Trending Now
We have updated our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for Eurasia Group and its affiliates, including GZERO Media, to clarify the types of data we collect, how we collect it, how we use data and with whom we share data. By using our website you consent to our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy, including the transfer of your personal data to the United States from your country of residence, and our use of cookies described in our Cookie Policy.
Quick Take
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: A Quick Take to kick off your week.
I am standing here at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. And of course, it's a split screen right now because everyone's also got their eyes back on Washington, DC and the inauguration for the second time of Donald Trump as president. It is the end of the post-Cold War order. That's what Borge Brende said, he runs the World Economic Forum, in a piece in the New York Times. I call it the G-Zero world, but this is the organization that's most committed to that order over the last 50 years. And of course, committed to doesn't necessarily mean fighting for. I think that's part of the issue, is that so many people, whether they were captains of industry, or media leaders, or heads of state, just believe that, well, after the Soviet Union was defeated, a united, more multilateral, globalized order was just what was coming.
And so, we didn't have to do anything. We just had to keep on keeping on. Of course, that isn't the way it felt for an awful lot of people living inside those countries. And the Americans definitively elected Trump not just once, but twice. And the first time, it was an experiment. He was an outsider to shake things up. The second time, you're electing somebody who's already been impeached twice, who's been convicted for crimes, who's already made very clear that he has no interest in promoting a US-led multilateral order. And that is exactly what people wanted, or at least, more people than wanted the alternative. And so that's where we are.
Outside of the United States, and Davos is mostly about other countries, 60 heads of state are here, and CEOs from all over the world, it’s really a question of how are you responding to that? And I would say that there's a big question of whether or not you accept it and normalize and capitulate, or whether you try to fight. And overwhelmingly, what we have is the former. I mean, the number of times you're talking about things that you never would have found acceptable, a year ago, five years ago, from the United States, cryptocurrencies being launched by the president in the days before his inauguration, making billions, tens of billions of dollars, that's just the way it's done in the United States now. Elon Musk joining phone calls and meetings with CEOs and heads of state. Really bizarre if that was happening with any other leader. But if the United States is doing it, I guess that's just the way it's done. And if the Americans are telling you we're going to take Greenland or we're going to take Canada, we're going to take the Panama Canal, well, we're not going to take that seriously, but we do recognize that we're going to have to give them a little something, because otherwise it's going to cause us a lot of damage.
One major exception here is that I don't expect the Chinese to capitulate at all. I mean, they're talking with the Americans, and maybe there will even be a meeting in the early days, a summit meeting between Donald Trump and XI Jinping. That's very different from a breakthrough deal. And rather, I think we’re at the beginning of what's very likely to be a trade war between the two largest economies in the world. And frankly, of all the things I just mentioned, that's probably the one that is going to concern the attendees of the World Economic Forum the most. Certainly, the one that's going to affect them most.
Anyway, that's where we're starting off with the summit this week. There'll be massive number of meetings over the course of the next few days and I'm sure I'll talk to you again. Talk soon.
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: A Quick Take for you today. I want to talk to you about the geopolitical recession that we, the world, are now in. What is a geopolitical recession you ask?
Well, economic recessions you kind of understand. We have boom cycles and bust cycles. They happen frequently. So frequently that we even have solid measurements for when an advanced industrial economy is in a technical recession. That's two quarters in a row of negative growth. Or when the world is experiencing a recessionary year. They happen frequently in the United States since World War II, every seven to 10 years on average. And that means that we have been through many of those cycles, and we can recognize them and we know that we don't like them. We want to respond to them.
And whether you are an advanced industrial economy, a free market economy, or whether you are an authoritarian state and a state capitalist system, either way, you've got central bankers and finance ministers or treasury secretaries that are using monetary and fiscal tools to try to minimize the impact of a recession and get back towards effective more sustainable growth.
Okay, so that's the economic side. But I'm not an economist. I'm a political scientist. Are there cycles in geopolitics? And the answer is yes. But they're a lot longer. And because the cycles are longer, playing out over several generations, we don't live through a lot of them individually. And so, we don't recognize them as a pattern. But we are right now in a geopolitical recession.
