A global risk consultant has warned that humanity should tighten its seatbelts for a very bumpy ride in 2025.
In his closely-watched annual forecast, Ian Bremmer on Monday predicted a ‘uniquely dangerous’ time for the planet, akin to the tense 1930s and the start of the Cold War.
This he attributes to Russia‘s imperial ambitions, the unchecked rise of artificial intelligence (AI), Donald Trump‘s return to the White House and his revived trade war with China.
Bremmer’s top worry is what he calls the ‘G-Zero world’ — where no single power, or group of nations, such as a US-led West, has an agreed roadmap for peace and security.
‘People everywhere are facing heightened geopolitical instability driven by a lack of global leadership,’ says the founder and president of Eurasia Group.
‘We are heading back to the law of the jungle, where the strongest do what they can, while the weakest are condemned to suffer what they must.’
His annual list came out as Russia touted military gains in eastern Ukraine, and as the US Congress met to certify Trump’s 2024 election win, ahead of his inauguration on January 20.
Bremmer, a straight talking consultant from Boston who advises global executives and policymakers, releases his list of 10 main threats to global peace and security each January.
China’s President Xi Jinping and US president-elect Donald Trump will be running the show again in 2025
Ukrainian fighters in Donbas defend themselves from neighboring Russia, which expert Ian Bremmer says will cause more chaos in 2025
At the start of 2024, he ranked the US election as the biggest danger, saying political rifts in the top economic and military power made the country less able to lead on global crises.
This year, he said the absence of world leadership has become a chronic problem that leaves humanity more likely to stumble into a devastating conflict.
‘We’ve lived with this lack of international leadership for nearly a decade now, but in 2025, the problem will get much worse,’ says his report.
‘Expect new and expanding power vacuums, emboldened rogue actors, and a heightened risk of dangerous accidents, miscalculations and conflict.’
Bremmer does not fault Trump directly, and praises the Republican for gains in his first term as president from 2017 to 2021.
They included better terms for North American trade, improved ties between Israel and Arab nations and nudging Europeans to spend more on their defense.
But he warns that Trump’s second term poses new challenges and threats.
Backed by majorities in Congress and the Supreme Court, Trump could achieve his plans of purging Washington, including the Justice Department and FBI, of perceived enemies, and in doing so permanently hurt those institutions, says Bremmer.
A revived trade war between China, the US and other nations could roil the global econony
Ian Bremmer, founder and president of Eurasia Group, predicts a ‘uniquely dangerous’ period for the planet
Meanwhile, Trump’s stated economics roadmap and trade tariffs could roil the US and global economies, and worsen already-strained relations with China, says the expert.
He also warns that AI is experiencing ‘relentless’ and fast-paced growth without any effective checks on whether the emerging technology is safe.
But the starkest danger is Russia, he adds, which is making gains in Ukraine and carrying out stealth attacks on European infrastructure.
Moscow ‘will do more than any other country to subvert the global order in 2025,’ says Bremmer, along with his group’s chairman Cliff Kupchan.
The report was released as Russia’s defense ministry said its forces had captured the town of Kurakhove, some 20 miles south of Pokrovsk, a Ukrainian logistics hub towards which Russian forces have been advancing for months.
Moscow is continuing to fend off a new Ukrainian offensive inside the Kursk region of western Russia, as both sides try to improve their positions before potentially returning to the negotiating table.
Other security experts have raised similar concerns to Bremmer.
The annual forecast from RANE on Monday also warned of Washington’s coming trade war, difficulties in cutting any peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, and spiraling conflict in the Middle East.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un attend a state reception in Pyongyang, North Korea June 19, 2024
Artifical intelligence is seeing ‘relentless’ and fast-paced growth without any effective checks on whether it’s safe
‘Israel will engage in wars of attrition in Gaza and Lebanon, where ceasefires are unlikely to end the conflicts, while its progressive annexation of territories in the West Bank will likely result in a violent uprising,’ says the group.
Late last year, DailyMail.com spoke with prominent security analysts with a gloomy prognosis for world peace.
National security expert Mark Toth and former US intelligence officer Col. Jonathan Sweet, say World War III is no longer a distant possibility – it has already begun.
They say it’s just happening in ways more subtle than Western societies experienced at the start of the 20th century’s global conflicts.
Instead, they’re hybrid threats, covert battles and ideological jockeying in the digital arena.
‘This third global conflagration doesn’t look or feel like what Hollywood envisioned,’ said Toth and Sweet.
‘No mushroom clouds or apocalyptic wastelands. Rather, it is war by a thousand cuts, conducted across multi-regional and multi-domain battlefields.’
