The Year Ahead: Into the wildcards
Our ten non-consensus scenarios for 2026.
According to the Chinese zodiac, 2026 – at least from mid-February – will be the Year of the Fire Horse. Occurring once every 60 years, it’s supposed to be a year of boldness, impulse, and rapid change. The last one, in 1966, saw the start of Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Its previous iterations – 1846 and 1906 – saw the Mexican-American War and the San Francisco earthquake, respectively. Japanese superstition holds that girls born under the Fire Horse will grow up to kill their husbands. Japanese births were already low in 2025. They are expected to stay low this year as well.
The year 2025 – which we described last week as the year in which multipolarity formally returned – was already bold, impulsive, and rapid by most measures. How can 2026 possibly top it? Time to giddy-up and keep some water handy. At the time of writing, we’ve already had the kidnapping of a foreign leader in Venezuela, what may emerge as a repeat of the fall of Milosevic in Tehran (i.e., where a regime is toppled by its civilians in the months after a Western air strike), and the birth of a new country (at least according to Israel): Somaliland. And we’re only on day three. What a time to take a publishing break!
Contra Hyman Minsky, instability tends to beget further instability, until a new equilibrium is found and things revert to mean. Our working hypothesis is that an equilibrium won’t be found this year, but there’s a wildcard scenario – see below – in which it might.
For new subscribers to Geopolitical Dispatch, each January, we produce 10 such wildcards in lieu of the often-predictable predictions published this time of year. Not forecasts, but within the realm of probability, these scenarios are designed to challenge the status quo and uncover potentially mispriced geopolitical risks. And while our last wildcard for this coming year may be slightly tongue-in-cheek, it too has potential strategic ramifications.
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But before gazing at the year ahead, let’s review how our ten wildcards from last year fared:
1. A new Islamic State emerges in the Sahel
Headlines in October that Mali was about to fall to terrorists may have been premature, but affiliates of Islamic State and Al Qaeda have certainly achieved de facto control of much of the Sahel this year, aided by Tuareg rebels in turn aided by Ukrainian (and allegedly French) special forces in an effort to discredit and distract the Russian mercenaries engaged by the region’s juntas. From Syria to Somalia, to Turkey to Australia, ISIS and its copycats have returned to the fore, but the Sahel and West Africa now form the locus of the ideology’s power, rather than the Euphrates and Afghanistan. So much so that the US decided to launch Christmas Day strikes on northern Nigeria.
2. India and Turkey start a proxy war
A proxy war didn’t happen in the Caucasus as we imagined it could, but a real one did over Kashmir. Pakistan, not Turkey, was India’s main belligerent, but Turkish drones and advisers played a key part, leading to economic boycotts in India and the revocation of a Turkish ground handling firm’s airport security license. Indo-Turkish tensions have been seen too in Cyprus, which Narendra Modi visited in June, as well as Afghanistan, where conflict between the Taliban and Islamabad – which Ankara has sought to mediate – is allegedly being fanned by Delhi’s security services.
3. China and the US do a deal on Taiwan
Many saw this as close to happening at various points in the Sino-US trade war and truce, but Washington’s decision to proceed with an $11 billion arms sale to Taipei, and Beijing’s decision to conduct record blockade-style exercises around Taiwan’s coast, have put the idea of a “grand bargain” on the back burner. Still, whether from the perspective of the US allowing Taiwan-manufactured Nvidia H200 chips into China, or Beijing’s overtures to Kuomintang leader Cheng Li-wun, just as Washington invited her to a visit “to avoid war”, there are major deals quietly being done.
4. The Koreas declare peace
The North’s drumbeat of weapons testing, military spending, sabre rattling, and deepening ties with Russia would suggest that peace on the peninsula remains as distant as ever. Yet the Demilitarized Zone went quiet after the South this year elected President Lee Jae Myung, who ordered the loudspeaker propaganda broadcasts to go silent and opened a probe into allegations his predecessor had planned a false-flag crisis to justify martial law. Lee continues to seek détente with the North, even going so far as to mull a formal apology. But domestic politics, and pressure from the US and Japan, may slow him down this year, just as they did last year.
