Sean Corbett, Chairman of Janes National Security Advisory Board gives his expert opinion on some of the global threats he anticipates this year.
It is a brave person these days that predicts, with any level of confidence, the major events and security challenges that are likely to dominate and influence the global security environment over the next 12 months. Predictive intelligence is notoriously challenging but also arguably the most valuable of the ‘ints’, and it is always worthwhile benchmarking ongoing and likely crisis points as a pointer of where to focus; the obvious, and the not so obvious. A brief roundup of this nature will necessarily be incomplete and somewhat superficial. Each scenario could be subject to a far deeper analysis that exposes the complexities and nuances and delves into alternative futures. As ever, at the end of the year it will be interesting to see what came to pass and what did not, but it is a racing certainty that something new and unforeseen will grab the headlines at some stage. It is fair to say though, the year is unlikely to be one of ‘strategic resolution’ and many of the extant challenges will endure well beyond the end of 2026, with ongoing wars continuing, regimes under sustained pressure, and alliances significantly tested by political uncertainty, economic strain, and demographic factors.
Russia-Ukraine: A continuing war of attrition (Confidence: High)
The conflict has evolved into an industrial‑tempo war dominated by munitions production, drones, electronic warfare, air defence, and manpower regeneration. These dynamics favour endurance over manoeuvre and reduce the likelihood of sudden collapse on either side. Despite the shuttle diplomacy and optimistic posturing currently playing out in the media, it is hard to see a robust, negotiated resolution any time soon. There is too much distance between Russia and Ukraine, particularly relating to the ceding of Ukrainian sovereign territory. The key factor that would change that calculation would be if the United States stops supplying critical weapons systems and enablers to Ukraine. European countries simply do not have the capabilities (or financial appetite) to fill a void and if this happens, the military pressure on Ukraine may become such that further swathes of territory in the Donbas would be lost. Hopeful narratives that claim the Russian war economy cannot sustain the conflict in the short to medium term are wide of the mark and fail to understand the hardships that the Russian people will endure, Putin’s stamina, and the willingness of Russia’s strategic partners to benefit from enhanced trade opportunities resulting from the conflict. At the same time, Russia has neither the mass nor the military acumen to force a complete capitulation and even if they were to make further inroads, the conflict would morph into a counterinsurgency that would become very messy indeed for occupying forces.
Russia beyond Ukraine: Increased hybrid pressure on Europe (Confidence: High)
Unable to achieve rapid success in Ukraine, Russia is increasingly incentivised to impose costs on European states through grey‑zone activity. Sabotage, arson, cyber intrusion, disinformation and infrastructure disruption, already employed in 2025, including damage to undersea cables and drone incursions over major European airports, are likely to proliferate through 2026 and offer Moscow a deniable and relatively low‑cost means of coercion below the threshold of collective military response. Evidence since 2022 suggests a sustained shift towards the use of proxies and criminal intermediaries, lowering operational risk and complicating attribution. In 2026, this pattern is likely to intensify, particularly against logistics, defence supply chains, transport nodes, and energy infrastructure. The strategic objective is not decisive disruption but cumulative pressure, political distraction, and erosion of public confidence.
Iran: Internal pressure and succession risk (Confidence: Medium to High)
In 2025, the Iranian regime suffered a significant strategic shock both through the dismantlement of their Hamas and Lebanese Hizbullah proxies and the direct Israeli and US airstrikes on their nuclear programme and military infrastructure, and the consequences will resonate throughout the next year. Iran enters 2026 under sustained internal pressure from economic malaise, demographic change, and social repression. Periodic protest activity is likely, but the regime retains strong coercive and surveillance capabilities and has repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to employ them. As such, protests alone are unlikely to threaten regime survival. In parallel, a deliberate programme to reconstitute key military capabilities, such as air defences, ballistic missiles and drones, supported by their Russian, Chinese, and North Korean strategic partners, will feature. Despite their defiant rhetoric, this effort is likely to be calibrated so as not to attract additional airstrikes. Resurrecting the nuclear programme will also be a priority but conducted in a highly secretive manner and will fall some way short of weaponisation. While the June 2025 airstrikes and associated activity undoubtedly heavily impacted the programme, it will not have been completely eradicated, and will have moved even further underground, both literally and metaphorically. The highest‑impact uncertainty is leadership succession. The death or incapacitation of the 86-year-old supreme leader could trigger elite factionalism, Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) intervention, or unstable collective leadership. Such a transition would have significant internal and regional implications and any transition is unlikely to be smooth.
China and Taiwan: Coercion short of war (Confidence: Medium to High)
China will continue to exert pressure on Taiwan through military exercises, maritime presence, legal measures, and information operations. Recent large‑scale drills have demonstrated a rehearsal of blockade and joint fires scenarios without crossing the threshold of an invasion. This activity continues the Beijing strategy of ‘normalising’ coercive presence, testing international responses, and compressing Taiwan’s reaction time. But the economic and political conditions are not yet ripe for a full-scale invasion. Estimates vary considerably but such an event would wipe out somewhere between USD2 trillion and USD10 trillion off the global economy. In addition, while modernisation of the Chinese military continues apace, it has some way to go before it achieves a truly fully integrated, all weather, day-night capacity. An outside chance of a full-scale invasion is possible if Beijing perceives a window of opportunity caused by US distractions elsewhere but that represents an outlier.
