Raleigh Report - January 2026

“That’s enough now.” — Jens-Frederik Nielsen, Greenland’s prime minister, speaking to the United States

Three notes and one song after the seismic shifts at the beginning of the new year.

We are hearing a lot about what we should learn from history (i.e., gunboat diplomacy, the end of historic alliances, etc.), the precursors to world wars, and the full end of the post-Cold War era. A lot of that is good food for thought. Now, we have entered the age of predators, and conflict is evolving for it. Let’s reflect just a moment on the current political atmosphere, the nature of power competition, and the forms of conflict that will emerge. 

1. Time has accelerated 

In the post-WWII era, we had a drastically reformed power atmosphere, an unstoppable rising United States, a bimodal world leading to proxy conflicts, and quite a number of civil wars as rebels sought international patrons in a pseudo-ideological battle for national power and alliance building. The external funding created long-running insurgencies and hampered economic and political development in devastating ways. We still saw terrors, horrors, and destruction, but because they were outside the “West” generally, they were treated like a poor-country problem. 

In the post-Cold War era, a formula for political and economic growth (the “end of history”) presumed that democracy, markets, institutions, economic growth, etc., would be an effective counter to the motivation and costs of conflict. Rapidly expanding international institutions, “norms,” and “rules” were designed to ensure equitable development and the protection of civilians. But there was a lot of pushback, both to the formula’s assumptions that development leads to peace and to the idea that conflict could not evolve for these new systems. The end of that system is fully complete, and with little benefit to civilians. Political inclusion created new forms of prolific violence, power showed a remarkable ability to use and abuse violence toward its own ends, no one followed the rules if it was not in their interest, and the West as a “moral arbiter” was superficial. 

Now, our age of predators. The game is afoot. The US has struck the first blow to Venezuela using the tools available to it: overwhelming military prowess and a delusional sense of ownership in the hemisphere. It didn’t prepare, it didn’t prevaricate. It doesn’t look like a strategy but a “move” that will lead others to move. In Venezuela, after pumping enough oil (at gunpoint or otherwise) to drive down the global oil price, both Russia and Saudi Arabia may be in more malleable positions: Russia’s self-funding of the Ukraine war will end, and Saudi Arabia will be tempted into the Abraham Accords. This will all be necessary for the eventual hit on Iran, where Israel will require the use of that alliance and territory. China (which bought Venezuelan oil and futures) will be given carte blanche in its own “sphere of influence” in exchange for turning a blind eye on the alliances it has spent quite some time building (with Russia, Iran, and Venezuela). These shifting political tectonic plates are supposed to usher in areas of control rather than a global war. Yet, there are no fewer than a million ways this “clean” version of the game can and will go wrong. At the very least, Cuba, Greenland, and Taiwan are dead men walking.   

2.       Warlords  

Over Christmas, I watched a BBC series from the 1970s on “The War Lords,” which was presented by an aged British professor who spoke for 30 minutes each about Mussolini, Stalin, Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt, and Tojo. The point of the series was to emphasize that WWII had been dominated by singular men who made executive decisions and demands in all of the relevant countries that defined that era and war. These leaders made decisions without consultation, compromise, or competition. So, a war of warlords is especially destructive as they seek to exploit or enforce demands. 

This has such resonance at the moment: We have all noticed that the Trump administration has a personal nature to decisions on tariffs, conflicts, directives, appointments, etc. But in other places — Israel, Iran, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Turkey, India, to name a few — we are seeing the exact same highly personalized and individual decisions about domestic and international politics. 

Influencing warlords is about getting personal, and very few of us can hope to come anywhere near the personal, but we will bear the costs for these decisions. 

Conflicts by these individual decisions are big by design. Spheres of influence are also supposed to mean “spheres of protection.” But they won’t, in practice. All sorts of other conflicts will continue, and indeed flourish. Let me list what I am expecting, in addition to the conflict between these warlord countries: 

a) Huge efforts in armed recruitment, especially as warlords are made aware that AI is not going to fight these wars for them. 

b) A flourishing “conflict as a service” market for paramilitaries. 

c) The expansion of opportunities for terrorist groups (both to take advantage of disorder and to offer destabilization services for competing warlords). 

d) Smaller, peripheral countries will experience more coups and power grabs as they are valued as allies, not democrats. 

e) In those same places, expect more mass killings of civilians and citizens as they fall prey to violent elite competition.

f) More riots and mobs as the only public weapon to wield. 

g) Resource grabs and resource protection rackets. 

h) More assassinations of senior figures when seen as obstacles. 

i) Investment will continue (especially in resource extraction, defense, etc.), and private and elite militias will be used to protect investment areas. 

