Clionadh’s Monthly ACLED Data & Analysis Outlook
Catastrophe is coming
Well, it’s official: the world really does love a chancer. Everyone has their own explanation for Trump’s sweeping return to power. Maybe it’s populism, or a deep-seated preference for ‘strong-man’ leadership. It is close to impossible to neatly explain the actions of the millions of Americans — men, women, rural, urban, young, and old — who turned out for him. Yet, regardless of the reasons, this outcome will reverberate across every corner of American society and beyond.
Taking comfort where I can, there was no violence — as detailed in an ACLED Q&A analysis unpacking shifts in extremist activity and demonstration trends. Ripping that comfort away from you, there will be a lot more violence. But, not — I repeat, not — in the US. The ‘resistance’ is going to have to be content with the rest of the world teetering on disaster.
With Trump’s re-election, there is a palpable fear that aspiring dictators and ‘strong-men’ will be rewarded for bold moves, bold policies, and a disregard for human rights. But will these changes in leadership and priorities lead to greater conflict? Yes.
I have three predictions for what global disorder and politics will look like at the end of Trump’s second term.
Might makes right
First, internationally, ‘might makes right’ will be the guiding principle.
Governments and their leaders across the world will not feel constrained to observe or defend human rights. This will not be such an enormous shift to what is happening now — as both the US and the UN have lost significant authority in how they advise and intervene with governments and their conflicts. But as a result, conflict incident rates have nearly doubled since 2020, and increased by 22% in just the past year. One in eight of us are now exposed to political violence, and many of those people are repeatedly affected.1 ACLED data from 2020 to present. All data are available to the public through ACLED’s website The recent year-on-year increase of above 14% will likely continue.
Going forward, the US will either ignore conflicts or support those whose interests are aligned with theirs. For aspiring rebels, that is how you make your pitch to Trump’s administration.
Where the US sees a common interest, you can expect a change in tone and action. This can manifest in some new — and massive — conflicts. For example, there will be fewer diplomatic guardrails around Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu as he seeks to attack a clearly weakened Iran, and the first sign of this is in how he fired his more cautious defense minister, Yoav Gallant, the moment a Trump win was likely. Netanyahu is likely to start a process of regime dissolution in Iran that could be openly supported by the US. Some hastily gathered anti-regime elites will be dug out and sent in as a potential new government, gathering the protesting public as its base. This will break Iran, as the regime is unlikely to go quietly. This potential conflict would rival Syria’s in its size and scope.
The US will also stop seeing interests where they currently have. Some conflicts — like Ukraine’s — will end with a sad limp as the US makes its position clear, allowing the conflict to shrivel through a lack of arms supply, financing, and support. What are Putin’s plans for eastern Ukraine? What are his plans for further entrenchments into Ukraine? And NATO states? All to be negotiated, rather than stopped.
More elite conflicts in non-democracies
Second, there will be more ‘non-democracies’ and ‘quasi-democracies’ and with that, the conflicts that we regularly see in these places. These regimes have a number of relevant traits that shape their likelihood of conflict: they are many (and their numbers are rising); they all have some democratic features (e.g., they hold elections) coupled with a continuously high rate of political violence; and many are stable mainly through public repression until the internal elite core begins to contest each other for power.
There is an enormous range of these regimes: Ones like in Russia, for instance, that maintain formal democratic processes but is marked by deep-seated elite competition and a persistent use of violence to suppress opposition; to places like Turkey and the Philippines, which are ‘illiberal’ with frequent crackdowns on political opposition and civil society. These dynamics are common in non-democracies, and stability often comes through public repression and precarious elite alliances, which can quickly unravel into violent conflict when elites begin vying for control. Many other countries across South America, Asia, and Africa are moving away from political and civic freedoms as the foundations of their political systems. Instead, who holds power and how to keep it has become the focus of elites.
Conflict comes out of a calculation from one group that they are stronger than the others, and can take the authority, territory, population control, or resources that they want. It comes from having power and wanting more. As a result, powerful elites see conflict as beneficial to their career prospects. Regimes are populated by people who want to keep and build their power. They will use violence to do it, and heaven help us all, because we voted them in.
Modern governments are often very inclusive of differing political identities, and have large bureaucracies with many appointed positions of power. Thus, keeping your opponents inside a big tent has proven very effective in lowering the rate of civil wars, but it has drastically increased the rate of violent political competition, often using militias as personal gangs and armies.
More elite conflict will take place through election violence, higher political assassination rates, and more attempted and successful violent coups. Again, this type of violence is already underway, but the numbers of gangs and militias will continue to soar as the number of ‘non-democracies’ increases.
Warfare vs. welfare
Finally, there will be no ideological agendas for conflict. Variable ideologies, grievances, and political exclusion were never particularly compelling or well-evidenced causes for conflict. But these all provided some basis upon which to negotiate endings. If a conflict’s ends justify its means—why have peace negotiations, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding forces? Power ratios will determine who wins conflicts.
Freed from the constraints of having to look like an armed group fighting for a cause or community, armed groups will be laser-focused on ‘warfare’ rather than ‘welfare.’ What does this mean in practice? If armed groups are contesting each other on how much violence they can create, they tend to focus on three things: (1) attacking soft targets like civilians — where terrorizing populations and mass atrocities are strategies for notoriety. (2) Attacking and controlling infrastructure for territorial gain, along with securing financial options like smuggling and extortion, and controlling finance options like smuggling and extortion. And (3) killing or usurping opponents (including other armed groups) to clear the field.
Faced with a much more powerful and persistent group, governments and external powers have held the line and not rewarded this violence with political power. It is the reason a group like al-Shabaab — clearly the stronger entity compared to the Somali government — remains an insurgent group when it evidently runs most of rural Somalia. Those days are over, and space will need to be made for those who won power on the broken backs of civilians.
Notes and Notions
This big election year has ended with a real bang (actually the Irish elections will be limping along here soon, so not totally over). On a personal note, recent elections are often positive for people that might — for example — roundly show distaste and distrust of any elite, educated, women, and /or foreigners (we are not called this anymore, but I am ‘taking it back’). I am not taking the animosity personally, mainly because it is coming from all sides. The losing sides (which is not always the left!) are making sure that we don’t get too big for our boots, mainly through enacting a solidly left principle that “the beatings will continue until morale improves.” The joke is on them because that is all very familiar to me, having grown up in rural Ireland in the ‘80s. For a cinematic treatment of Irish, 1980s, quiet rural horror, please go see “Small Things Like These,” which is, in a very subdued way, a Christmas film. The film is based on a short and harrowing novel by Claire Keegan, and it is just as well that Cillian Murphy is not getting paid by the word. If you like it, you will love “The Quiet Girl,” which is magical.