5. Singapore changes government
This categorically didn’t happen, with the ruling People’s Action Party extending its 60-year incumbency with a four-percentage-point swing in its favour at May’s general election. But the main opposition Workers’ Party also saw a swing of an almost similar degree (albeit to a total of 15% of the vote, versus the PAP’s 66%), giving it its best result since 2006, despite a lawfare campaign against its leader for lying to parliament over an extramarital affair (which wasn’t even his). Singapore remains a long way off from a change of government, but what was once considered impossible is now becoming widely discussed inside and outside the city-state.
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6. Australia goes nuclear
This also didn’t happen, with the then-incumbent Liberal Party failing to win re-election on a nuclear energy platform due to what some perceived to be its leader’s similarities to Donald Trump, who – if Australians could vote in US elections – has a 16% approval rating (a similar fate memorably befell Canada’s Pierre Poilievre). Yet under Australia’s new Labor Party government, a commitment to procure nuclear-powered submarines under the AUKUS pact with Washington remains, and US nuclear assets continue to rotate into and out of Australian ports. Moreover, rebounding uranium prices, driven by the AI data-centre boom and Russian sanctions, buoyed the share prices (and tax receipts) of key Australian miners.
7. China rescues Haiti
Nobody rescued Haiti this year, least of all a country with which it lacks diplomatic relations (Haiti recognises Taiwan). Yet China’s alleged designs on the Caribbean region, from ports in Panama to oil in Venezuela, became a major theme of the second Trump administration’s foreign policy and Haiti has always been seen as a vulnerable target. Likewise, the contest between Beijing and Taipei over regional diplomatic recognition intensified, with elections in Honduras, St Vincent, and St Lucia watched closely in East Asia (Belize, another Taiwan ally, also held elections, but the potential for a switch was limited).
8. Greenland becomes a US territory
This may not have happened, but it was certainly proposed, much to the chagrin of Copenhagen and Brussels. And with Donald Trump’s recent appointment of a new special envoy, former Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry, to advance the cause of annexation, this will be a topic of speculation into 2026 as well. We posited that the then-expected election of a pro-independence, left-leaning territorial government in Greenland would propel Trump’s advances, but as in Australia and Canada, the US president loomed large in the poll, and Greenlandic voters instead opted for a relatively pro-Danish, pro-business candidate, who has since sought closer relations with (but not membership of) the EU and key European partners like France.
9. Germany elects the AfD
The hard-right Alternative for Germany enjoyed its best federal result ever in February, with a 10-percentage-point swing. But the addition of 69 new seats wasn’t enough to dislodge a centrist coalition, which formed this time with the centre-right Christian Union in charge and the centre-left Social Democrats as the junior partner. Yet in 2025, the AfD not only broke through the geographic constraints that had previously kept it as a largely East German phenomenon, but the cordon sanitaire (or Brandmauer) around other parties leveraging its votes in the Bundestag to pass legislation. In 2026, five state elections, including for Berlin, will be held, with the AfD currently polling first in two: Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Saxony-Anhalt. Should the AfD take government in either, another Brandmauer will have been broken.
10. France elects Marine Le Pen
This probably would have happened had Emmanuel Macron made good on New Year’s threats to hold a referendum in the wake of the 2024 legislative elections, where Le Pen’s National Rally became the largest single party in the National Assembly. Political gymnastics since then have allowed a series of Macroniste governments to remain in power, but the balancing act will only get harder, irrespective of whether a 2026 budget is successfully passed. The Rally remains the most popular party in France, and if Le Pen doesn’t become president in 2027, it will most likely be because her protégé, Jordan Bardella, becomes president instead.
Now onto the wildcards for 2026:
1. Trump goes out with a whimper, not a bang
One of the forecasting season’s more exotic rituals is an annual meeting of shamans on a Peruvian beach to make their own geopolitical predictions (we hope to be invited next year). Leading their prophecies is one that Donald Trump will become very ill. Such a forecast – for someone turning 80 in June – is more actuarial than occult, but