If we encountered our planet as an alien species today, what would we see?
An expanding population of eight billion people experiencing unprecedented growth after tens of thousands of years of stagnation. Staggering opportunities afforded by new technologies, especially the human capital and industrial breakthroughs that AI is about to unlock for millions (and soon billions) that otherwise would have no such access.
Even looking at the geopolitical headlines, we can work up some optimism about the year ahead. Three years after Russia invaded Ukraine and attempted to overthrow its leadership, negotiations (and even a possible ceasefire) appear close. So, too, in the Middle East, after more than a year of fighting in Gaza and beyond, there’s less stomach or purpose for expanding the violence. And in the United States, a hotly contested presidential election led to an undisputed winner with a clear mandate, and almost nobody claimed it was unfree, unfair, or stolen.
But take a closer look, and we've got big problems.
The United States and China, the two most powerful countries in the world by a wide margin, assertively reject responsibility for the rest of the planet. They cast an eye at enemies first and foremost within their own borders and worry increasingly about threats to their stability. Both are informed by political and economic value systems focused on the short term, despite the increasingly obvious reality that they’re not working for most of their people – especially the increasingly disillusioned youth.
A “community of nations” is today the stuff of fairy tales, with governance that isn’t meeting the needs of citizens. Our challenges – from climate change to technological disruption to security threats – are increasingly global. They demand far stronger international cooperation than is thought desirable or would be feasible with the institutions that exist today. And the political actors most essential to strengthening global institutions are moving in the other direction.
We are heading back to the law of the jungle – where the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. This is the G-Zero world I’ve been warning about for over a decade now – an era when no one power or group of powers is both willing and able to drive a global agenda and maintain international order.
This leadership deficit will reach critical mass and grow critically dangerous in 2025, creating a recipe for endemic geopolitical instability. The risk of a generational world crisis, even a new global war, is higher than at any point in our lifetimes. That’s why the G-Zero winning tops Eurasia Group’s 2025 Top Risks report.
The central problem facing the global order is that core international institutions – the United Nations Security Council, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and so on – no longer reflect the underlying balance of global power. This is a geopolitical recession, a “bust cycle” in international relations that can be traced back to three fundamental causes.
First, the West failed to integrate Russia into the US-led global order after the Soviet Union's collapse, breeding deep resentment and antagonism. We can argue about who’s to blame, but the consequences are undeniable: Now a former great power in severe decline, Russia has transformed from a potential partner into the world’s most dangerous rogue state, bent on destabilizing the US-led order and forging military-strategic partnerships with other chaos actors like North Korea and Iran.
Second, China was brought into the international order – crucially as a member of the World Trade Organization – on the presumption that global economic integration would encourage its leaders to liberalize their political system and become responsible global stakeholders as defined by the West. Instead, China grew far more powerful but no more democratic or supportive of the rule of law. Deepening tensions, and even confrontation, between China and the West, are the result.
Third, and perhaps most consequentially, tens of millions of citizens in advanced democracies concluded that the globalist values their leaders and elites had been promoting no longer worked in their favor. Rising inequality, demographic shifts, and technological disruption have eroded trust in democratic institutions and reduced these nations’ capacity for global leadership. President-elect Donald Trump has both fed and profited from this anti-globalist, anti-establishment surge.
There are three ways out of a geopolitical recession: reform existing institutions, build new ones better aligned with current power realities, or destroy the old system and impose new rules through force. While all three are happening to some extent, in 2025 the focus will be overwhelmingly on the third.
The United States is the only nation powerful enough to lead – in fact, it’s in many ways more powerful than ever, at least compared to its allies and adversaries. But it is no longer willing to serve as world sheriff, architect of free trade, and promoter of common values. Trump’s return to power with a politically consolidated, solidly unilateralist administration will definitively accelerate America’s retreat from global leadership. But though Trump is the principal symptom and political beneficiary of the geopolitical recession, he’s not the cause. That’s why we didn’t make Trump our number one risk this year.
Just as the US embraces a transactional, “America First” unilateralism, its traditional allies face unprecedented political weakness. Canada’s government has just collapsed. So has Germany’s, where populist parties are likely to make gains in the upcoming federal elections. France is in the throes of a protracted political crisis. The UK is led by an unpopular new government still finding its feet. Japan’s ruling party has lost its majority, with new Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba unlikely to last long. South Korea’s political system is in disarray. Rather than stepping into the leadership void, these nations are focused on playing geopolitical defense – keeping their heads down and hoping to avoid becoming targets of disruption.
Meanwhile, the Global South, despite growing economic heft, lacks both the cohesion and capability to lead. India, the strongest and most plausible global leader among developing nations, remains a lower-income country, focused on building bridges mainly in support of its national interests. Gulf states like Saudi Arabia and the UAE, despite their growing ambitions, lack the standing to drive global reforms.
For its part, China – the second most powerful country on Earth and only viable US challenger – couldn’t lead even if it wanted to. Not only does it lack the legitimacy and “soft power” needed to attract a stable following, but its ongoing economic woes, combined with President Xi Jinping’s prioritization of national security and political control, leave Beijing too preoccupied with domestic challenges.
In short, with no one willing and able to lead, what’s left is ever greater geopolitical instability, disruption, and conflict. Power vacuums will expand, global governance will languish, and rogue actors will proliferate. The world will grow more divided and more combustible. The most vulnerable will pay the biggest price.
We’re entering a uniquely dangerous period of world history on par with the 1930s and the early Cold War. This doesn’t mean we’re headed toward World War III or even a US-China cold war, though both scenarios become more likely in a G-Zero world. The more immediate danger is the unraveling of the world’s security and economic architecture leaving many spaces – both countries and crucial domains like cyberspace, outer space, and the deep seas – ungoverned and under-governed, wide open for rogue actors to increasingly operate with impunity.
The G-Zero winning isn't just Eurasia Group’s top risk this year – it's the force multiplier that makes every other global challenge more dangerous and harder to solve. The tail risk of something truly catastrophic will grow fatter every day.
