Category Archives: Geopolitics
5 geopolitical questions for 2025
- In 2025, leaders will grapple with a range of geopolitical challenges.
- Various dynamics and questions should shape the geopolitical agenda next year.
- Here are five key questions that leaders will need to address.
If 2024 was the year of elections, 2025 will be the year of questions.
The start of the year will see governments across the world at the beginning of new terms, forced to respond swiftly to mounting economic, social, security, environmental and technological challenges. These issues would be difficult to address at any time, but today they come amid a turbulent geopolitical context—one that is seeing a disintegration of the post-war international order.
As a result, leaders will not only need to address specific challenges but do so while finding agreement to build a global framework for promoting peace and prosperity in place of the aggression and economic uncertainty we are now experiencing.
What, then, are the dynamics that should inform leaders’ actions?
What 3 dynamics should inform leaders’ actions in 2025?
First, leaders must account for a growth in seemingly irrational responses among their constituents and counterparts. Leaders can no longer assume domestic and global stakeholders will be guided by identifiable interests because polarized domestic and global politics may lead to decisions that appear counterproductive to external audiences. Indeed, some of the forces shaping these decisions are the result of not just deepening polarization but rising levels of misinformation.
The effect of geography on consciences is plainly visible in divergent responses to Gaza, Ukraine, and Sudan.
Second, leaders need to be ready for a growth in inconsistency. External commitments are made based on a state’s location and domestic interests. The effect of geography on consciences is plainly visible in divergent responses to Gaza, Ukraine, and Sudan. Acceptance of double standards around the application of human rights and the responsibility or desire to protect are now more normal than the aspiration to universal values, such as those espoused by the UN Charter and Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Lastly, leaders need to be ready for a growth in influential voices. Leaders will have to reckon with and listen to new actors, from business leaders to social influencers to rising states, many of who are unwilling to adhere to the status quo. The postwar ‘liberal’ consensus is being challenged as much from within as without—even those states that were the bulwark of post-war order contain strong domestic political forces that now contest it.
With these dynamics as a backdrop, what are the most pressing geopolitical questions leaders will need to answer in the year ahead?
Here are five questions for 2025:
How to advance security within a fragmenting global order?
Global cooperation is at a low point and conflict is escalating. Traditional leaders and institutions, such as the WTO and UN, have recently proved ineffective in delivering broad global consensus, or serving as a platform to resolve disputes. Countries and emergent blocs from across the Global South have not yet clarified whether they will serve as a salutary check on a declining West-led global security order, or simply play a disruptive role. Balancing this dynamic will also be Beijing’s task, given that it is at the centre of multiple new geometries—such as the proposed Global Security Initiative, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) and a possible Russia-Iran-China axis.
Traditional leaders and institutions, such as the WTO and UN, have recently proved ineffective in delivering broad global consensus, or serving as a platform to resolve disputes.
The two most divisive conflicts in 2024—Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine and the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza—emerged from long-standing frictions. That these conflicts suddenly inflamed, signals that the global security order is too fragmented to either maintain or negotiate peace.
In this context, when adherence to universal values is an impossibility and the existing order is disintegrating, leaders will be forced to acknowledge the limitations to their influence and the constraints of their alliances.
Leaders will have to ask: What are ways to reach across divides to prevent further conflict? Is it possible for leaders to accept more limitations on their power and take on the task of peace-making? What are the minimum areas of agreement that can generate progress and counter retrogressive action?
How to understand sovereignty in the contemporary world?
The ideal of a rules-based order, painstakingly preserved since 1945, is further away from being practiced now than it has been over the past eight decades. Without shared norms, strong institutions, and a commitment to international law, it is difficult to shape a stable, peaceful environment. However, defenders of the rules-based order have come to realize that for many countries, the role and stability of national political institutions and arrangements are essential. While armies crossing physical borders is an obvious affront to sovereignty, perverse economic measures, manipulation of political systems and regulating access to markets, trading arrangements and payment systems potentially violate the UN Charter and can infringe on the most important aspects of sovereignty.