What causes a geopolitical recession? Well, basically it's when the balance of power becomes misaligned, out of whack, with the rules of the road geopolitically. With how the world order is structured, the institutions, the architecture. So, for example, the global order that we have been living through both after World War II through the Cold War, and then through Soviet collapse, was all about a number of global institutions and architecture that the United States created with its allies, its friends, after World War II was over.
So, the world has just gone through this horrible cataclysm, a geopolitical depression, and now we've got a boom cycle. And the United States is creating the United Nations and the WTO and the IMF and all of these other global institutions with the idea being support for collective security, support for a multilateral free trade architecture, support for rule of law, promotion of human rights, promotion of democracy all over the world. Generally speaking, the United States created a whole bunch of global institutions that reflected what the United States thought about how the world should be run.
Then over time, the balance of power changes, but the institutions don't. At least not as much because they're sticky, because it takes a lot of political capital to change them. People kick the can down the road. Let somebody else do it. And when that gap grows too wide, then the geopolitical order starts to shake. It becomes much more unstable.
So, what happened here? Three big reasons why we are now in a geopolitical recession. Number one, when the Soviet Union collapsed, Russia was not integrated into the West, not into the EU, not into NATO. They're angry about it. They blame the United States. They are now a chaos actor on the global stage, at least insofar as the advanced industrial economies. The G7 are concerned, and their top allies are fellow chaos actors: North Korea and Iran. That's reason number one.
Reason number two, China was integrated into the global order, particularly the global economy on the notion that as they got wealthier, as they benefited from that, they would become responsible stakeholders. And what that means for Americans is that they're going to align with these US led global institutions and values and norms. They'll support rule of law. They'll become more politically liberalized. They'll become more economically free market in orientation. The Chinese have gotten much wealthier. They're now a technological peer to the United States, no one else is close, ahead in some areas, behind in others. But they absolutely have not aligned with the United States. And that is making a lot of Americans and a lot of American allies very concerned, and it's leading to confrontation between the two most powerful countries.
Number three, while those first two things were going on, lots of people in the West, and especially the United States, increasingly felt like their own leaders, their political leaders, their business leaders, their corporate leaders, their media leaders, their elites, were promoting globalism, were promoting a bunch of things for a global order that didn't help them. So, all of those ideas about collective security and promotion of democracy and promoting free trade, not interested, because the average American doesn't feel like they're benefiting from it.
And certainly that is a big reason why Trump won, not just once, but twice, and more decisively the second time around. And so now, not only do you have the Russians acting like rogues with allies, and the Chinese much more powerful, but not aligned with the US-led global system. But you have the Americans saying, "We're not very interested in promoting that global system anymore. In fact, we're more interested in the law of the jungle."
It's a worldview that's closer to the Chinese. Not multilateralism but just one-on-one relations where you are stronger and you tell the other country what you want to have done. It's very transactional, it's very pragmatic. Doesn't really matter what kind of values that country holds. If you're Trump, you'll do a deal with Russia or China or an ally, and you'll criticize and pressure anybody if they're not behaving the way you want to. The fact that there are common values doesn't really matter. The fact that you're part of the same infrastructure and architecture doesn't really matter. It's, "What are you doing for me now?"
So given all of that, we are now in a serious geopolitical recession. What I call a G-Zero world. Not a G7, not a G20, where there's an absence of global leadership. Now, what's very interesting about that G-Zero world, what's very interesting about this geopolitical recession that I believe that we're in is that the United States is in a particularly strong position right now. Particularly strong compared to its adversaries like China facing the worst economic conditions since the 90s, maybe even the 70s. Like Russia in a period of severe economic decline, and other decline, national security, political. And Iran, which has basically just lost their empire, their empire by proxy, the Axis of Resistance in the Middle East. The US is also much stronger relationally to its allies. America's technology capabilities becoming so dominant compared to what the Europeans, the Japanese, the South Koreans, the Canadians don't have. America's military capabilities. The strength of the US economy coming out of the pandemic compared to every other G7 democracy shows that the United States can get a lot more done in a geopolitical recession. Can ensure that its will is followed.
