"2025: Year in geopolitics" written by Lindsay Newman
Our inboxes will soon be flooded with reports, opinions and analysis of the key risks to watch for in 2026. I know this well, as I spent years producing those annual reports in my prior roles.
So often these days as we anticipate what might lie ahead, we skip the post mortem. Yet, we are better-positioned to make forecasts if we analyze where we have recently traveled. To this end, I have compiled a list of the last year in geopolitical trends. In identifying these trends, I sought to answer the question: What were the geopolitical developments in 2025 that proved most surprising, most pivotal and most impactful from the vantage point of the end of 2024?
1) A tale of two conflicts: We close out 2025 with the war in Ukraine and the conflict between Israel-Gaza on diverging pathways. It is unsurprising that the conflict in the Israel-Gaza theatre was the first to see a breakthrough: Hamas terrorists were degraded by two years of fighting that also saw Iran and its regional proxies weakened. Trump’s backstop for Hamas – threatening that “all hell would break loose” if negotiations did not succeed, ultimately proved decisive. With many in its leadership structure lost and its backs against the wall, Hamas ultimately agreed to a peace plan that US envoys had tirelessly hashed out, traded and re-traded with Israel and regional Arab states.
Thousands of miles away, the US has sought to deploy the same playbook in Ukraine this fall with less to show for it. At least for the moment. The slow pace of tangible progress is largely down to the parties involved remaining at cross-purposes with vastly differing incentives. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy remains committed to no territorial concessions. President Vladimir Putin remains committed to all territorial concessions with ambitions for more. Europe remains existentially threatened. And the US remains motivated by the prospects of negotiating a peace plan insofar as being the architect of such a deal unlocks economic and financial benefits for the US. We are closer than we have been in three and a half years to a negotiated ceasefire, and yet there is absolutely no guarantee that a deal will be achieved.
2) AI Wild West: We are in the midst of a generational shift in technology. 2025 was the year that AI went mainstream. What was just a few years ago on the horizon is now in the palm of our hand and shaping everything from how we work, to how we ask questions and how we think. According to the largest scale review of how users are engaging with ChatGPT (conducted by OpenAI), chatbots are increasingly being called upon for everyday tasks like information seeking and practical guidance. As demand for AI grows, industries and terminology (data centers!) are sprouting up around us, shifting the physical landscape and the geopolitical playing field. In the US, AI development is powering the economy and now a core component of foreign policy engagement. According to one estimate, investment in information processing equipment (mostly those data centers) and software accounted for a staggering 92% of US GDP growth in the first half of 2025. The potential scale of this technological revolution cannot be understated. And yet, as firms go fast and break things, implications for the future of work, online safety, individuality and creativity are vastly unknown. Guardrails must be stood up alongside AI deployment, otherwise the risks ahead will be great.
3) Private sector comes along too: With technological innovation serving as the current engine of our global economy, the private sector finds itself in the conductor’s seat. As I have said to anyone who will listen to me for the past few years, we live in a world now in which private sector firms have market capitalizations larger than small nations’ annual GDP. Private sector actors are geopolitical actors. From biotech to technology, space travel and defense, it is private sector development that is providing solutions traditionally reserved to governments. I am going on record here: the great power competition ahead is not one between any set of nation states. The great power competition ahead is based on a multi-stakeholder model of geopolitics in which the private sector will also be pursuing power.
4) Trump 2.0: This past year has been defined by the return of US President Donald Trump. From January 20, 2025 onwards, one message has become transparently clear: this is not your Trump 1.0 administration. The second Trump administration is more ambitious, more agile, and relentlessly focused on pursuing US national interests, wherever and whenever through all available means, in each case as entirely defined by the administration itself. This is the Trump Doctrine. Ignore all analysis that would have you believe the US is turning inwards. From striking nuclear facilities in Iran and negotiating would-be peace deals, to global tariffs, to amassing military assets in the Caribbean and striking alleged narcotraffickers, this is an activist presidency. The prize for Trump is legacy. He sees himself as a unifier and peacemaker, but also the transactional businessman. The punchline is national security will be tied to economic security, economic benefit. We saw this throughout 2025 where every hard power move was followed by the shadow of economic gain: a natural resource deal with Ukraine, tariffs on Canada that brought a withdrawal of the digital service tax, both the conflict peace plans. This is the template, this is the blueprint.
5) Discord: The relationship between government and citizens was under renegotiation in 2025. Trends activated during 2024’s year of elections around anti-incumbent sentiment, economic disaffection, and value shifts; gained further momentum this year. As governments face tests from new power centers (like the private sector), many have sought to rewrite the rules of the road and concentrate authority. Countries with established democracies, are increasingly pursuing policies that undermine independent institutions and erode checks on their power. Recent examples include the declaration of martial law in South Korea, Mexico’s judicial reform, and instances where elections were postponed like Senegal, cancelled like Romania or beset with violence like South Africa, France and the United States.
As governments recalibrate the scope of democracy, forces of extremism, polarization and radicalization are driving populations apart. These threats have gained a foothold in reaction to the failure of centrism to deliver prosperity for all. We may eventually witness another course correction, but for the near term the political center is not holding. This is evident in 2025 in the UK where the left-leaning Labour government faces the greatest challenge from far-right Reform party. We see it in Germany where both the far-right and far-left parties gained ground in February’s elections. In Portugal where the far-right Chega party increased its vote share in May 2025 elections to become the main party in opposition. In the US, where figures like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the far progessive left clearly have the Democratic party’s momentum as a counterpoint to Trump’s MAGA movement.
Bonus trend:
Climate holds on by its fingertips: At the turn of this decade, many of us thought climate risks and the energy transition would be the central geopolitical conversation of the decade ahead. Five years on, attention has been diverted elsewhere to conflicts, technological innovations, economic pressures, and pandemic recoveries. The major annual climate moment – the United Nations Climate Change Conference – this year in its 30th year, failed to reach agreement on a roadmap for fossil fuels. Even still, as I turn next week to the trends to watch in 2026, resource constraints will be an exploding issue for the years ahead. Especially, as we seek to meet the appetite of an AI-driven landscape.