By Jeffrey D. McCausland, PhD
The United States enters 2026 already burdened by multiple crises. Russia's war in Ukraine grinds on with no clear off-ramp. Gaza remains volatile despite a fragile ceasefire. Tensions with Iran remain high with the real possibility of conflict. Venezuela's instability continues to reverberate across the Western Hemisphere, and Washington's long term strategic plan is unclear at best. Even relations with longstanding allies are under strain—from trade disputes to renewed tensions over Greenland's strategic future.
Yet history suggests that the crises policymakers prepare for are rarely the ones that define an era. Governments plan around known threats; they allocate resources to visible conflicts; they build strategies around intelligence assessments and trendlines. But geopolitical history is punctuated by shocks—moments that arrive outside planning assumptions and overwhelm institutional readiness.
Defense planners and risk analysts often frame this dynamic as "Black Swans" and "Pink Flamingos." Black Swans are true surprises: low-probability, high-impact shocks that emerge from the realm of "unknown unknowns." They are visible only in hindsight. Pink Flamingos, by contrast, are dangers hiding in plain sight. They are predictable risks that policymakers recognize but fail to prioritize due to more immediate pressures. Pink Flamingos are threats deferred until they metastasize.
As President Donald Trump navigates his second term, both categories loom large. The most consequential foreign-policy shocks of the coming years may emerge not from today's headlines but from simmering theaters where warning signs are already flashing.
Few regions embody both Black Swan and Pink Flamingo risk more acutely than South Asia. The subcontinent witnessed its most serious military confrontation in decades in May 2025 after a terrorist attack in Kashmir triggered Indian airstrikes on Pakistan and a four-day exchange of missiles and drones between the two sides. Although active fighting subsided, the structural drivers of conflict—territorial disputes, water access, militancy, and sovereignty claims—remain unresolved.
This recent confrontation marked the most dangerous escalation between the two nuclear-armed neighbors since 1971. Disinformation campaigns inflamed public opinion on both sides, compressing decision timelines and raising escalation risks. But initial signals from Washington suggested detachment: Vice President J.D. Vance initially framed the conflict as "none of our business." But as the real possibility of the use of nuclear weapons rose, the administration shifted, voicing concern about escalation.
Trump later characterized the subsequent ceasefire as a diplomatic success he had personally brokered which India strenuously rejected. Yet the underlying deterrence architecture remains fragile. Borders remain shuttered. Trade flows are suspended. Most alarmingly, water has emerged as a new flashpoint after India suspended participation in the Indus Waters Treaty—an action Islamabad characterized as tantamount to an act of war. Subsequent terrorist attacks in both New Delhi and Islamabad underscored how brittle the ceasefire remains. A recent terrorist attack in Islamabad that killed 31 people and injured 169 others was described by Pakistan's Defense Minister as inspired by India and Afghanistan.
Great-power politics further complicate future crisis management. Russian President Vladimir Putin's December visit to India highlighted New Delhi's enduring defense relationship with Moscow, including cooperation on advanced air-defense systems, fighter aircraft, and nuclear energy. Simultaneously, U.S.-Indian relations have cooled following steep Trump-era tariffs, constraining Washington's diplomatic leverage. But this may be changing based on the recent announcement of a new trade agreement between Washington and New Delhi.
U.S. outreach to Pakistan, including a high-profile meeting between Trump and Army Chief Asim Munir, has reinforced perceptions of American strategic drift. In a region where crisis mediation depends on trust, even small shifts in alignment can carry outsized escalation risk.
Pakistan alone represents a layered instability risk. It is part Pink Flamingo, and part emerging Black Swan. Domestically, political legitimacy is eroding. A widely circulated critique by commentator Zorain Nizamani struck a nerve by arguing that Pakistan's ruling elite is profoundly disconnected from its youthful population. The critique resonated not because the argument was new, but because it captured a widening generational fracture. This was further amplified by social media ecosystems aligned with opposition movements. Such grievances are difficult to channel through formal politics under the country's repressive conditions. That raises the risk of extra-institutional mobilization: mass protests, civil unrest, or elite fragmentation. All this occurring against the backdrop of a fragile economy.