Also, the fact that Trump is consolidated so much more power this time around compared to 2017 when he was first president. Last time, he had all of these establishment Republicans that didn't really support him, all the way from Mike Pence, his vice president, to Mad Dog Mattis, to Mike Pompeo, to Nikki Haley, to Gary Cohn, and on and on and on. This time around, not at all. Everyone is aligned with Trump.
Also last time, the GOP, the Republican Party, didn't feel like they had to ride Trump's coattails. He wasn't as popular as a lot of they were in their own individual campaigns. This time around not at all. Trump's much more popular than them, they need him much more. And that's happening at a time when so many allied governments are very, very weak. And that's a problem, right? For them. If you're Canada and your government's imploding, or you're South Korea and your government's imploding, or you're Germany, your government's imploding, or France and your government's imploding. Or even countries like the United Kingdom and Japan where the establishment is very, very vulnerable, and very unpopular, Trump's ability to tell you, "This is what we want. And by the way, we are a lot more effective at playing the law of the jungle than either our allies or our adversaries."
It's going to be very hard for them not to kiss the ring, not to provide big wins for the Americans. So, lots of wins for Trump, and that's what we're going to see over the course of the coming year, and a lot of defense being played by a lot of those other countries around the world. But is that sustainable?
Because to get out of a geopolitical recession, you ultimately need to create new rules of the road. You need new global architecture, especially because our challenges, whether it's climate change or an arms race, nuclear weapons, whether it's AI and new disruptive technologies, for good and for bad, they all are global challenges and global opportunities. But we are increasingly fragmenting our responses to national and even local levels.
So, this is not a sustainable trajectory, and that is what we're going to spend an awful lot of time looking at over the coming year, over the coming administration, and going beyond. Because, of course, this is the first time that any of us have experienced a country, the United States, essentially unwinding, undoing its own order. These global institutions that Trump and others are saying are globalist and not useful for the Americans to align with are institutions the United States initially created to help run the world in America's own image, but the US no longer believes that that works for it. And that is a fantastically interesting, but also unnerving, unsettling, and unstable time for us all geopolitically.
So, that's what a geopolitical recession is. I hope you found this worthwhile, and I'll talk to you all real soon.
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: a Quick Take to kick off your week.
Let's talk about Greenland. First time I ever encountered it was when I was playing Risk in school, and it was this big island between North America and Europe that connected you with Iceland. But it was part of North America, at least on the Risk map, and that's how you got your five armies if you owned the whole thing. So you always threw a couple up there, a lot of big, big territory. And now we're visiting, and Donald Trump Jr. taking Air Trump One last week and landing in Nuuk, the capital of Greenland. Landed for a few hours, did some social media stuff, and then got back to Mar-a-Lago, where he's probably more comfortable. What's happening? Why do the Americans say that they are going to buy it, incoming President Trump, and what does it mean for American alliances and the future of the global order and all of that?
Well, first, let's recognize that as much as it sounds crazy, Trump is not the first president to offer to buy Greenland. He's actually the third. The first was Andrew Johnson. His Secretary of State, William Seward, who was down for Alaska, also offered 5.5 million to buy Greenland. This was back in 1868. The timing is interesting, of course. There's no historic claim on Greenland. The US troops did briefly occupy it in World War II for defensive purposes, but it's not as if the United States has any reason to believe that this should be American. It's not like, say, what the Russians say about Crimea.
And the Greenlandic government, which is itself, it represents all of 55,000 people, despite the size, is led by a separatist political party. They want independence. Independence is popular in Greenland. They've had a few polls, and people generally say that they'd like to be Greenlanders and not part of Denmark. And they are clearly leveraging all of this spotlight from Trump to advance having an independence referendum during parliamentary elections coming up real soon, like in April. And frankly, given that Denmark is a tiny country and spends about $500 million a year on Greenland, that if the Americans came over the top and said, "Well, we'd make you an ally. We'd put troops on the ground and we'd pay you more, not taking it over, Greenland would be an independent state." I think it would be much more likely that Greenland would actually vote for independence. And then, Trump would say, "We've got a new ally, and we've got everything we wanted. And we have these basing rights for the Arctic," and all of that.