Without shared norms, strong institutions, and a commitment to international law, it is difficult to shape a stable, peaceful environment.
In recent decades, it was seen as vital that countries cede sovereignty and the ability to make independent decisions on certain policies to global governance institutions, in order to build a “cohesive” global order. Illiberal challengers to this order have long stressed the importance, as they see it, of maintaining sovereignty as the building block of international relations. Now, even defenders of a global order often understand that rules cannot be designed or enforced in a world where state sovereignty is not respected. Because without strong states that can speak for their populations and defend their rights, how can a rules-based order flourish?
In 2025, therefore, leaders will ask: Can the independence of the state be addressed and revitalized in parallel with the strengthening of trans-national structures that offer security for their populations?
Looking ahead
In 2025, leaders across the world will have to search out answers to these five questions. Their answers need not be identical; but the chances are that, if they are in sharp dissonance with each other, then the problems the world seeks to address will be magnified. Amid irrationality, inconsistency, and an abundance of voices, finding a fragile consensus is more important than ever.
This essay first appeared on the World Economic Forum.
Technology: Taming – and unleashing – technology together
Innovative approaches will require regulatory processes to include all stakeholders.
Technology has long shaped the contours of geopolitical relations – parties competed to outinnovate their opponents in order to build more competitive economies, societies and militaries. Today is different. With breakthroughs in frontier technologies manifesting at rapid rates, the question is not who will capture their benefits first but how parties can work together to promote their beneficial use and limit their risks.
The challenge: benefits of frontier technologies may be compromised by inequities and risks
The prolific pace of advancement of frontier technologies – artificial intelligence (AI), quantum science, blockchain, 3D printing, gene editing and nanotechnology, to name a few – and its pursuit by a multitude of state and non-state actors, with varied motivations, has opened a new chapter in contemporary geopolitics. For state actors, these technologies offer a chance to gain strategic and competitive advantage, while for malicious nonstate actors, these technologies present another avenue to persist with their destabilizing activities.
Therefore, emerging technologies have added another layer to a fragmented and contested global political landscape. Besides shaping geopolitical dynamics, they are also transforming commonly held notions of power – by going beyond the traditional parameters of military and economic heft to focus on states’ ability to control data and information or attain a tech breakthrough as the primary determinant of a state’s geopolitical influence.
These technologies also have significant socioeconomic implications. By some estimates, generative AI could add the equivalent of $2.6 trillion to $4.4 trillion to the global economy and boost labour productivity by 0.6% annually through 2040.14 Yet, simultaneously, the rapid deployment of these technologies has sparked concerns about job displacement and social disruption. These dynamics are triggering new geopolitical alignments as states seek to cooperate or compete in developing and using new technologies.
As frontier technologies take centre stage in global politics, they present a new challenge for international diplomacy.
As frontier technologies take centre stage in global politics, they present a new challenge for international diplomacy. What can states do to stem the proliferation of frontier dual-use technologies in the hands of malicious actors who intend to cause harm? Can states look beyond their rivalries to conceive out-of-the-box solutions, or will they always be playing a catch-up game with tech advancements? What role behoves the United Nations-led multilateral frameworks regarding the global governance of these technologies, or will plurilateralism and club-lateralism trump it?
A new approach for governing frontier technologies
The historical evolution of global tech regimes offers important lessons for the challenges posed by frontier technologies today. During the Cold War, industrialized nations established export control regimes, such as the Nuclear Suppliers Group and the Missile Technology Control Regime, that sought to exclude certain countries by denying them several dual-use technologies. Those control regimes proved successful in curbing tech proliferation. However, with changing geopolitical realities, the same regimes began extending membership to previously excluded countries. This approach offers a vital lesson: shedding the initial exclusivist approach in favour of extending membership helped to retain the regimes’ legitimacy.
Secondly, while the multilateral export control regimes succeeded, the nuclear non-proliferation regimes performed sub-optimally as they amplified the gap between nuclear haves and have-nots. This triggered resentment from the nuclear have-nots, who sought to chip away at the legitimacy of the regimes.
