Which geopolitical trends will dominate in 2025?
The Big Ask | No. 01.2025
2024 was a year of significant geopolitical ramifications. The deepening partnerships between an axis of authoritarian nations has given rise to the ‘CRINK’ (the People’s Republic of China ((PRC)), Russia, Iran and North Korea), Russia’s war against Ukraine and the conflict in the Middle East have entered new, more transformative and dangerous phases, while political instability continues to characterise several leading democracies, including Donald Trump’s victory in the United States (US) presidential election and governmental collapse in Germany and France.
As a result of these developments, the world finds itself in the worst geopolitical environment since the end of the Cold War and continues to hurtle towards ever-increasing instability and uncertainty. Yet it remains to be seen what 2025 has in store for us all? So, in this week’s Big Ask, we asked 11 experts: Which geopolitical trends will dominate in 2025?
Neil Brown
Distinguished Fellow, Council on Geostrategy
Three broad trends will dominate 2025: Firstly, the full spectrum challenge of a PRC, economically stable as opposed to successful, and determined to assert itself regionally and challenge the free and open international order, aided by increasing connectivity with the other like-minded regimes in the CRINK. Secondly, increasing fragility in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Latin America and Africa will bring large-scale migration, incubate international and transnational crime, and keep those regions and much of the so-called ‘Global South’ susceptible to PRC and Russian influence. Thirdly, an incoherent Euro-Atlantic alliance.
With the ambitions of autocrats clear and unlikely to change, the most unpredictable of the trends is in the political Euro-Atlantic and especially Europe. US growth will accelerate in 2025 as dollar primacy, energy independence, tax cuts and deregulation embolden the appetite to ignore burgeoning debt. Europe will fall further behind, given political and economic weakness in its largest economies which will hamper growth and investment at a national and European Union (EU)-level. This will undermine clarity of EU thinking on global risk, suppress investment, and make Chinese help on jobs and emissions targets look attractive, threatening the opportunity that exists now for a US-led and PRC-facing economic and security alliance.
The usual suspects in Paris, Berlin and London will use Trump 2.0 ‘Make America Great Again’ (MAGA) rhetoric to revive fanciful notions of EU strategic autonomy, and dismiss global threats as exaggerated or even caused by Washington. Early in 2025, this will risk Euro-Atlantic divisions over Ukraine until they realise that exploiting Moscow’s military, economic and political weakness in 2025 is the best hope of securing a credible peace.
Research Fellow on National Security, Council on Geostrategy
Intensifying competition between the CRINK and the leading free and open nations will be the key geopolitical trend in 2025. Two of the CRINK in particular will want to intensify their efforts to dismantle the free and open order in the short-term because they know they face relative decline over the long-term. The PRC and Russia face serious economic and demographic challenges: by 2055, the PRC’s working age population will decline by roughly 280 million. These struggles are already being felt. Leaders in Beijing and Moscow know that the period from now until the mid-2030s is their best chance to dismantle the prevailing international order. As 2025 progresses, we should expect bolder and more assertive moves from the CRINK.
This has serious ramifications for Britain. As things stand, the UK lacks preparedness to meet the growing threat, and acts as if the geopolitical environment is still relatively benign. 2025 will be the year where leaders will have to decide whether a serious change in course is required – as the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) nations across the alliance’s eastern flank have done. His Majesty’s (HM) Government has said many of the right things, such as a ‘securonomics approach’ to the economy, ironclad support for Ukraine, and viewing defence as the first job of government. However, the necessary level of political will and resources needed to make good on these statements is yet to be seen.
Britain allowed its adversaries to steal a march over the last decade, 2025 will be a vital year to make up for lost time.
Director, Strategy, Statecraft, and Technology: Changing Character of War Centre, University of Oxford
The elasticity of democracies means that short-term disruption, while catching headlines, rarely has lasting significance. By contrast, the rigidity of authoritarian regimes means that, while possessing the outward appearance of strength and power, their internal political crises can cascade rapidly to the point of failure.
