Bangladesh

Unlikely (roughly 20–30%) that Bangladesh will be directly involved in significant armed conflict within the next three years; the main risk channel is border spillover from Myanmar plus election-linked internal violence that could escalate beyond policing capacity.

Election-period contention is the main volatility amplifier: protests and sporadic violence are plausible, but security forces are likely to prevent sustained armed confrontation in core cities. The Myanmar border will remain tense, with continued infiltration attempts and occasional cross-border fire risk; containment is the modal outcome unless a lethal incident triggers rapid escalation.

Over five years, risk depends on whether political institutions consolidate and whether Myanmar’s western theater stabilizes. If governance reforms strengthen policing legitimacy and the Rohingya situation de-pressurizes, conflict risk falls. If transition politics harden into zero-sum repression while border spillover persists, Bangladesh could face a higher chance of sustained internal armed violence in peripheral regions, though interstate war remains unlikely.

Risk definition and base rate “Significant armed conflict” here means sustained, organized violence involving state forces (interstate clashes or civil-war-level fighting), not episodic protests, terrorism, or criminality. Bangladesh’s base rate remains low-to-moderate: it is not an expeditionary power and has strong incentives to avoid interstate war.

Threat drivers The highest-probability pathway is inadvertent escalation on the Myanmar frontier. Fighting in Rakhine and adjacent areas increases risks of cross-border fire, armed infiltration, weapons seepage, and new refugee surges that could trigger Bangladeshi security operations and tit-for-tat incidents. Reports of detentions of suspected armed entrants and heightened border alert postures are consistent with a persistent spillover environment. A secondary pathway is domestic political violence around the 2026 electoral/transition cycle: mass protests, factional street violence, and politicized security responses can degrade command-and-control and create localized armed confrontations, especially if armed groups exploit disorder.

Resilience and systemic firebreaks Bangladesh retains substantial coercive capacity (army, police, border guards) oriented toward internal security and border control, which historically contains unrest below civil-war thresholds. Geography and force posture favor defense and border management rather than power projection. Regionally, both India and China have strong interests in preventing Bangladesh from becoming a war zone that disrupts trade, connectivity, and investment; this tends to channel competition into diplomacy and influence rather than kinetic escalation. Bangladesh’s long-standing preference for strategic autonomy and UN peacekeeping orientation also biases elites toward de-escalation.

Net assessment The risk is meaningfully above “stable” because Myanmar’s conflict is structural and proximate, and Bangladesh’s political transition is brittle. However, most plausible outcomes remain short of sustained armed conflict: border incidents are more likely to be contained skirmishes, and domestic unrest is more likely to remain episodic and repressible. A sharp upward revision would require clear signs of (a) repeated lethal cross-border engagements, (b) durable insurgent sanctuaries in Bangladeshi territory, or (c) fragmentation of security forces during political crisis.