Cabo Verde

It is unlikely (around 6%) that Cabo Verde will be directly involved in significant armed conflict within the next three years, with risks concentrated in transnational maritime crime spillovers rather than interstate or civil war dynamics.

Election preparation and municipal disputes may generate protests and heated rhetoric, but the most likely outcome is routine political contestation with limited security incidents. The dominant operational risk remains maritime crime (trafficking logistics, corruption attempts) rather than organized armed groups. Climate shocks can strain services and budgets, but recent disaster response measures suggest manageable stress rather than destabilization.

Over five years, risk depends less on classic war drivers and more on governance under economic and climate pressure. If debt, tourism volatility, and extreme weather erode livelihoods, organized crime could gain leverage, raising the chance of sporadic armed incidents. Continued external maritime-security support and institutional continuity should keep the probability of significant armed conflict low unless a major regional security shock changes incentives.

Net assessment Cabo Verde’s three-year conflict risk remains low. The country is an island state with no active territorial disputes, limited strategic depth for insurgent sanctuary, and a long record of peaceful political competition. Its small force structure and doctrine are oriented to policing functions (maritime surveillance, counter-trafficking, disaster response) rather than expeditionary war, reducing both capability and incentive for direct kinetic involvement.

Threat drivers The principal security pressure is transnational: the Atlantic cocaine corridor and associated corruption/criminal violence risks, plus maritime domain challenges from a very large EEZ relative to state capacity. A secondary driver is domestic political friction around elections and municipal governance; localized protests or administrative crises can occur, but these are structurally distinct from organized armed rebellion. Regional instability in West Africa can raise background risk (migration, trafficking, organized crime linkages), yet Cabo Verde’s oceanic separation materially dampens spillover.

Resilience and systemic firebreaks Cabo Verde benefits from comparatively strong institutions, civilian control of the security sector, and a stable two-party alternation pattern. Economic vulnerabilities exist (high public debt; tourism dependence; climate shocks), but recent reporting points to improving public finances under IMF-linked frameworks and continued investor confidence, which lowers the probability that fiscal stress translates into state breakdown. External partnerships with Portugal, the EU, and the United States focus on maritime security capacity-building, creating a deterrent and response buffer against criminal and hybrid threats.

Escalation pathways (most plausible to least) (1) Organized crime penetration leading to episodic armed incidents and a heavier security response; (2) election-period unrest that remains non-lethal or limited; (3) direct involvement in interstate conflict is remote absent a major Atlantic crisis that forces basing/operational entanglement. Overall, stabilizers outweigh drivers; no new structural evidence indicates a shift toward significant armed conflict.