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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?
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:
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?
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?
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.
The views expressed above belong to the author(s). ORF research and analyses now available on Telegram! Click here to access our curated content — blogs, longforms and interviews.
Samir Saran is the President of the Observer Research Foundation (ORF), India’s premier think tank, headquartered in New Delhi with affiliates in North America and ...
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