The key lesson for today is that the success of any tech-related proliferation control efforts is contingent on not accentuating existing technology divisions between the Global North and South.
The UN-led multilateral framework has focused on enhancing global tech cooperation through initiatives like the Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation. However, while there has been little substantive progress at the global, multilateral level, bilateral and minilateral tech cooperation has thrived. Groupings such as the Quad, AUKUS and I2U2 that focus on niche tech cooperation present a possible model pathway forward.15 They have demonstrated the value of like-minded partners coming together to realise a common vision and ambition. These arrangements also suggest that even as the UN-led multilateral frameworks attempt to grapple with frontier technologies, minilaterals may provide the starting point for collaboration to address frontier technologies’ advancement.
To ensure that efforts at tech regulation succeed, countries will be required to undertake innovation in policy-making, where governments take on board all the stakeholders – tech corporations, civil society, academia and the research community. The challenge posed in recent months by generative AI through tools like deep fakes and natural language processing models like ChatGPT has shown that unless these stakeholders are
integrated into policy design, regulations will always be afterthoughts.
How to strengthen tech cooperation
The following are four proposals for strengthening global cooperation on frontier technologies:
– Develop the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) framework for emerging technologies: Similar to the R2P framework developed by the UN for protecting civilians from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity, the international community must create a regulatory R2P obligation for states to protect civilians from the harms of emerging technologies. This obligation would entail three pillars: 1) the responsibility of each state to protect its populations from the emerging technologies’ misuse, 2) the responsibility of the international community to assist states in protecting their populations from the emerging technologies’ misuse, and 3) the responsibility of the international community to take collective action to protect populations when a state is manifestly failing to protect its own people from the emerging technologies’ misuse. The specific measures that are needed will vary depending on the specific technologies involved and the risks that they pose.
– Design a three-tier “innovation to market” roadmap: States must ensure responsible commercial application and dispersion of new technologies. One critical step towards this is for states to design a three-tiered tech absorption framework comprising a regulatory sandbox (pilot tested in a controlled regulatory environment for assessing collateral impact), city-scale testing and commercial application.
– Convene a standing Conference of the Parties for future tech: The Global South must convene a standing Conference of the Parties (COP) for future technologies along the lines of COP for climate change negotiations. This body would meet on an annual basis where the multistakeholder community – national governments, international organizations and tech community – will deliberate on new tech developments, present new innovations and reflect on related aspects of the dynamic tech ecosystem and its engagement with the society and communities.
– Link domestic innovation ecosystems: Inter-connected national innovation ecosystems will ensure that like-minded countries can pool their finite financial, scientific and technological human resources to develop technologies. For instance, in the field of quantum science, the European Commission’s research initiative, the Quantum Flagship, has partnered with the United States, Canada and Japan through the InCoQFlag project. Likewise, the Quad has the Quad Center of Excellence in Quantum Information Sciences. This underlines the importance of prioritizing one of the frontier technologies and networking domestic innovation ecosystems to focus on its development, as no country alone can harness the deep potential of frontier technologies and mitigate the associated risks.
Technology as a tool of trust
Throughout history, technology has been the currency of geopolitics. New innovations have bolstered economies and armies, strengthening power and influence. Yet, technology has also served as an opportunity to bind parties closer together. Today, at a time of heightened geopolitical risks, it is incumbent on leaders to pursue frameworks and ecosystems that foster trust and cooperation rather than division.
This essay is a part of the report Shaping Cooperation in a Fragmenting World.
4 pathways to cooperation amid geopolitical fragmentation
The world is experiencing geopolitical turbulence. Wars are raging across the Middle East, Europe and Africa; 2023 marked the largest ever single-year increase in forcibly displaced people.
In addition to these security challenges, the world faces a warming planet and fragile global economy that can only be addressed through joint action.
