Nonstate Actors: Impact on International Relations and Implications for the United States

• Estimates of their impact should be made cautiously, however, for few nonstate actors are completely independent of nation-states, and they do not have uniform freedom of movement. Although nonstate actors have a great deal of latitude in both weak and post-industrial states, modernizing states such as China and Russia—home to the bulk of the world’s population—have been highly effective in suppressing them and in creating their own substitutes, some of which have demonstrated their power to counter US objectives and even to challenge global rules of engagement.