Similar long-term models provide more reliable variables than the performance of markets or the advent of new technologies, both of which will undoubtedly mark the events of 2025. The PRC’s population is ageing and in decline. Russia will struggle to find sufficient young people to sustain its own economic activity. Global energy prices will increase this coming year. Economic and demographic pressures will mobilise peoples in Africa and the Middle East, spurring further migration and conflict. Taken together, the prospects of stability look limited. Along the global fracture line (which extends from Central-South America, across northern Africa, through the Middle East, along the India-China border, through the South China Sea, and which concludes along the 38th parallel of Korea), the prospects of conflict are very high indeed.
The implications are that the world’s major states will be drawn into these crises because of reputational or economic interests. A more adroit policy would be to focus on economic regeneration led by the private sector, prioritisation of resource supply, friend-shoring economics, and investment in deterrence.
Associate Fellow, Council on Geostrategy
In 2025, uncertainty and instability will continue to define the global geopolitical environment. Leaders will increasingly focus on economic sovereignty and security, particularly for goods critical to national security. This will elevate maritime geopolitics, as vital sea lanes continue to be contested and the competition for resources intensifies. Geopolitical rivalries will persist and intensify, profoundly affecting global security and the economy.
As climate impacts continue to intensify, the Arctic will become a focal point as nations compete for access to new routes and resources. Diverging approaches to the ‘green transition’ in the maritime space will also have significant ramifications for oceanic security.
The Trump administration’s potential tariff hikes on Chinese goods could disrupt maritime supply chains, possibly opening new routes. Yet, the PRC’s control over key overseas ports remains significant. In this context, the Royal Navy should address how to protect critical trade flows, while faced with growing deployment pressures and operational demands.
As maritime issues take centre stage, nations will face tough decisions about protecting critical infrastructure and supply chains with limited resources. The South China Sea will remain a flashpoint, with continued challenges to freedom of navigation. American involvement will grow, imposing further pressure on prioritisation and allied resource allocation.
Having been assumed for so long to be inherently stable, instability in the maritime domain will be the norm in 2025. Because the global trade system depends on safe and timely sea transport, enhanced security measures, including increased naval presence and cooperation, will be required from navies already stretched thin.
Associate Professor of International Relations, University of Waterloo
Ukraine had a difficult 2024. Uncertain American support and the failure of the summer counteroffensive in 2023 left Ukraine vulnerable to sustained Russian pressure. The effects were felt especially towards the end of the year when Russia ratcheted up the fighting in the Donbas region amid growing disinterest in the war among various Western European publics.
In 2025, such pressure will likely intensify as Ukraine continues to wrestle with the hard moral and political choices which come with mobilising more military-capable men. The new Trump administration may yet continue military aid to Kyiv, but it will expect European allies to contribute more. That Ukraine is relying more and more on its own defence industry to supply itself is a very positive development. However, self-reliance can only achieve so much.
Ukraine’s main European partners will still deliver aid. Whatever its own attitude towards Russia’s war on Ukraine, the new Trump administration’s insistence on even more defence spending across NATO will reinforce their ability to contribute military assistance for Kyiv. That said, economic productivity and growth across much of European NATO have fallen relative to the US. The anxiety that voters could feel as a result creates the conditions for far-right parties to achieve major electoral gains, as might be the case with Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in the German federal election this February. As much as European allies can and should do more when it comes to defence, the guns-versus-butter tradeoff will become increasingly acute in 2025. For Europe to be truly secure over the long-term, political leaders across the continent may have to make daring reforms to spur greater innovation and prosperity for most, if not all.
Charles Parton
Chief Advisor, China Observatory, Council on Geostrategy
Inevitably, 2025 should be seen through orange-tinted glasses. Never before has a new (or recycled) American president seemed so likely to make geopolitics great again, or as in the last chapter in Alice in Wonderland, be one who might cause the pack of cards to fly in the air.