Externally, Islamabad faces mounting border tensions with Afghanistan. Clashes, cross-border militancy, and trade blockades have intensified humanitarian and economic strain on both sides of the frontier. The Afghanistan-Pakistan corridor, already one of the world's most volatile border regions, now risks becoming a chronic flashpoint with spillover implications for counterterrorism and refugee flows—which takes on greater significance considering Pakistan's status as a nuclear-armed state.
Since April 2023, Sudan has been consumed by civil war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), commanded by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti. Each faction blames the other for igniting the conflict, but responsibility matters less than consequence: the human toll has been catastrophic.
An estimated 150,000 people have been killed in the war, and this count is likely conservative and may not fully describe the effects of famine and disease. Satellite imagery has documented mass-casualty sites, and there are countless reports that sexual violence, trafficking, and slavery have been used as instruments of war. More than 13 million people have been displaced internally or fled the country. Roughly 33.7 million require humanitarian assistance. Over 70 percent of hospitals have been destroyed, contributing to cholera outbreaks that have killed thousands.
But Sudan is not merely a humanitarian disaster. It is also a geopolitical fault line drawing in regional and global powers. Egypt and Saudi Arabia back the SAF, motivated by Nile water security and Red Sea stability. The United Arab Emirates is widely believed to support the RSF, driven by interests in gold, agriculture, and logistical corridors. Consequently, there is a growing concern of increasing tensions between the United States' most important allies in the region—the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
Russia, after initially backing RSF elements, has cultivated ties with the SAF while pursuing a naval base at Port Sudan. Pakistan is reportedly finalizing a major arms sale to Khartoum. Regional actors—including Chad, Libyan factions, Ethiopia, and Eritrea—have also been pulled into the conflict's orbit. This externalization risks transforming Sudan into a proxy war with significant regional consequences.
Sudan's instability intersects directly with one of the world's most critical maritime corridors: the Red Sea. Roughly one-third of global containerized trade transits this waterway annually. At its narrowest point, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, is just 26 kilometers wide. Any disruption here reverberates across global supply chains. Houthi attacks on commercial shipping demonstrated this vulnerability. By sinking a few vessels and hijacking others, the group effectively severely restricted maritime traffic beginning in late 2023. Shipping firms rerouted around the Cape of Good Hope, dramatically increasing transit times, and insurance costs.
Egypt, which controls the Suez Canal, lost an estimated $13 billion in revenue between 2024 and 2025 as traffic plummeted. Annual canal income fell from roughly $10 billion to $4 billion, exacerbating Cairo's fiscal crisis. Although traffic partially rebounded following a Gaza ceasefire, stability remains tenuous. For Europe, the stakes are acute. Maritime trading powers face supply-chain disruptions and strategic challenges if Red Sea insecurity becomes chronic.
Sudan's war and the humanitarian tragedy that has resulted now echoes through global commerce as civil conflict, regional rivalries, threats from proxies, and maritime insecurity converge.
North Korea embodies a hybrid risk: familiar yet evolving in destabilizing ways. Trump invested significant diplomatic capital during his first term pursuing nuclear negotiations with Kim Jong Un. Summits in Singapore and Hanoi, along with the president's unprecedented visit to the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), marked historic yet ultimately fruitless diplomatic engagement with the "Hermit Kingdom."
Notably, North Korea has received scant attention from Trump in his second term. His National Defense Strategy (NDS) also omitted explicit reference to U.S. extended deterrence commitments to South Korea, an omission that has unsettled Seoul's security establishment. Public polling now shows roughly 70 percent of South Koreans support developing an indigenous nuclear deterrent. If Seoul crosses that threshold, Northeast Asia could face cascading proliferation pressures involving Japan and potentially Taiwan which was not mentioned in the NDS at all.