It's pretty significant in terms of talking about the Nordics. Denmark has had Greenland as part of its territory since 1830. And Greenland is autonomous, they have their own parliament, which means they are right now in charge of their own domestic affairs, but not foreign or security affairs. So in that regard, also much like Crimea under Ukraine. But they have moved more towards an independence movement over the past decades. In part, self-determination is what people generally are aiming for around the world, with better understanding of others, post-colonial, being able to achieve it for themselves. Also, because there's a difficult history with Denmark. A lot of forced integration, taking Greenlanders from their homes, from their families, to put them in Danish schools and make them more Danish. Even forced birth control to reduce the Greenland explosion of population. Those things are not happening now, but that is a history that was exploitative and makes a lot of Greenlanders feel about the Danes the way that a lot of Native Americans feel about the United States. So, it's understandable why there would be an independence movement.
Now, the Danes, in addition to all the European leaders, are squashing any idea that Greenland is for sale, but that is very different from Greenland might well go independent. And there's no question that Greenland is important, particularly in terms of national security. Russia has put billions of dollars into Arctic infrastructure, including its Northern Fleet, and they're the only country in the world that's really actively trying to seize the Arctic's economic and strategic potential. That's going to become much more important as the ice cap melts, with transit routes, with exploitation of resources. The United States did have some troops on the ground, a meaningful number, in Greenland, something like 10,000. It's now down to 200. They've reduced that. They could certainly expand it with a new relationship with an independent Greenland.
Of course, they could also expand it with a new relationship with Denmark, of which Greenland is a part, Trump not all that interested in that because it doesn't make spectacular headlines, and also because he likes real estate. Let's face it, you look at him personally, and he loves putting his names on pieces of property that are iconic and that have a large visual footprint in the minds of people. And historically, he almost lost his economic empire a few times by holding on to iconic real estate for too long. So is that a factor in how Trump thinks about Greenland? You'd have to imagine it plays a role. So I think we are going to be talking about this actually a lot more over the coming months, and it's going to have a lot more to do with what 55,000 Greenlanders decide to vote for. And then how the Americans negotiate with them.
- Trump wants something, but likely not a 51st state ›
- Musk vs. Europe: How far will each go? ›
- The Graphic Truth: The politics of polar bears ›
- It's Not So Absurd To Want Greenland ›
- Trump talks of taking the Panama Canal - and jokes about Elon Musk ›
- What Trump wants from Greenland, Canada, Panama … and more - GZERO Media ›
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: A Quick Take for you, a happy New Year, I wish that I could say that 2025 was getting off to a smoother start, clearly not the case, certainly not in my country.
Two terrorist attacks in the early hours of the first day of the year, in New Orleans, back where I went to school, Tulane University. 14 dead, dozens injured in a terrorist attack right on Bourbon Street, as all the revelers were celebrating. And then, hours later, Las Vegas, the Trump International Hotel, a Cybertruck carrying fireworks and gas canisters, essentially a bomb, a driver killed himself before blowing up his truck. Nobody else killed, lots of injuries, could have been a lot worse. Everyone's talking about potential connections, they use the same app to rent the vehicles, they're both US citizens, one's a veteran, one's active, one was active in the US Forces, both served in Afghanistan, were even on the same base.
No evidence at all that they knew each other, and certainly no evidence that the attacks were in any way coordinated. In fact, if you look at some of the posts and other things made by the New Orleans bomber, out of Texas, was thinking about attacking friends and family before he was worried about the media receptivity on that. Far more likely both of these were lone wolf attacks. But there are some important things to point out, like if you're angry and disillusioned with the US, its system, its leaders, its values or lack thereof, and you want to attack the excesses of it, decadence of the United States in your view, and you want to have great symbolism, January 1 gets you there, Bourbon Street in New Orleans, and Las Vegas are pretty much ground zero, so in that regard, not a coincidence at all.