The irascible queen of hearts is Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, and his war against Ukraine. How will Trump deal with Putin’s policy of ‘sentence first – verdict afterwards’? The consequences for Europe and the global future are immense.
The king of hearts, who presides over the trial, inventing rules as he goes, is the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Trump’s policies towards the PRC are vital to many countries’ economic and national security, converging concepts which will dominate in 2025. Europe is the unfortunate jury squeezed between the main protagonists. Tariffs, connected vehicles, and decoupling will be the main trends to deal with.
As for the unfortunate jack of hearts, the UK’s Labour government needs to move beyond its Mad Hatter’s Tea Party slogan of ‘3 Cs’ (compete, challenge, cooperate) to a clear articulation of a China strategy – before the 5th July anniversary of its election win.
Sadly, it seems unlikely that in 2025 the world, like Alice, will awake from a strange dream ‘remembering…the happy summer days’. More likely, we shall hear the ‘distant sobs of the miserable Mock Turtle’ – or perhaps the sound of the last trump. (With apologies to readers of Lewis Carroll – no analogies are perfect.)
Associate Fellow, Council on Geostrategy
For the UK’s energy and environment policies, there will be two dominating geopolitical themes to keep a close eye on: trade in clean tech and climate diplomacy.
If Britain wants cheaper goods and insulation from volatile oil and gas prices, it may need to continue to import some energy technologies from the PRC, which has built dominance in many critical supply chains over decades through consistent industrial strategy. But this already nuanced position will be even harder to craft as the EU and US take protective measures against Chinese imports.
HM Government will try to incentivise the manufacturing of some technologies here, but UK energy policy is already overstretched and the consequent burden on the bill payer is too high. This may compound uncompetitiveness in manufacturing from high electricity prices due to an inefficient electricity market and high gas prices.
With supply chains elsewhere still relatively underdeveloped, a mutually respected balance between cost and security will need to be struck regarding UK-PRC trade. The rumoured ‘overdue’ UK-China Energy Dialogue will be one to watch out for.
2025 will also see an important climate summit in Brazil. HM Government has been courting Brazil due to its G20 Chairmanship and upcoming United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conferences (COP) presidency, while in Azerbaijan, Britain presented itself as ‘back’ as a leader in climate negotiations. How these global negotiations influence – or rather are influenced by – wider geopolitical trends will tell us about the primacy of climate change and our chances of limiting its impact, given the fracturing nature of present international relations.
Regardless, with the US likely to withdraw from the Paris Agreement again, the 1.5°C target officially ‘dead’, and 2024 seeing another record broken for coal consumption, the UN process appears detached from reality and unfit for purpose. 2025 will require more effective and creative mechanisms for carbon mitigation than arguments over abstract emissions and finance targets.
Co-founder and Director of Research, Council on Geostrategy
Key trends – CRINK revisionism; the growing disparity between the American and European economies; technological innovation in areas such as artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing, space, etc.; environmental degradation; and demographic shifts – will of course continue to shape the world. These will define geopolitics in 2025, just as they defined 2024.
But the key trend is frequently overlooked. Just over 30 years ago, Francis Fukuyama released his The End of History and the Last Man (1992), one of the defining texts of the post-Cold War era. He identified the human need for recognition to be the driving force of History. Fukuyuma argued that traditionally, humans craved recognition through dominance (megalothymia). But due to a number of powerful socio-economic forces and technological developments from the 17th century, this desire to dominate gave way to the desire to be recognised as equal to other humans (isothymia). It led to the emergence of the first democratic nation-states.
What has been overlooked is how the same force drives international relations. Just as the rise of isothymia at the national level led to the British (1688), American (1776) and French (1779) revolutions, so too did it give rise to the UN, the EU and increased multilateralism and international law on the international plane.