Alliance cohesion has also shifted. The Biden administration emphasized trilateral coordination among the United States, Japan, and South Korea. Trump's second-term approach has leaned more heavily toward bilateral burden-sharing, including tariffs and demands for increased allied defense spending, which threaten to scuttle Washington approved nuclear-submarine cooperation with Seoul.
The most consequential shift, however, lies in Pyongyang's deepening alignment with Moscow. In June 2024, the two states signed a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership treaty that includes mutual defense language and mechanisms for military cooperation. Since then, North Korea has reportedly supplied massive quantities of artillery ammunition—estimated at 40 to 60 percent of Russia's current battlefield shell usage in Ukraine. Pyongyang has also deployed more than 15,000 troops to support Russian operations, suffering thousands of casualties. Intelligence assessments suggest a potential second deployment of thousands of DPRK troops soon.
This partnership is both transactional and transformative. Russia has supplied oil shipments exceeding one million barrels and provided advanced military technologies, from air-defense systems to electronic-warfare capabilities and drone innovations. Arms sales revenues may have delivered billions to North Korea's economy, fueling its fastest growth in nearly a decade. This cooperation has accelerated North Korea's military modernization while binding it to a revisionist axis opposed to Western sanctions regimes.
Recent missile launches underscore rising tensions. Cruise- and ballistic-missile tests in early 2026 reinforced Pyongyang's commitment to expanded capabilities. The strategic significance lies less in any single launch than in cumulative signaling. Persistent testing complicates missile-defense planning, reinforces deterrence narratives, and normalizes escalation ladders.
These demonstrations also shape regional politics. It is hardening domestic opinion in South Korea and influencing alliance coordination with Washington. With U.S. strategic attention divided across multiple theaters, Pyongyang may calculate that there are growing opportunities and incentives for calibrated provocations.
In 2002, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld offered a now-infamous categorization of uncertainty: "known knowns," "known unknowns," and "unknown unknowns." The phrasing was widely mocked, yet the framework captured a central dilemma of intelligence and strategy. Some risks are measurable; others are speculative; still others remain invisible until they erupt.
But a fourth category often proves most dangerous: unknown knowns. These are threats institutions recognize yet fail to act upon due to bias, distraction, or political constraint. Sudan's war, Pakistan's demographic unrest, Red Sea shipping vulnerability, North Korea's military convergence with Russia, South Asia's nuclear instability are not invisible threats—and yet all are under-prioritized.
Crisis triage is unavoidable. The Trump administration's foreign-policy bandwidth is already stretched across Europe, the Middle East, and the Western Hemisphere. But strategic surprise rarely emerges from the center of policymakers' gaze. It erupts from the periphery, where warning indicators accumulate without triggering action.
The central challenge for U.S. foreign policy in 2026 is not merely managing today's crises, but identifying which overlooked theaters could generate tomorrow's systemic shock. Because in geopolitics, it is the unforeseen or overlooked event that shapes history most.
Dr. Jeff McCausland is Founder and CEO of Diamond6 Leadership and ULM Strategic Consulting. He is a retired US Army Colonel and former Dean of Academics at the U.S. Army War College. He is a Visiting Professor of National Security at Dickinson College and a National Security Consultant for CBS radio and television. During his military career he served in a variety of command and staff positions both in the United States and Europe during the Kosovo crisis and Operations Desert Shield and Storm. This included serving as a member of the National Security Council (NSC) staff in the White House in 1991. He is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, the U.S. Army Airborne and Ranger schools, and the Command and General Staff College at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. He holds both a Master's Degree and Ph.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. He is the co-author of Battle Tested! Gettysburg Leadership Lessons for 21st Century Leaders. You can learn more at: https://www.jeffmccausland.com/ulm