Year in Review: T-intersection

A fork in the road for a world on a knife-edge.

Knight at the Crossroads, Viktor Vasnetsov, 1882, oil on canvas, State Russian Museum, Saint Petersburg.

The year began as it ended: a war in Ukraine, discord in the Middle East, larceny in Washington, fervour on Wall Street, and self-satisfaction in Beijing. What changed? Everything.

Unlike last year, which seemed to herald a transition, this year, the transition actually happened. It came, of course, with the second term of Donald Trump. It also came in the form of a new leg in the tech boom and, of course, a return to a world of tariffs. It was a year when policy was often indistinguishable from theatre and when transactions often substituted for strategy. And staying on words beginning with ‘T’, it came with plenty of tragedy, turmoil, and travesty, as well as an unusual amount of trolling and trophies.

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Of tragedy, it ranged from the famine of Palestinians in Gaza to the massacre of Jews in Bondi, as well as from air crashes in Ahmedabad to wildfires in California. There were earthquakes in Afghanistan and Myanmar, and storms across Southeast Asia. Political violence in the US rocked both the left and the right. Civil conflict in Sudan, Myanmar and the Congo failed to heed Trump’s premature declarations of peace.

Of turmoil, Gen Z protests toppled governments in Nepal, Mongolia and Peru, and came close to doing so in Cameroon, Paraguay and Serbia. Coups of a more old-fashioned variety occurred in Madagascar and Guinea-Bissau. Attempts were made in Benin and Mali.

Of travesty, for many, it’s hard to go past the Epstein files, or the destruction of the White House East Wing. For others, it was the rise and fall of crypto, enriching politically connected billionaires while fleecing gullible traders unable to save for a home deposit. Joe Biden’s official portrait as an ‘auto-pen’, the AI-produced video of Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu drinking beers in a redeveloped Gaza, claims over Greenland, and the bombing of boats in the Caribbean may fit this description, too.

Of trolling, one need not look far beyond Elon Musk’s X (né Twitter), a favourite haunt of the far left and far right, or Trump’s own Truth Social (largely a favourite of the president’s entourage, bemused journalists, and bots). Yet it happened offline as well. Whether it was the tariffing of penguins on the Heard & McDonald Islands, the three-way Modi-Putin-Xi bearhug in Tianjin, or Albania’s appointment of an AI agent as minister of state, some things seemed only to happen to provoke the reaction of others.

Of trophies, US foreign policy seemed to be animated mainly by Trump’s desire to win the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize (which ultimately went to the woman he has been trying to install as president of Venezuela). Even the tariffs placed on India seemed more about Narendra Modi’s refusal to acknowledge Washington’s role in a ceasefire with Pakistan than about its imports of oil from Russia (which itself was happy to play the Nobel nomination game). And then there was FIFA awarding Trump with a golden ball, held aloft by severed, feminine hands, as a kind of ersatz Nobel peace prize at the soon-to-be-named Trump-Kennedy Center. A true example of win-win cooperation.

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Shortly after Trump’s inauguration on 20 January, Musk told attendees at a Washington rally that they were at “a fork in the road in human civilisation”. His remarks, somewhat overshadowed by what was later described as a Nazi salute, were typically bombastic but also prescient. A week later, heading up the newly-established Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, he sent out an email also titled “Fork in the road”, inviting US civil servants to resign. A new set of sheriffs was in town. And while Musk himself would be edged out in the subsequent months, seldom has a shift in an administration’s personnel, policies and tone so radically reshaped the political expectations, culture and certainties of the rest of the world.

The year will have books written about it, but may be best remembered as the definitive break between the unipolar world of American hegemony, post-1991, and the multipolar world of great-power rivalries, spheres of influence, and might-is-right. The genesis of this multipolar era can be traced to the financial crisis of 2008, or even the 9/11 terror attacks of 2001, but the new world order has not only now emerged, but has been definitively declared in the US National Security Strategy. We have left the interregnum. Even if a Democratic president takes the White House in 2028, as currently seems likely, the shibboleths of US power, and the alliances that undergird it, have been irrevocably damaged.

Multipolarity doesn’t mean disaster. Indeed, it meant stability for most of the 19^th century. And from the Concert of Europe to China’s Warring States Period (which, despite its name, saw a flourishing in technology and philosophy), it’s been the organising principle of much of the world, at least before the Cold War. Yet it’s a radically different operating environment for firms and investors used to either unipolarity or bipolarity.

In a multipolar world, frictions to commerce and trade will be greater (and not just in terms of tariffs). Rules and regulations will be less aligned and more liable to change with the political winds. Travel and migration will get harder, whether or not you’re one of a growing list of sanctioned individuals or just hold the wrong passport, and could get harder still as Europe confronts its own debates on identity and citizenship. The exchange of information will continue, but remain impeded by misinformation, disinformation, and AI slop, much of it generated by state-based actors and designed to divide and distract.

On a personal note - and continuing on from my colleague Damien Bruckard’s review of our year in business last week - there was not a single day in 2025 during which we struggled to identify five key developments with geopolitical significance or serious potential implications for business. Instead, on most days, the struggle was to select only five. Given all that has happened, the fallout yet to occur, and the structural shift to a more multipolar, contested, and complex world, this is undoubtedly going to be the case again in 2026. Even if specific events are hard to forecast, one thing is certain: it will pay for businesses and citizens alike to pay close attention to geopolitics in the year ahead.

So, if 2024 was the moment before the transition, and 2025 was the transition, what will 2026 bring? Watch this space.

As we continue our holiday break in daily briefings, we’ll provide our 10 wildcard forecasts for the year ahead next Saturday. We’ll also review the record of our forecasts from 12 months ago. As in this year, whether rocky or smooth, the road ahead will certainly be interesting.

In the meantime, I hope you continue to enjoy a restful break. To paraphrase Giorgia Meloni’s Christmas message to her staff: don’t worry about the year just passed. The next one will be worse.

Thank you for subscribing to Geopolitical Dispatch. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments.

Best,

Michael Feller, Chief Strategist

michael@geopolitical-strategy.com

This briefing is for general information only. It is not legal, financial or investment advice. Information and opinions are current at the date of publication and are subject to change without notice. There is no representation or warranty as to its accuracy, completeness or reliability, and no liability for any loss arising from use or reliance on this information is accepted.