A couple of lone wolves with the same sort of animus, in terms of why they would take their grievances out in the most public way, going after Trump and Elon, ditto, and of course, we've already seen a bunch of this in the most disastrous potential ways with the attempted assassinations against now President-elect Trump, one of which was this close, and almost happened, could easily have happened, and we'd be having very different conversations if that were the case right now. I'm thinking a lot about the symbolism, a lot about the impact, because the coverage in the media and on social media about these terrorist attacks is so overwhelmingly about trying to figure out who's to blame, which team, who's responsible? Is this on the right or on the left? Were these people outraged with Trump or were they Trump supporters? Were they white nationalists? Were they Americans? Were they not Americans? Were they Muslim extremists? All of that.
When, of course, the most important thing to focus on are the victims. The most important thing to focus on is the outrage that these attacks are occurring, and that innocent citizens, civilians are getting killed, are getting injured, that their families are suffering, that the impact on the communities, and that we're not apparently able to prevent them. That is the focus that we should have, and it couldn't be more different in that regard from 911, where the response was to rally around the flag. The response was to rally around the president, who had over 90% approval ratings in the weeks after those attacks, wasn't particularly popular beforehand. And what changed between those days, well, what changed was that the average American felt very patriotic and felt that all Americans were ultimately on the same side, on the same team.
And that is not where we are right now. Right now, the average American feels that the primary enemies are inside the country, supporting their political enemies, whoever they happen to be. And we are seeing this especially on social media, we're seeing this with so much disinformation, we're also seeing it, frankly, with President-elect Trump, who was immediately talking about, well, this was a threat from outside the country, and it's because we're not defending the border, and it's Biden, and he's the biggest disaster, and he's not protecting, as opposed to Biden is the American president, Trump is about to be the American president, they're both the leaders that deserve to be listened to, and need to be rallied behind in a time of crisis. Very far from that, you can't imagine a US really getting over 50% approval right now, with a good percentage of the remaining 50% thinking that that president is a core part of the problem.
And that means, number one, that these attacks are likely to do more to drive Americans apart than to bring them together. Secondly, that there's going to be much more politicization that comes on the back of these attacks, and talking about how certain parts of the US public is not patriotic. So, for example, when the first New Orleans attacks occurred, in New York City, there were some significant demonstrations, obviously completely unrelated, that were pro-Palestinian demonstrations in the US. A lot of response to that was these people need to be surveilled, they're calling for intifada, they are a part of the problem. When, in reality, they're American citizens expressing freedom of speech, just like Trump supporters or American citizens expressing freedom of speech, and they're all the same Americans. But a lot of Americans don't feel that way. And that, I think, is being maximized, it's being, the algorithms are driving more of that hate, more of that anger, more of that anxiety.
And the media coverage, which is so divided, is also driving that, depending on what and who you're watching and focusing on ensuring that the views that you bring into this are only going to be strengthened, and the enemy's views are going to be disparaged. That's where we are, that's how we're responding to tragedies, two tragedies, as we kick off 2025. I'd like to believe that these are solvable, addressable problems, and that we can create more of a community, create more of a civil society in the United States, but in the near term, the trend is not in that direction, the trend is indeed very far in the other direction.
And that's something that I think we're going to be paying attention to and talking about for some time to come. So, I hope that you and your families had a restful and peaceful and Happy New Year, but we've got a lot of work to do, and we'll do our best to honestly and without fear or favor, continue to analyze that for you, and talk about it, and focus over the course of the year. And that's it for me, and I'll talk to you all real soon.
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: A Quick Take in this holiday season on the back of the biggest fight in the United States that we have seen among Trump supporters since his election win.
Started off when Vivek Ramaswamy, the billionaire, the co-director of this new Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE as they're calling it, writing that we have to bring in lots of high-talent immigrants, complaining that American culture isn't getting it right for the people that they need to hire in order to make the United States win and more competitive. We hear it all the time. You need to staple a green card to every STEM PhD that's being awarded to non-Americans in the US so they can stay. You need to keep those students here. You need to bring in far more talented legal immigrants in larger numbers to address the talent gap in the United States, and if Americans want to win, that's what you need to do.
