The United States, China, and Russia will compete "to set the emerging conditions and the rules that will shape" the world order for years to come, according to 2023 Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community.
The report, released Wednesday by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), reflects the collective insights of the intelligence community.
"Strategic competition between the United States and its allies, China, and Russia over what kind of world will emerge makes the next few years critical to determining who and what will shape the narrative perhaps most immediately in the context of Russia's actions in Ukraine, which threaten to escalate into a broader conflict between Russia and the West," the assessment said.
"Second, shared global challenges, including climate change, and human and health security, are converging as the planet emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic and confronts economic issues spurred by both energy and food insecurity."
Militarily, China poses a greater threat to the U.S. than Russia, according to the assessment.
"Beijing is accelerating the development of key capabilities that it believes the People's Liberation Army (PLA) needs to confront the United States in a large-scale, sustained conflict," the assessment said.
"Russia probably does not want a direct military conflict with U.S. and NATO forces, but there is potential for that to occur. Russian leaders thus far have avoided taking actions that would broaden the Ukraine conflict beyond Ukraine's borders, but the risk for escalation remains significant."
The assessment said "Russia's unprovoked full-scale invasion" of Ukraine has shown that "the era of nation-state competition and conflict has not been relegated to the past."
"While Russia is challenging the United States and some norms in the international order in its war of territorial aggression," the assessment said, "China has the capability to directly attempt to alter the rules-based global order in every realm and across multiple regions, as a near-peer competitor that is increasingly pushing to change global norms and potentially threatening its neighbors."
China and Russia also could exploit countries still recovering from the pandemic. Low- and middle-income countries, particularly, are under threat from extreme weather, food insecurity, and humanitarian disasters.
"Efforts by Russia, China, and other countries to promote authoritarianism and spread disinformation is helping fuel a larger competition between democratic and authoritarian forms of government," the assessment said. "This competition exploits global information flows to gain influence and impacts nearly all countries, contributing to democratic backsliding, threats of political instability, and violent societal conflict through misinformation and disinformation."
China and Russia are not the only countries that should concern the U.S.
"Iran will remain a regional menace with broader malign influence activities, and North Korea will expand its WMD capabilities while being a disruptive player on the regional and world stages," the assessment said.
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