With Brexit, political convulsions in France and now Trump’s return as American president, is the fundamental tension between isothymia and megalothymia at the national and international levels intensifying? And is this necessarily a negative development, especially if it frustrates the CRINK states’ ability to get their way? After all, if the leading democracies do not see themselves as superior to the autocracies, how can they prevail?
Research Fellow on Sea Power, Council on Geostrategy
A key geopolitical trend in 2025 will be dealing with grey zone action against civilian infrastructure and systems from the CRINK nations. In the last year, we have seen numerous examples of this, from anchor-dragging incidents causing sub-sea cable damage in the Baltic, to election interference in Georgia, Moldova and Romania, to cyber attacks on businesses and governments by state-sponsored actors.
These kinds of events are likely to increase in both number and sophistication over the next year given their value to the states behind them – grey zone action by its very nature allows these states to advance their interests in their ongoing competition with the US and its allies while not stepping over the line into acts which would clearly constitute grounds for a conventional military response.
And herein lies the big problem which will be central in 2025: where should this line be drawn? How serious and attributable does a cyber-attack or a cable cutting incident have to be to warrant a military response from its target? How many violations of international law can a state commit before there are consequences? And how much damage can a state take before its government is compelled to act?
Research Fellow in Indo-Pacific Geopolitics, Council on Geostrategy
On 22nd December, the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) and Chinese coast guard vessels passed through the Miyako Strait near the disputed Senkaku Islands. Their movements, analysts suggest, pointed to them practising for a blockade scenario. A sign, perhaps, that Beijing is ending 2024 as it intends to go on.
The PRC’s desire to dominate the waters within the First Island Chain will likely continue in 2025. Be that with large-scale exercises, grey zone activity against its neighbours, or harassment of foreign vessels passing through the region.
Last year, further down the chain, around Taiwan, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) carried out two major joint exercises, alongside military manoeuvres, which continued to slice away at the status quo. With Lai Ching-te, President of Taiwan, who Beijing takes exception to, in office for the next three years, do not expect cross-strait tensions to cool.
Even further down, meanwhile, Chinese and Philippine vessels clashed in the South China Sea. Contestation over Second Thomas Shoal peaked last summer. The agreement between both countries on resupplies to the grounded warship there, the Sierra Madre, may not hold. Moreover, Beijing may direct its attention to another nearby shoal – where further flare-ups could ensue.
With the Royal Navy’s Carrier Strike Group visiting the Indo-Pacific in 2025, Britain has an opportunity to exercise its maritime rights in these waters and, in doing so, uphold UNCLOS and signal its opposition to Beijing’s expansionist actions.
Policy Fellow on China, Council on Geostrategy
The geopolitical pressure cooker will continue to simmer through 2025. Ideological ramifications of the wars in the Middle East continue to test Euro-Atlantic nations and engender extremism and terrorism among their populations. Trump’s election threatens to unravel Britain’s precarious commercial progress post-Brexit and, of course, the nearest and most pressing issue for the UK is the notion of Russian expansionism. Although these phenomena are actively erupting, a slow-burning challenge for Britain brews consistently in the background: the PRC.
Britain’s response to its most immediate threat – Russian expansionism in Ukraine – has been modest increases in defence spending and to agree with Trump that NATO members should do more. Britain is absolutely right to do this, but the country’s political strategists should continue to monitor the knock-on effects such pledges will have on the other side of the world. Namely, the CCP is pushing the expansion of its Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), a security organisation designed as a counterweight to NATO, with the CCP as its main actor.
Abbas Araghchi, Foreign Minister of Iran – a member state of the SCO – recently met with the organisation’s secretary general in Beijing to discuss how Iran’s accession in 2023 can help strengthen the group’s aims of ensuring ‘the security and political interests of member countries’.
The SCO has an increasing number of member states – Belarus joined last year – and a slew of dialogue partners and observing members. While North Korea is not on the list, all other countries of the CRINK are, and this is enough for the UK to remain highly vigilant of its progress.
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