The year 2025 promises to be a tumultuous one in many parts of the world. But will the status quo remain? Will it be a case of the more things change, the more they remain the same? Will we see changes for a better or worse world? And how will Australia cope with or help shape the world order?
Merriam-Webster recently chose polarisation as its word of the year for 2024. It was selected because it appeared to perfectly describe the state of politics, economics and culture that dominates in the West, and also increasingly in Australia.
According to the definition, there is an increasing division between two sharply distinct opposites resulting in a situation in which the opinions, beliefs, or interests of a group or society no longer range along a continuum, but become concentrated at opposing extremes. We can add to this societal division the polarisation between nation states driving and defining geopolitics in 2024 and earlier.
In 2025, much of what will happen in the US, and by extension, its allies including Australia, will depend on what President Donald Trump’s new term of office will achieve and how it will do so.
For now, it appears that his policy plans within the US will focus on restoring the conservative conception of American society; dismantling the Democratic Party control of what he sees as the deep state; and defending the borders through immigration restrictions and mass deportation.
The economic policy of the first Trump administration was characterised by individual and corporate tax cuts, trade protectionism, and deregulation in the energy and financial sectors. These are likely to continue and be fine tuned.
On foreign policy, what’s clear is that Trump, despite his latest blustering on Mexico, Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal, and pronouncement that tariff is his favourite word and “the most beautiful word in the dictionary”, will find it impossible to fight wars on both home and external fronts.
Some of his war belligerent administration members who see China as the US enemy number 1 may want to maintain Joe Biden’s policy of using allies to maintain the US’s leading position in the political and economic sectors but Trump himself may not favour this strategy.
Predictions for the World Order for 2025
Looking into the tea leaves, here are predictions for what lies ahead in the world for 2025
- The US attempts to alternately bully and sweet talk allies and the non-West will encounter resistance and pushback undermining the US dominant position in global geopolitics. Mexico and Panama are already showing that, despite being lightweights in the global economy, they will be no pushovers. Other countries will show that they have a stronger spine in dealing with the US on key geopolitical controversies. This may include Australia
- European Union countries will have to deal with a resurgent Russia following a widely expected Ukraine peace settlement which is likely to end with the Crimea region joining the Russian federation.
- Countries will find greater agreement with the late Henry Kissinger’s much quoted warning on international relations: “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy but to be America’s friend is fatal.” The huge costs of reconstruction and knowledge that money and bloodshed are the inevitable price to pay for being proxies in the US concept of “rule of law and global order” will see a reshaping of European public opinion on the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. Its impact on peace and security issues will have ripple effects in Europe and the Indo-Pacific especially
- In the Middle East, Israel’s military victories have brought temporary euphoria to the Zionist camp. But they have only taken the country further away from peace and security. Expect Israel’s public to realise that only a political solution and the creation of a Palestine state can provide the elusive peace settlement for the region that number of battlefield victories can bring.
- In the Asia Pacific region, the recent demonstration by China of cutting edge advances in its air, naval and land-based military power has given rise to what some see as a tectonic shift in global military power. This development, together with what appears to be China’s irrepressible global economic clout, will influence regional and global alliances and accelerate the more rapid arrival of BRICS and China’s Belt and Road Initiative as countervailing forces in politics and economics.
Emergence of G3?
The intriguing question for 2025 is how Trump will deal with China. Biden had warned in 2022 that “if we (the US) don’t get our act together, they (China) will eat our lunch”.
Add to this a victorious Russia whose formidable military power and natural resources endowment make it a dangerous countervailing force against any enemy, and we have a potent cocktail to challenge US and Western dominance of the present world order.
Will Biden’s strategy to push back and bring down China with trade, economic and Cold War-style confrontation policies be hardened or moderated? Or will Trump, seen as the realist and transactionist par excellence, reach compromises with China and Russia, the two enemies identified by the foremost US think-tanks as standing in the way of making America great again in global geopolitics?
Trump knows that in 2009 China played a key, but little publicised, role in the aftermath of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy and stock market crash by helping the US and world economy recover from the resultant global financial crisis.
The Chinese response in enabling the world economy to escape from a potential global depression had, at that time, led to suggestions that the US and China should agree between themselves on how they would share influence and power for the benefit of the world.
Is it possible that Trump, who is not a fan of NATO or G7, may see the US’s best interest in a geopolitical configuration borrowing from the experience of the earlier financial crisis – perhaps a new G3 comprising the US, Russia and China?
This will buy him time to make America great again without instigating wars around the world. And if that were to happen perhaps it can pave the way for a more multipolar world in which BRICs’ principles of openness, equality, co-operation, mutual benefit and peaceful coexistence can be the main drivers of change.
Lim Teck Ghee
Contributions to Pearls and Irritations
Your contribution will fund quality independent comment and analysis in Pearls and Irritations
Contribute