Despite this daunting picture, there are ways the international community can still work together. Experts from the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Geopolitics tell us how, in a new report entitled Shaping Cooperation in a Fragmenting World.
The report offers innovative pathways towards greater global cooperation in four areas: global security, climate action, emerging technology and international trade.
Below are the key highlights, as outlined by our experts.
1. Global Security – advancing global security in an age of distrust
By Bruce Jones, Ravi Agrawal, Antonio de Aguiar Patriota, Karin von Hippel, Lynn Kuok and Susana Malcorra
The starting point must be to recognize that distrust is, in the short and medium term at least, a baked-in feature of geopolitical reality.
Managing this and forging responses to global challenges despite it requires recognizing that collaboration is possible even under conditions of intense distrust: the US and the Soviet Union repeatedly proved this during the Cold War.
Third parties are key to managing the distrust through quiet diplomacy (often at or through the UN), brokering offramps, de-escalation and crisis avoidance. So-called “middle powers” have in the past played a key role in great power conflict prevention and de-escalation and are an important part of this moving forwards.
Although this term has, until recently, been confined to Western countries, shifts in the global balance of power mean that it extends beyond the West to “rising” powers elsewhere.
A standing mechanism that links the western major and middle powers with the non-Western ones (Brazil, India, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates and so on) would create a diplomatic mechanism that could straddle the increasingly bifurcated worlds of the G7, Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (the Quad) and the expanded BRICs.
2. Climate Change – rethinking climate governance
By Samir Saran and Danny Quah
There is now a need to rethink global climate governance. The fundamental imbalance is this that while the developed world has been the key contributor to historical emissions, future emissions will be concentrated in the developing world. It is necessary to not just increase the amount of private capital deployed in the Global South, but also to ensure the scope of such investment is widened to include adaptation.
Similarly, the technology needed to scale up green energy solutions also remains concentrated in the developed world and China. The mandate and lending patterns of multilateral development banks should be changed and the start-up sector in the emerging world should be repositioned towards climate goals.
At the same time, multilateral forums such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the G20 must better acknowledge and differentiate impacts of climate change on health outcomes across genders and craft women-led initiatives to mobilize societal support for political action.
3. Emerging Technology – taming technology together
By Samir Saran, Flavia Alves and Vera Songwe
The prolific pace of advancement of frontier technologies and its pursuit by a multitude of state and non-state actors, with varied motivations, has opened a new chapter in contemporary geopolitics.
To ensure that efforts at tech regulation and stemming their proliferation succeed, countries will be required to undertake innovation in policy-making, where governments take on board all the stakeholders – tech corporations, civil society, academia and the research community.
Similar to the responsibility to protect (R2P) principle developed by the UN for protecting civilians from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity, the international community must create a regulatory R2P obligation for states to protect civilians from the harms of emerging technologies.
And the Global South must convene a standing conference of the parties (COP) for future technologies, along the lines of COP for climate change negotiations.
4. International Trade – expanding and rebalancing trade
By Nicolai Ruge and Danny Quah
Strengthening and rebalancing the trade system requires expanding the trade agenda, not limiting it. The broader the benefits delivered by trade, the more firmly it will be aligned with national and global priorities.
Trade that is designed to deliver on globally shared priorities as defined by the UN Sustainable Development Goals will gain the trust of governments and citizens and be “fenced off” from geopolitical rivalry rather than disrupted for near-term political wins.
To rebuild global trust in the benefits of the multilateral trade system, it is of paramount importance that the Global South – and particularly least-developed countries – are not cut out of the growth and development pathways that participation in international trade provides.
Mechanisms must be in place to ensure they are able to take advantage of new opportunities created by shifts in global value chains.
How can these pathways be successful?
Throughout the report , one common factor emerged as key to enhancing cooperation across these four domains: inclusivity.
To address challenges in global security, climate change, emerging technology and trade, the international community must prioritize diverse voices and involve actors that have previously been on the margins of multilateral fora.
With this approach as a North Star, building cooperation is possible.
This publication originally appeared in World Economic Forum.
Samir Saran 