and build new ones in light of intensifying strategic competition and growing risks of conflict with China. Policymakers and analysts need to devote more energy and time to identifying and weighing risks of strategic competition-- bilaterally, regionally and globally—then determine how the United States and its allies can deter China without provoking armed conflict. This should include U.S. efforts to strengthen deterrence—both generally and in specific sensitive areas—bolster military cooperation among U.S. allies and security partners in Asia, and calibrate U.S. security commitments to mitigate the risk of unintended escalation of tensions during potential crises.