The average American has heard this before, and they've heard it for a long time. To be clear, it is not like the US economy isn't winning right now. You look at the stock market, you look at corporate profits, you look at Elon Musk, the dude is worth nearly half a trillion dollars, and that's with a very strong dollar. Look at how the United States' economy has performed since the pandemic, while Europe, and Japan, and South Korea, and Canada, and others just are not, and they're not innovating, and they don't have the big companies. I've heard this about other issues. I've heard about tariffs. I've heard about even free trade. You hear it about investments and capital flows around the world and need to make things work more effectively for the big money in the United States. And working-class and middle-class Americans know that when elites in the US say that the US is going to win, that it doesn't mean 'em. The United States, for so many Americans, is a country of second-class healthcare, and second-class education, and second-class opportunities. And if the American dream doesn't work for the average American citizen, then you're telling them we should be bringing in really much more talented Indians? Good luck with that argument for them.
And those of you that know me, know that that's not my personal perspective. I grew up in the projects with a mother though that did absolutely everything for her kids. And I had opportunities. We had opportunities. I feel very lucky to have been born in America, not better than anyone else, not having any more intrinsic worth, just super, super fortunate. So the American Dream absolutely worked for me. Capitalism in the US and the ability to be an entrepreneur absolutely worked for me. But most of the kids that grew up in my neighborhood don't feel that way today, along with far too many working and middle-class Americans.
And if the United States felt like the land of opportunity instead of a two-tier system where you buy your way into privilege, and you buy your way into opportunity, and then you make sure you do that for your kids, and the best indicator of how well an American is going to do is how fortunate your parents are compared to other advanced industrial democracies, rich democracies around the world, well, that is not a country that's going to say, "Yeah, we need to do more to help the wealthiest win." Because the wealthiest have already figured out how to win for themselves, and there are lobbying dollars, and their access to the best that the world has to offer for them in the United States. If the average American felt that way and felt that applied to them, then Trump wouldn't be president today. You wouldn't have "America First" resonating for so many people that want to undermine globalism because globalism wasn't about the globe and it wasn't about all Americans. It was about just getting it done for that small, small group of people with access to capital.
This is the failure of globalism, and this is why the United States doesn't want to take the lead on global security, or global trade, or even global democracy anymore. You have to be a leader at home before you can effectively lead anybody, nevermind everybody else. This is what we're facing come January 20th. I think it's a useful fight to see play out publicly because there's a very big difference between those that have access to decision-making, power and authority in the United States and those that turned out and actually voted, the masses that voted against the establishment. And to the extent that they continue to be hard done by and every expectation for the last 40 years in the US is that that will be the case, whether it's a Democrat or Republican running the country, this situation is only going to get more toxic.
That's it for me. I wish everyone Happy holidays. Hope you had a merry Christmas. Looking forward to the new Year. I'll talk to you all real soon.
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: A Quick Take to kick off your Merry Christmas week. Maybe it'll be a little bit quieter, but it doesn't feel that way these days.
I wanted to talk a little bit about the statements from President-elect Trump about the territories that he seems to have some interest in. Over the last day, we've had statements that the US should take the Panama Canal, and some memes being posted by Trump and the vice president-elect. And he said that it used to belong to the United States, the Panama Canal, and President Jimmy Carter foolishly gave it away. And now he wants it back. And is it because he's angry that the Panamanian government is claiming that he owes lots of taxes for Trump properties? Maybe. Certainly, the governments don't like each other. The Panamanian president came out and said sovereignty and independence of his country are not negotiable, not surprisingly.
And then, Trump with another statement, and it's not the first time, saying that ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity. In his first administration, he wanted to try to buy it. Denmark said no. Now he's saying, "Look, national security reasons for the United States, absolute necessity, that's like pretty much 100%, right? So, got to take Greenland over." And the Greenland prime minister has said it's very much not for sale.
So, look, what are we talking about here? Well, first, national security reasons are of course defined by the United States as the most powerful country. That is a different type of US exceptionalism. Historically, US exceptionalism was more about the idea that the Americans actually had right on their side, and so their values were somehow different and better than those of other countries.
