What to expect in 2025 The beginning of a new era in geopolitics

The beginning of a new era in geopolitics

- By Lachlan Forster

2024 was a year defined by the record number of elections held around the globe, with an estimated 3.7 billion people voting across 72 countries [1]. But now that the voting population from across the world have made their decisions, 2025 looks to be a year of significant potential for changes and critical developments within geopolitics, as new leaders backed by fresh mandates seek to assert their national interest in a rapidly changing international framework.

The ongoing crises in Ukraine and Palestine, alongside rapidly changing security conditions within Syria, Sudan and Myanmar, indicate that conflict will continue to occupy a large amount of focus from policymakers in 2025 [2], even though the global appetite for military action is seeming to grow thinner as these wars drag on longer. Furthermore, with the re-entry of President Donald Trump into the geopolitical arena, riding a wave of global right-wing enthusiasm which is set to carry forth into the new year, the emerging multipolar world may be stymied in its development by a return to a hegemonic global order [3].

The redrawing of borders

Throughout the late 2010s and 2020s thus far, the primary theatre of dispute over borders has been within maritime zones, with arguments over the sovereignty of areas within the South-China Sea and Indian Ocean standing as significant hurdles for the development of bilateral relations between regional states [4]. However, as 2025 begins, a number of outstanding disputes and uncertainties over the current lines of land borders stand unresolved, along with the potential for new states or independence movements to emerge.