China emerges as the leading threat to the United States even overshadowing the nuclear-armed archrival Russia and the unpredictable North Korea.

Iran joins China as the emerging threats to US interests and their allies in the Middle East in the face of the ongoing conflict in Gaza in Gaza and connections with Hezbollah and Houthis.

This is according to The 2024 Annual Threat Assessment report that contains information collected from January until its publication on March 5. The wars in Africa and the continuous  kicking out out of the French in West  Africa is a major concern to the US.

According to the report, among the five threats to the US and its interests are China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and Conflicts and Fragility across the world.

However, the reports accept there are other emerging threats such as climate change and diminishing economies, but also does not reveal how the US threatens the Global South through its hegemonic approach to issues. The report also did not mention the emerging BRICS as a threat to the US. 

“During the next year, the United States faces an increasingly fragile global order strained by accelerating strategic competition among major powers, more intense and unpredictable transnational challenges, and multiple regional conflicts with far-reaching implications,” says the summary introduction.

The report says that an ambitious but anxious China, a confrontational Russia, some regional powers, such as Iran, and more capable non-state actors are challenging longstanding rules of the international system as well as US primacy within it.

“It is not an exhaustive assessment of all global challenges, however. It addresses traditional and nontraditional threats from U.S. adversaries, an array of regional issues with possible larger, global implications, as well as functional and transnational challenges, such as proliferation, emerging technology, climate change, terrorism, and illicit drugs,” it admits.

China tops the list threats to the US, not through the military might of the likes of Russia, but through technology, economic might and that Beijing in increasing influencing more former allies of the West to its orbit. Especially in Africa and Latin America.

“Towards this effort, Beijing seeks to champion development and security in the Global South—areas that Beijing perceives are receptive to engagement with China because of shared historical experiences under colonial and imperialistic oppression—as a way to build global influence; demonstrate leadership; and expand its economic, diplomatic, and military presence,” says the report.

 That President Xi Jinping the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) envisions China as the preeminent power in East Asia and as a leading power on the world stage, by undercutting US influence, driving wedges between Washington and its partners, and fostering global norms that favour its style of leadership.

For instance, it says, China’s leaders will maintain statist economic policies to steer capital toward priority sectors, reduce dependence on foreign technologies, and enable military modernisation.

The US is concerned that China has conducted orbital technology demonstrations, which prove China’s ability to operate future space-based counter space weapons. “Cyber China remains the most active and persistent cyber threat to U.S. Government, private-sector, and critical infrastructure networks,” it says.

The fear of China’s ability is seen in attempts by the US to persuade allies like Netherlands not to use Huaway technology and export of microchip technology to China.

But the biggest acceptance that he US is horrified about China’s technological advancement is recent vote by Congress—352 to 65—to ban China owned TikTok video-sharing platform on grounds of national security. President Joe Biden says that if the bill—that is now with the Senate—reaches his desk, he will sign it despite many American companies relying on the app to make money. 

The US believes that TikTok is owned by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)to spy on the American military, citizens and technological innovations.

The US is not happy that China helped Russia burst the sanctions that were imposed by the West after the invasion of Ukraine, through support to Russia’s defense industrial base, including by providing dual-use material and components for weapons.

Trade between China and Russia has been increasing since the start of the war in Ukraine, China is by far Russia’s most important trading partner with bilateral trade reaching more than $220 billion in 2023, already surpassing their record total 2022 volume by 15 percent.

While the report says that China does not want a hot war the US, Washington is concerned that Beijing would us the 2024, Taiwan’s presidential and legislative election to promote reunion. This is because Beijing claims that the United States is using Taiwan to undermine China’s rise

“In the South China Sea, Beijing will continue to use its growing military and other maritime capabilities to try to intimidate rival claimants and to signal it has control over contested areas. Similarly, China is pressing Japan over contested areas in the East China Sea,” it says.

On Russia, the US is concerned that Western sanctions have resulted in Moscow’s strengthening ties with China, Iran, and North Korea to bolster its defense production and economy are a major challenge for the West and partners.

Moscow’s deep economic engagement with Beijing provides Russia with a major market for its energy and commodities, greater protection from future sanctions, and a stronger partner in opposing the United States.

“President Vladimir Putin probably believes that Russia has blunted Ukrainian efforts to retake significant territory, that his approach to winning the war is paying off, and that Western and U.S. support to Ukraine is finite, particularly in light of the Israel– HAMAS war,” the report says.

While Washington says that Russia will not want a war with NATO, Moscow will continue to modernise its nuclear weapons capabilities and maintains the largest and most diverse nuclear weapons stockpile—as a deterrence and achieving its goals in a potential conflict against the United States and NATO.

Decades of cultivating ties, providing support, funding, weapons, and training to its partners and proxies around the Middle East, including Lebanese Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iranian backed militias in Iraq and Syria, will enable Tehran to continue to demonstrate the efficacy of leveraging these members of the “Axis of Resistance” against Western hegemony.

Tehran was able to flex the network’s military capabilities in the aftermath of HAMAS’ attack on October 7, orchestrating anti-Israel and anti-U.S. attacks from Lebanon to the Bab al-Mandeb Strait while shielding Iranian leaders from significant consequences.

 During 2023, Iran expanded its diplomatic influence through improved ties with Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq.  “Iran stipulated a readiness to re-implement the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) to gain sanctions relief, but Tehran’s continued support to terrorist proxies and threats to former US officials have not favored a deal,” the report says.

On North Korean, the report says that leader Kim Jong Un will continue to pursue nuclear and conventional military capabilities that threaten the United States and its allies, which will enable periodic aggressive actions as he tries to reshape the regional security environment in his favor.

North Korea has emerged from its deepest period of isolation driven by a combination of nearly two decades of severe UN sanctions, to a situation where Pyongyang pursuing stronger ties with China and Russia with the goal of increasing financial gains, diplomatic support, and defense cooperation.

“Kim almost certainly has no intentions of negotiating away his nuclear programme, which he perceives to be a guarantor of regime security and national pride,” the report says.

It concludes that North Korea routinely times its missile launches and military demonstrations to counter US South Korea exercises in part to attempt to coerce both countries to change their behavior and counteract South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s hardline policies toward the North.