Now, it's more about we want it. It's for our national security. It has nothing to do with values, but we can get away with it because we are stronger. Now, lots of countries do this. Russia they have made that argument about Crimea, which used to belong to the Soviet Union under the leadership in Moscow and the Russian Federation first among equals. And then was given to the Ukrainians by Khrushchev, which I remember Elon Musk referred to as "Khrushchev's mistake," which seemed the kind of thing he wouldn't come up with and would've heard from the Kremlin. Now they want it, and they want it because it was historically theirs, and they shouldn't have given it back. And so, it doesn't matter if the Ukrainians have sovereignty, and the locals wanted to be a part of Russia anyway, which is true in the case of Crimea. Not in the case of the Southeast Ukrainian territories that the Russians presently occupy.
But of course, it's against international law. Having said that, against international law, when you're the more powerful country, doesn't seem to matter very much in today's international environment. Certainly not as much as it used to. That's why Ukraine is going to get partitioned, and Ukraine is going to have to accept a loss of territory de facto in order to maintain security guarantees going forward. We see this in terms of China and the "nine-dash line" in the South China Sea, which clearly is ridiculous, if anyone that looks at a map recognizes that China should have no claim on all of this territory and the resources inside that territory. But China's more powerful than all these other countries, like Indonesia, and the Philippines, and so they can get away with a lot more.
Israel in the West Bank, and more territory that they're taking, and more territory just in the last couple of weeks that they say is temporary. But for how long? Who knows. Near the Golan Heights, strategically important for them, national security reasons, so it's ours, right? That is where we are heading.
And does Trump mean it? Probably not. He didn't mean it last time with Greenland. It's just a negotiating stance, and he exaggerates a fair amount. And he's looking to both say things that amuse him and put other countries on the back foot. Just like he did with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Canada who is facing a much harder domestic political time because Trump is making him look like an idiot on the international stage, and Trump and the US are a lot more powerful than Trudeau in Canada.
But it does matter if the United States doesn't support international law. It does matter if the US is not interested in upholding its existing trade deals, its existing collective security agreements. And unlike in 2016, when Trump won for the first time, this time around there's more legitimacy to it in the United States. And what I mean by that is, Trump won, and he won the popular vote. And he almost got 50% of all of the voters in the United States. And it's not like Americans don't know what Trump did, don't know what he's accused of, don't know his role around January 6th, don't know what he's intending to do going forward. They're fully aware of this, and they voted for him anyway. Or maybe I should say they voted for him in part because of that.
So, you don't get to blame the Russians, which was farcical back in 2016, but no one's even trying to make that argument now. Trump won, and Trump won on an agenda that he is now very much moving forward with. And that is going to be a big issue for other countries because they are a lot less powerful than the United States. Elon Musk, similar challenge here, acting in many ways as the most powerful person in the US government after Trump. Certainly the most unfettered, and when he comes out publicly and says that Germany's in trouble if it's not for the alternatives for Deutschland, the AFD, it's not close to a majority of support in Germany, but the German government's in trouble. And he will push for more support for a Euro-skeptic group. Very far on the right in the German political spectrum, and the German government is going to be scared.
How much do you want to go after Elon and push him back when you know that he has the full support of the American president? Do you really want to fight with him? And the answer is a lot less than you would've been willing to fight with him before Trump won. So, I think all of this is really creating a much more transactional law of the jungle global space, where both the United States, and China, and a number of other countries are increasingly playing by a very similar lack of rule book if you will. And we're becoming more a world of winners and losers, as opposed to a world of leaders that bring people together, and that is a problem. We've experienced that in the past, but we haven't experienced it when the challenges are so obviously larger, the national challenges.
So, clearly global challenges when it comes to climate, or it comes to AI, when it comes to the proliferation of dangerous weapons. So, clearly a much more dangerous environment is the consequence of all of that, and that's how I think I respond to what I see from Trump. Not that it's so different from what we're seeing from other countries, but precisely because it's so similar, and because those are countries that the Americans historically are like, "No, no, no, we don't play by that." And that's increasingly where we are. So, anyway, a lot that we'll be looking towards in 2025, and a very, very volatile geopolitical environment. Merry Christmas to everyone. Hope you have a happy New Year, and I'll talk to you all real soon.
