National risk perceptions: Armed conﬂict (interstate, intrastate, proxy wars, coups, etc.) FIGURE 1.11 Source World Economic Forum Executive Opinion Survey 2024.Executive Opinion Survey rank of national risks from the question “Which ﬁve risks are the most likely to pose the biggest threat to your country in the next two years?” 1st10th20th30th33thRank is aggressive. Both the United States and China may go further in the coming years in undertaking military manoeuvres close to Taiwan, China designed to show strength and act as deterrent. A major risk is that just one such manoeuvre could be misinterpreted by the other side and/or lead to accidental loss of life or destruction of hardware, leading to tit-for-tat military escalation. Waning appetite for multilateralism With the world facing this wide spectrum of ongoing armed conflicts, and escalation risks in the two major cross-border conflicts, the current weakness of the multilateral security framework with the UN Security Council (UNSC) at its core is alarming. The UNSC has not managed to stop conflicts from escalating, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the wars in the Middle East and in Sudan. Despite discussions over the last year about reinvigorating UN peacekeeping operations, these are in decline on aggregate, with their size having been reduced from over 100,000 peacekeepers in 20168 to around 68,000 in 2024.9 The UNSC faces ongoing structural challenges,10 and over the next two years risks having even less impact, given the new US administration’s likely less favourable stance towards the UN generally and its preference for seeking solutions to conflicts unilaterally. There is a danger that more governments lose faith not only in the UNSC, but in multilateralism as a forum for resolving conflicts, and that the world instead becomes more adversarial, with conflicts ending only via battlefield, winner-takes-all victories and not through negotiated, multistakeholder peace agreements. While there continue to be discussions that aim towards reform of the UNSC, they are unlikely to make meaningful progress over the next two years given the complexity of aligning national interests and the current lack of political will to do so. Furthermore, there is no viable alternative global governance set-up in sight. The growing vacuum in ensuring global stability at a multilateral level will lead governments around the world increasingly to take national security matters into their own hands, coordinating security and defense efforts only with select allied countries, or making unilateral military decisions. More countries will attempt to gain a greater degree of autonomy and self-sufficiency. Defense budgets could be prioritized over other long-term Global Risks Report 2025 22