The potential for conflict will arise from rivalries in Asia, ranging from India-Pakistan to China-Taiwan, as well as among the antagonists in the Middle East. Their potential lethality will grow, driven by the availability of WMD, longer-range missile delivery systems, and other technologies.
Internal conflicts stemming from religious, ethnic, economic, or political disputes will remain at current levels or even increase in number. The United Nations and regional organizations will be called on to manage such conflicts because major states—stressed by domestic concerns, perceived risk of failure, lack of political will, or tight resources—will minimize their direct involvement.
Export control regimes and sanctions will be less effective because of the diffusion of technology, porous borders, defense industry consolidations, and reliance on foreign markets to maintain profitability. Arms and weapons technology transfers will be more difficult to control.
Prospects will grow that more sophisticated weaponry, including weapons of mass destruction—indigenously produced or externally acquired—will get into the hands of state and non-state belligerents, some hostile to the United States. The likelihood will increase over this period that WMD will be used either against the United States or its forces, facilities, and interests overseas. … Rapid advances and diffusion of biotechnology, nanotechnology, and the materials sciences, moreover, will add to the capabilities of our adversaries to engage in biological warfare or bio-terrorism.
Most adversaries will recognize the information advantage and military superiority of the United States in 2015. Rather than acquiesce to any potential U.S. military domination, they will try to circumvent or minimize U.S. strengths and exploit perceived weaknesses. IT-driven globalization will significantly increase interaction among terrorists, narco-traffickers, weapons proliferators, and organized criminals, who in a networked world will have greater access to information, to technology, to finance, to sophisticated deception-and-denial techniques and to each other. Such asymmetric approaches—whether undertaken by state or non-state actors—will become the dominant characteristic of most threats to the U.S. homeland.