GEAB 191

The start of January marks the 19th anniversary of your faithful monthly bulletin. We extend our gratitude for your extraordinary support, which has made these years of publication possible.

If we are still here, it is also because of the relevance of our anticipation method – a method that proved its value as early as 2006, when we anticipated the subprime crisis. Since then, crisis after crisis has come and gone. The accelerating pace of change and the intensifying challenges of the modern world have only strengthened our commitment and refined our methodology. Today, it is clearer than ever: understanding the world we live in requires more than analysing the past and present. It demands the courage to project into the future.

The proof lies in the growing number of forward-looking analyses. Recent weeks have witnessed an unprecedented proliferation of trends for the year ahead—a phenomenon that inspired us to offer a critical perspective in last month’s bulletin. This month, we take our turn, guided by our commitment to identifying ruptures and distinguishing them from mere trends of continuity.

And there will be no shortage of breakthroughs in 2025. In our view, the year should see peace agreements in Ukraine and the Middle East, the first steps toward NATO reform, and significant political shifts with a Russia possibly without Vladimir Putin and a Ukraine without Volodymyr Zelensky, to name but a few.

In Germany, upcoming elections are about to challenge long-standing principles instilled in its citizens since 1945. Meanwhile, France prepares for a referendum of significant consequence.

Across the Atlantic, the White House may find itself at a crossroads, with the two heads of the eagle — Trump-Musk vs Vance-Thiel — potentially signaling confrontation. On the global stage, the US-China rivalry will increasingly shift into the digital territory. Simultaneously, China and Russia will do their utmost to downplay their centrality within BRICS, in order to give the group of countries the means to act as catalyst for peaceful multipolarisation.

In technological terms, it is a backlash from the difficult deployment of generative AI in both professional and personal contexts. This will hit our societies, with major repercussions on Tech Stock Market, which in turn will impact the global economy. The latter will mainly be marked by two historic and transformative developments: the integration of Bitcoin into the global monetary system, standing nearly on equal footing with fiat currencies, and a change in Central Banks’ inflation targets from 2% to 3%.

Our overall view leads us to conclude that Europe will be the continent facing the greatest difficulties this year, finding itself alone in the face of its demons and navigating in a world where even the United States is adapting to new global configurations. The resolution of the conflict in the Eastern regions will force Europe to acknowledge its growing detachment from the rest of the world and its internal divisions. These rifts will be expressed in the reform of NATO and debates surrounding EU enlargement. Amid these new shocks, strong leaders with authoritarian tendencies will be best placed to calm desperate and disillusioned public opinion.

Despite everything, we are less pessimistic than many about this reshaping world. The anxiety gripping various strata of our societies can be explained by the unprecedented, even unheard-of scale of the situation. Although the crises persist and new ones are sure to emerge, there’s no point in panicking at the sight of this new world. All we have to do is raise our heads slightly higher and look further into the future.

To read the full GEAB bulletin 191, click here.