Chinese global agenda (Confidence: High)
China’s global agenda is now well documented, but recent events in Venezuela and other Latin American have shone a spotlight on its influence well beyond East Asia. China will have been somewhat unnerved by the US action, that will not only impact its hydrocarbon imports but challenge Chinese influence in the region. Beijing is therefore likely to redouble both soft power efforts and power projection, including infrastructure investment in partner nations. In parallel it will look to consolidate and expand influence in Africa and the Middle East, intensifying trade efforts and security co-operation and creating dependencies that extend China’s strategic reach.
Gaza and the Middle East: fragile and reversible calm (Confidence: Low to Medium)
The fragile ceasefire in Gaza is likely to remain exactly that throughout 2026, as the underlying political drivers of the conflict, ideological, governance, security control, and reconstruction, remain unresolved. A ceasefire or limited political arrangement in Gaza may reduce the likelihood of large‑scale hostilities, but the environment will remain fragile throughout 2026. The potential for limited and isolated flash points is high, and the challenges of converting the ceasefire into a durable political settlement are significant to say the least. Consequently, there will be no strategic resolution to this thorny issue any time soon. That said, international stakeholders, including those in the Middle East, will remain invested in containing a wholesale resumption of hostilities, and together are likely to prevent renewed wide-scale conflict.
Venezuela and beyond: increased volatility (Confidence: Medium)
At the time of going to press, it is not yet a safe assumption that a transfer of power will be orderly and secure. While the general population has welcomed the removal of Maduro, there are those, including a substantial number of military and paramilitary leaders, whose future was wedded to his administration. They are not likely to give up easily, and political upheaval, contested legitimacy and even widespread violence are a distinct possibility, particularly if the removal of Maduro does not visibly result in significant reforms. Regionally, there will some extremely nervous national leaders, including those of Panama, Colombia, Cuba and even Mexico, but how their concerns are manifested remains to be seen. They will need to find a balance between placating their great power neighbour with maintaining favourable trading relations with their primary benefactors, notably Russia and China. That will prove challenging indeed and they will feel caught between a rock and a hard place. The potential for both miscalculation and follow-up US activity in the region is high.
The High North: Political posturing and military intensification: (Confidence: High)
Traditionally downplayed as a focus for potential conflict, (‘Arctic exceptionalism’), the High North is now rapidly rising up the agenda as a zone of intensifying competition. Already critically important for early warning and satellite tracking, large swathes of the region are forecast to become ice free within the next 20 years. This will offer not only new northern sea trade routes but will allow access to huge reserves of natural resources. The region therefore threatens to become the next inflection point in the global competition between the US, Russia, China, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Sweden. And there are others who see themselves as valid stakeholders, most notably Türkiye and India and even Australia. This has resulted in heightened political posturing, supported by a build-up of military infrastructure (most notably by Russia), equipment modernisation for example, the Chinese icebreaking fleet), military exercises (including by NATO), and increased maritime patrols. Against this backdrop, 2026 is likely to see an increased operational tempo, more lawfare over contested maritime law and exclusive economic zone (EEZ), increased tension over ‘dual use’ bases, ports, and research sites and new strategic deployments. While all of this is likely to fall short of direct confrontation, the risk of miscalculation and isolated incidents is high, and unintended escalation cannot be ruled out.
And the rest:
The civil war in Sudan continues to be the forgotten conflict, despite experiencing some of the hardest (and most brutal) fighting. A civil war all about power struggles between the factions: the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and Rapid Support Forces (SAF), in which neither side can prevail, coupled with a lack of serious international attention, will make this endure throughout 2026, attendant with significant humanitarian consequences. Bordering seven other states, refugee flows into Chad, South Sudan, and Ethiopia risk further regional contagion. The Balkans has been simmering for some time now, with Bosnia, Kosovo, and Serb relations remaining structurally fragile. Political stasis, ethnic tension and weak institutions will continue to create an environment in which the risk of episodic unrest is significant, although the region is unlikely to descend into large-scale conflict. A resurgence of violent extremist organisations, particularly in the Maghreb and Sahel, but also in the Middle East, is a very real possibility and deserves significantly more attention. With a return to great power competition, the risk is that ungoverned spaces will again be filled by radical actors. The civil war in Myanmar, recently escalated in advance of widely discredited elections, will rumble on. And of course, if in the highly unlikely event that the US does invade Greenland, then all bets are off!
In addition to the ‘traditional’ threats detailed above, a common and concerning feature throughout will be an increased exposure to persistent grey‑zone coercion, fuelled by industrial levels of disinformation that will further fracture society cohesion. Continued advances in automation and artificial intelligence (AI) will provide both opportunities and threats. The widespread use of Large Language Models (LLMs) will provide almost instant points of reference thereby compressing decision‑making timelines, at the same time raising the risks of unintended escalation as the balance of human/machine teaming shifts towards the latter. All of this will be amplified by the scourge of disinformation and misinformation, that will continue to polarise societies, driven by the all-pervasive algorithms that reinforce our positions and block out counter views, and fueled by concerted and co-ordinated disinformation campaigns by state and non-state actors, whose aim is to erode democratic systems that rely on shared understanding of societal norms. Cyber operations will also continue to proliferate among state and non‑state actors in 2026, increasingly integrated with physical disruption and influence campaigns. AI‑enabled tools will raise the speed and scale of activity for both attackers and defenders, compressing decision timelines and increasing the risk of unintended escalation. Critical infrastructure and supply chains will remain prime targets, particularly where disruption can be plausibly denied or framed as criminal or accidental. Together, these dynamics will make 2026 a year where miscalculation, fatigue, and opportunism pose as much danger as deliberate aggression. It promises to be another ‘interesting’ year!
