GEAB 141

As an introduction to our traditional January “key trends”, here are the main guiding lines that we have identified for this “phoney year [1]”.

This first year of the new decade promises us a journey through dangerous waters. And the financial crisis announced two years ago by a desperate world of finance could be the least of our worries. That said, 2020 will be characterised by a radicalisation of both the worst and the best, where the increasingly obvious successes of the “world-after” will push the last supporters of the “world-before” to make increasingly dramatic mistakes. US-China relations will continue to be strained throughout the year, in the context of a US presidential campaign in which anti-Chinese sentiment provides a unifying bipartisan theme. Europe will be forced to consolidate the third way, which it de facto embodies, if it wants to avoid becoming the battleground of this US-China war.

Geopolitics: An 80% risk of serious conflagration

We had planned a January GEAB issue focused on geopolitical risks in 2020. Current events have preceded us, and the US-Iranian crisis has ushered in the New Year in style. But it’s not only the Middle East that is a cause for concern. In fact, we continue to believe that this region is under such tight control that it is more conducive to inventing the alliances and governance that the 21st century needs than it is to a widespread and prolonged conflagration. Rather, sparks could fly in a number of other parts of the world. A non-exhaustive list of such events will be presented in the rest of this bulletin.