3.       Risk in a time of “conflict as a service”

For the conflict analyst community, these events represent both a drastic turn in context and call for a similar change in perspective. Before we start on the outrage, let me be quite explicit: No one cares that we are appalled by this, and no one is coming to stop this. 

If I am outraged by anything, it is how I can reasonably assess risk when individuals are making decisions largely based on their aesthetics of power, their need to exaggerate their might, and how to make the biggest global story about national interest. There is less evidence of a strategy to assess risks. The conflict analysis community at present has no confidence and no authority. What value do we have? It used to be that people were advocating for a silent and vulnerable group — that is no longer of value. Further, pacifism or speaking of peace is now seen as a luxury belief. It used to be that people had insights from models or experience or policy — that has been rejected, as have academic renditions of politics and even recent history. 

Yet, there are ways to have positions on the patterns and directions of conflict without succumbing to awfulizing or moralizing. We can assess what is happening and hold ourselves to standards of realism — by acknowledging the presence of many simultaneous threats;  honesty — in acknowledging that some threats and actions matter more than others and avoiding being an unreliable narrator; and independence — by not advancing someone else’s causes or interests. We can show people how to avoid the worst consequences of what they are doing, and if they do that anyway, to explain what the worst is, how it will play out, who is going to benefit, who is going to lose, where it is going to spread, and how to get out of it. 

Notes and notions

I am almost embarrassed at the sorry state of “notes and notions” this month. We had a quiet and lovely Christmas after a busy December. If anything comes to mind, it is feeding birds with fat cakes that can hang from fruit trees. Word to the wise, just buy them rather than make them, unless you have a real desire to shop for mealworms. Also, my sole gardening advice is always to choose to grow a fruit tree rather than flowers. Flowers break your heart. 

In Irish news, I am continually worried about the state of Ireland’s maritime defense and concept of neutrality, no matter how many puff articles appear in the Irish Times about it. Part of Christmas was spent informing the children about maritime security, which they either ignored or seemed to want to actively defy. 

A good read was this article in which Financial Times spoke to the head of Australian intelligence, Andrew Shearer. They had this to write: “Conflicting priorities are a constant battle, he says. ‘At different times we have had to deal with malign state actors or domestic terrorism but generally not both,’ he explains. ‘Espionage, foreign interference and cyber attacks by foreign intelligence services are at unprecedented levels while religiously and ideologically motivated forms of terrorism remain a sickening reality.’”

I have become slightly obsessed with the BRICS and “swing states.” 

ACLED webinars

Webinar | How US intervention in Venezuela may shape conflict in Latin America and the Caribbean

Join ACLED on Friday, 16 January 2026, at 10 a.m. EST for a live conversation with regional experts Maria Fernanda Arocha, Sandra Pellegrini, and Tiziano Breda, as they unpack the implications of US actions in Venezuela and what this means for conflict dynamics across the region. This event will be held in Spanish, with live English interpretation. Register here.

Webinar | Ransom, gold, and spoils of war: Islamic State Mozambique's new cash flow

ACLED’s second webinar of the year will examine new income sources that fund Islamic State Mozambique operations across northern Mozambique. Join us on Thursday, 22 January 2026, at 9 a.m. EST for an in-depth conversation with Peter Bofin, ACLED’s Southeast Africa Senior Analyst, and Emilio Zeca, a Consultant and Senior Researcher at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies at the Joaquim Chissano University. Register now to secure your spot. 

ACLED in the media

• Our latest Conflict Index, which we released at the end of 2025, has garnered a fair bit of attention. Among the coverage we received, The Telegraph interviewed me for their podcast Battle Lines, in which I spoke about the conflict trends we’re seeing. The Kyiv Independent picked up on the fact that Russia’s war in Ukraine was the world’s deadliest conflict in 2025, and The Washington Post used our data in reporting that 2025 was a year of heightened conflict.
• The series of reports as part of our Conflict Watchlist 2026 was also well received. To name a few mentions, the one on the Sahel was picked up by Bloomberg, Newsweek picked up the report on Sudan, Reuters did so for Myanmar, and France24 reported on our findings on Latin America and the Caribbean.
• Sky News used our data in a syndicated scrollytelling piece, Israel attacking Lebanon every four hours as ceasefire frays.
• CNN, The Washington Post, Sky News, and The Times made use of ACLED data in their reporting following the US strike on Islamic State terrorists in Nigeria in December, and DW News spoke to Miriam Adah.
• Tomás Queface was interviewed by The Guardian for its article Hundreds of thousands newly displaced as Islamic State insurgency expands in Mozambique.
• The US’ capture of Maduro has generated plenty of interest in expert commentary from ACLED. To name a few examples: Tiziano Breda spoke to The Guardian, The Independent, Huff Post, and The Telegraph.