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: As 2024 comes to a close, we always look back on our Top Risks. How we did at the beginning of the year. I back in January, referred to this as the "Voldemort of years," at least geopolitically. The year that must not be named because of three major conflicts that we expected were going to only get worse over the course of the year. The Russia-Ukraine war, the war in the Middle East, and the war between the United States and itself. Those absolutely played out.
First, the risk on Russia-Ukraine, where we said that Ukraine would effectively be partitioned. Not a popular thing to say back in January, and not something that we were hoping for. Just something that we believed was going to happen, even irrespective of how the US elections turned out. The fact that Ukrainians were going to be much more overstretched in the ability to fight. The fact that the Russians would be able to maintain the war machine, and the fact that the Europeans and the Americans were increasingly tiring of a war with lots of attention in other places.
All of that meant that Ukrainians would increasingly be desperate. And we really saw that in particular with this spectacular Ukrainian attack into Kursk taking Russian territory, but needing 40,000 of their troops to accomplish it away from their front lines. As the year comes to a close, Ukraine is losing territory faster than at any point since the beginning of the war. And they increasingly recognize not only that they need to start negotiations, but they're going to have to end up trading some land for peace and for security guarantees from the West. So indeed Ukraine today, de facto partitioned.
Number two, the war in the Middle East, which we believed was going to expand significantly. At the beginning of the year, we were talking about Gaza. Now of course, we're talking about the 'Axis of Resistance,' a year when in Yemen the Houthis were popping off rockets and missiles against civilian tanker traffic going through the Red Sea and also against the United States and other military assets in the region, and the Americans and others hitting them back. We saw the war open to include Hezbollah and Lebanon. We saw the war also threaten to bring Israel and Iran together directly as they exchanged fire against each other and as the Israelis were able to decimate Iran's proxies.
Some good news on this front. First of all, the fact that ultimately the United States, Israel, and most importantly, Iran, showed restraint and risk aversion in what would've been a much more devastating fight. And what would've led oil prices to go well over a hundred if that war broken out. That did not occur. And also the fact that the Israelis have been able to show military dominance, which meant that there is no more effective 'Axis of Resistance' at the end of this year. In fact, the big surprise that not only did the war expand, but Assad is gone. Not because of Obama who said that over 10 years ago, but rather because they were unable to respond to HTS supported by Turkey, a rebellion against Assad, and the Russians, and the Iranians. Assad's support base were inadequate to keep him in power. He now sits in Moscow.
And now finally, the US versus itself. A year of only more significant division and polarization inside my own country, the United States. And we've seen that play out. First of all with a Biden that was running for the presidency and had no capacity to serve for another four years, refused to step down, was finally essentially forced out, forced to step down by everyone around him, including former President Obama, former speaker Pelosi, and all of the rest. On the Trump side, two, not one, attempted assassinations, one by this much. And if that had occurred, we'd be in a hell of a lot more difficult position now as a country. The election did go off without a hitch, and was accepted as free and fair, thankfully. And now the United States looks forward to a new president. But the divisions inside the US, the weakening of America's political institutions only growing over the course of 2024.
So those were our top three risks. You can look at all 10, and see how we did go back and check it out on the link that we have here. And also take a look in early January. Watch out for our Top Risks of 2025. It will be something you do not want to miss.
- Eurasia Group’s Top Global Risks 2024 ›
- Why 2024 is the Voldemort of years ›
- 2024's top global risks: The trifecta of wars threatening global peace ›
- A world of conflict: The top risks of 2024 ›
- Ian Bremmer explains the 10 Top Risks of 2025 - GZERO Media ›
- Unpacking the biggest global threats of 2025 - GZERO Media ›
- Podcast: The Top Geopolitical Risks of 2025, a live conversation with Ian Bremmer and global experts - GZERO Media ›
- Top Risks 2025: America's role in the crumbling global order - GZERO Media ›