Foreign policy often involves making difficult and debatable choices about which parts of the world matter more to a given country—and which, by extension, matter less. It's about defining national interests and determining where those interests are most evident and endangered. This is why the United States has done far more to stop ISIS in Syria and Iraq than, say, sectarian war in the Central African Republic.
In short, it's about priorities. And according to a new survey of U.S. foreign-policy experts and practitioners, those priorities could look a lot like the map above in 2015, at least from America's point of view. The map sorts potential conflicts around the world into three tiers of risk: red for high-priority threats, orange for moderate-priority threats, and yellow for low-priority threats. According to Paul Stares, the report's lead author, it's a color-coded snapshot of "where the balance of U.S. attention and resources should be devoted" in the coming year. As such, it's also a guide to the places and conflicts that are likely to receive relatively little attention from America's national-security apparatus in the months ahead.
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