CNAS Insights | Eight Things to Watch for in 2026

Buckle up for a pivotal geopolitical year. In 2026, the world will struggle to make sense of U.S. actions and intentions, and Washington will remain uncertain about its own place in the world. Only one thing is certain: to expect the unexpected in Washington.

As we enter 2026, here are eight foreign policy developments to watch for.

Terrorism returns. 2025 began with an attack in my hometown of New Orleans that left 14 people dead and more than 50 injured. The year concluded with the ISIS-inspired attack on a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney, Australia. In between, ISIS carried out, planned, or inspired attacks in Britain, Russia, Germany, Austria, and elsewhere.

It’s been years since most Americans worried daily about terrorism, and a long time since defeating ISIS and al-Qaeda represented top priorities for U.S. foreign policy. To keep it that way will take greater effort. 2026 will show whether the intensification of terrorist threats continues, and how the United States and its allies respond to them.

China misses its opportunity. Beijing’s leaders must toast their good luck these days. Washington emphasizes its role in the Western Hemisphere rather than the Indo-Pacific, is straining key relationships with tariffs, and has harmed ties with new partners like India. China reacted harshly to the Japanese prime minister’s comments about Taiwan, and yet they elicited silencio from the Trump administration. Washington has relaxed export controls on advanced semiconductors, allowed TikTok to operate, and framed China not as a long-term strategic challenge to the United States but instead as a solvable economic conundrum. Beijing announced this week an imminent military exercise that looks an awful lot like a practice Taiwan invasion.

Given all this, one might expect Beijing to seize the opportunity to pull friends from the United States, fill a vacuum of leadership, exert additional economic influence, consolidate regional dominance, and neutralize U.S. resistance. It probably won’t. Chinese leaders have squandered earlier opportunities—like during COVID—and are likely to do the same here. The saving grace for America might well be that Beijing’s diplomacy can be as daft as ours.

Tariffs start to bite. Some early predictions were that Trump’s tariffs—by some counts at their highest level in almost a century—would tank the economy. Yet the financial markets are running at all-time highs and U.S. GDP growth crested 4 percent in the last quarter, the opposite of what many economists predicted. Other indicators, however, are moving in the wrong direction: Unemployment is at a four-year high, inflation remains above target, and countries are seeking alternatives to the U.S. market. The administration has announced $12 billion in federal assistance to farmers on the losing end of trade disputes.

Will 2026 be the year when tariffs begin to drag on the U.S. economy, especially if artificial intelligence–fueled growth subsides? So far, political voices opposing protectionism have been few and far between. If they grow, the centerpiece of the Trump administration’s foreign economic policy is at direct risk.

Ukraine endures under extraordinary duress. For four years of war, all sides have waited for catalytic change. The West has hoped that the human and financial costs to Russia would grow too high, and that its economy or will to fight would collapse. Moscow hoped for a break in Ukrainian lines and Western exhaustion with aiding Kyiv. The Trump administration has, more recently, wished to dangle economic incentives and global rehabilitation in front of Moscow, and to convince Ukrainian leaders that trading territory now is better than losing it on the battlefield later. None of this has happened.

Russia retains its maximalist goals in Ukraine, Kyiv maintains its will to fight even amid slipping capability, and it remains difficult—and maybe impossible—to craft binding security guarantees acceptable to all sides. The upshot is that the safest bet is on continued tragedy: the endurance of this terrible, needless war—well into 2026 and perhaps beyond.

The Venezuela endgame is revealed. The U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean—the largest since the Cuban Missile Crisis—can’t hold indefinitely. As an aircraft carrier strike group, F-35s, B-52s, and much more fill the region, the administration emphasizes its counternarcotics mission. The hardly hidden motive is to increase pressure on Venezuela until Nicolás Maduro departs the country. It’s an attempt at regime change by freak-out—scare the Venezuelan leader without committing the United States to a ground operation reminiscent of Iraq.

Someone will swerve in this game of chicken. Maduro’s departure for Cuba, Russia, or Turkey would be welcome but unlikely. He may well conclude that the risks are lower staying in Caracas and waiting Trump out, rather than looking for real estate on Bashar al-Assad’s street in Moscow. If he doesn’t go, look for Trump during 2026 to explain that the military operation was about counternarcotics all along, that it was a resounding success, and that as a result it’s time to stand down.

Israel-Turkey rivalry flares. The Middle East changed dramatically during 2025, with attacks on Iran, a post-Assad government in Syria, and the decimation of Hezbollah and Hamas. All this has pushed the Israel-Turkey rivalry to the fore. Ankara supports the Sharaa government in Syria; Jerusalem remains deeply skeptical and has helped the Druze minority there. Turkey has offered troops for a stabilization force in Gaza; Israel is resolutely opposed to their entry. Israel just became the first country to recognize Somaliland; the Somali president is visiting Ankara this week for a meeting with Erdoğan.

The administration’s efforts to maintain good ties with both Israel and Turkey will come under some strain in 2026. If Ankara returns its S-400 missile defense system to Russia and thereby clears the way to acquiring F-35s, a long-running irritant in U.S.-Turkey relations will disappear. Yet Israeli leaders will be concerned about their qualitative military edge. That’s just one example of how the accentuated rivalry will play out, both in the Middle East and Washington.

Nuke talk increases. Given rising regional threats and worries about U.S. credibility, more countries today openly discuss the nuclear option than ever before. Saudi Arabia struck a security agreement with Pakistan that may (or may not) include extended deterrence. A majority in South Korea favors building its own nuclear arsenal. Sentiment is increasing in Japan and Poland. The lesson of Ukrainian and Libyan vulnerability to attack, and nuclear-armed North Korea’s safety from it, is plain for all to see.

In 2026, this will all likely remain talk. None of these countries is likely to acquire nuclear weapons in the near term. But the trajectory is clear, and it is not moving toward governments foreswearing nuclear arms to nestle comfortably under the U.S. umbrella. A world in which four or five additional nuclear powers arrive on the scene is a dangerous one indeed.

Washington remains uncertain about America’s global role—and the world about America. It’s hard to determine what exactly the United States wants today, if anything, beyond lower migration and financially advantageous deals. Trump bills himself as the “President of Peace,” ending wars no one else could resolve. Yet, in 2025, his administration has also carried out military strikes in Yemen, Somalia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, the eastern Pacific, the Caribbean, and Nigeria, and has threatened attacks in Venezuela, Mexico, and Colombia. It says it is pivoting to the Western Hemisphere but wishes to build up the navy to counter China. It wants to reduce American entanglement in the Middle East but has taken charge of postwar Gaza. The administration is mostly silent about adversarial alignment, but the axis of upheaval is working together more closely, bound by opposition to a U.S.-dominated order.

In 2026, the United States will remain highly uncertain about its place in the world. Countries will struggle to understand Washington’s vision and how they fit into it. Dealmaking will increase, but so will hedging. Change and uncertainty will be at a premium. And in that sense, we’ll see more of the same.

Richard Fontaine is the Chief Executive Officer at the Center for a New American Security.