Summing up the year’s highlights and indulging in random guesswork may be an ill-advised thing to do. Instead, let us all address the broader factors capable of shaping international politics in 2025 as, contrary to popular misconceptions, the black swan events should only be viewed as tactical blips within an already well-established context.
The waning days of the outgoing year and the dawn of the new one are about the right time to recap and process the events that are already in the books as well as contemplate their potential implications for the future. However, the extent to which the past can or may affect future developments is always coloured by an analyst’s imagination and perspective.
There is no way of knowing how exactly history is going to play out. What we all can do, though, is deduce and outline the overarching rationale behind the current events. Now that the curious readership worldwide has been presented with multitudinous assessments of the 2024 global political trends, we can trace back the underpinnings of these trends, which have a much longer history.
In other words, summing up the year’s highlights and indulging in random guesswork may be an ill-advised thing to do. Instead, let us all address the broader factors capable of shaping international politics in 2025. There are two reasons it is worth your time and effort. One is that the grasp of these broader factors curbs our dependence on a numerous roster of commentators whose expertise and integrity cannot always be taken to the bank. Secondly, it helps us realise that random events pack no potential to change the course of history since they are essentially its spinoffs.
A recently popular cliché that has been patently overused by various columnists is a black swan event. But far from reshaping the reality, these should only be viewed as tactical blips within an already well-established context. Even sudden economic shocks or violent armed conflicts only serve to illustrate the fundamental contours of the current political landscape.
These contours and intrinstic features are quite well-known and well-researched, and these are not going anywhere, for they are all integral products of decades’ worth of global political and economic developments.
On the one hand, this is a good thing. It shows zero revolutionary potential. The present-day interntional polical scene is unlikely to be buffeted by a new force that could use a whole gamut of resources and capabilities to undermine the current rulebook and switch up for a radically new one. In the past, such forces – the French revolutionaries in the 19th century and the armed Germans in the 20th century, twice – led to the deadliest of wars.
Today, there are no such powers anymore. While both Russia and China insist on the strict observance of their state borders, neither government seeks to lay down the rules for everyone else. The US and its satellites may be easily endorsing all sorts of violence, but their main focus is to retain the gains made by the previous generations of politicians. The agenda of the West’s leading nation is to consolidate its current status, but it does not involve stirring a frenzied worldwide reshuffle. And there there is a nuclear deterrence policy as the backbone of the US–Russia relations. In a sense, 2025 will see an Orwellian carryover from the previous epoch, one of a peaceless peace.
Again, this is a somewhat soothing realisation as it minimises the odds of an unsurvivable global armageddon. This scenario, as is evidenced by Washington’s Ukraine policy, can only be brought on by bureacratic considerations outweighing the politics of common sense. But the incoming administration may want to make sure to pre-ept this scenario. But history suggests that the vanishingly low odds of a global hot war are not enough for the humanity to be able to find an instant fix for a minefield of problems. 2025 is likely to show that we will remain faced with the same laundry list of problems.
If it had not been for nuclear deterrence, the amount of bad blood between the great powers might have already spilled over and sparked a new world war. The single biggest cause would have been a bitter territorial dispute in Eastern Europe that was triggered by the US post-Cold War expansionist policy posing a security threat to Russia. Although the world is now abuzz with the speculation of a potential wind-down of the Ukrainian conflict, it pays to recall the proposals Russia put forward to the West in December 2021. Importantly, those went beyond the future of Ukraine and addressed the bigger picture. In 2025, we can sure expect Russia and the West to figure out a peaceful resolution of the Ukrainian conflict. At least, there are indications that this may be the case. However, the West will still have to face an array of its own problems that led to its territorial dispute with Russia in the first place.
They have a hard time solving these issues amid the ongoing crisis of the neoliberal economic model the West came up with 50 years ago in a bid to outmuscle its Cold War opponent. Today, this model is taking a heavy toll on both Europe and the US as the latter strives to capitalise off every single thing taking place globally.
But the costs are increasingly crippling the national economies. In 2025, we may well witness Europe’s existential crisis unravel, with the anti-establishment AfD potentially winning big in Germany’s early election in February. The crisis is further exacerbated by the collapse of the French Fifth Republic and the erosion of the UK’s political scene as the approval ratings of the recently triumphant Labour have taken a catastrophic nosedive. But there is no conceivable way of sorting this crisis militarily. The US cannot afford such risks while the Europeans have been severely exhausted by the current political mess.
But even against the spiralling downturn, the neoliberal model keeps scoring wins in terms of an economic globalisation. Which is not a bad thing either, as it helps create a backdrop for a potentially prosperous non-Western world. As a result, rather than substituting the unipolar domination model, the political and economic multipolarity are getting co-opted into the existing world order to make for a more balanced global political configuration. Seeing as Europe carries on slumping and slotting into a role as the US dependents, the ‘one-legged’ West may well experience an overall decline in 2025. Meanwhile, China and Russia will have a chance to balance out the existing world order without eroding it altogether.
In 2024, Brics came to symbolise this emergent multipolar configuration. In 2025, this status will be further reinforced. But its sustainability will be tested by Brazil’s 2025 chairmanship in the organisation. The potential pitfalls may be avoided and corrected by Russia lending a hand to Brazil in a joint effort to prop up the positive dynamic attested to by the 2024 Russian-led Kazan summit.
In 2025, the global majority will be looking to step up its role in fixing multiple issues in global politics. Yet it still needs to cover a lot of ground before it can ultimately shake off its dependence on the traditional leaders.
One good example would be the event in the Middle East where the US and Israel’s determined cooperation led to some drastic shifts. But in 2025, both the Arab nations and Iran will not be able to mount a major response. With this in mind, the fate of Iran may be seen as a potentially troublesome development. The biggest question will be the sovereign Iran’s role in resculpted balance of power in the region. But the Iranian government may eventually prove to be far more resistant to both the internation pressure and their domestic woes than most experts believe it is capable of.
Another important pool of the global majority players are the Central Asian republics. Ever since Russia and the West got entangled in a military and political standoff, these countries have taken advantage of it to bolster their own developmental trajectories. But as the Ukrainian statehood is crumbling at an alarming rate, things may turn sour for this part of the world as well. Bear in mind that these nations’ major ally, Russia, is now busy remoulding and overhauling its immigration policy.
Russia is definitely keen on learning the harsh lessons of the US and European woes that have stemmed from an imprudent and flippant immigration policy. But again, this is something the Central Asian republics should be better off keeping a watchful eye on when dealing with Russia. 2025 may well usher in an updated rulebook in terms of these interactions.
China will also be grappling with a fair share of pressure in 2025. The most knowledgeable of pundits are already warning that the post-Covid pandemic ‘reset’ of the Chinese economy is still struggling to catch up with the targets set by the government. As the Trump administration will most certainly seek ways to put extra pressure on China, the government will be faced with an increasingly tough scenario where they may be advised to prioritise rectifying their domestic aspects, saving up more resources and reconsolidating the power. But China’s actual policy calls are still anyone’s guess.
But as for the rest of it, 2025 will mostly take over from 2024, and successful problem-solving will require consistency and a longer-term vision.