After five decades of brutal, dictatorial rule, the Syrian people “stand at a moment of history – and a moment of opportunity”, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said earlier this month. “That opportunity cannot be missed.”
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Economics
The economy is beginning to stabilise after the pandemic, and most countries have largely got a handle on rampant inflation. But economics will still play an “outsized role in politics” next year, said public policy professor Thomas Klassen on The Conversation. The International Monetary Fund is predicting “stable yet underwhelming” growth, but even stable conditions can “generate political fallout”. And economic dangers “lurk” on the horizon.
America’s “transactional stance” will “encourage troublemaking” by China, Russia, Iran and North Korea – the “quartet of chaos”. It is “unclear whether America would stand up to China in a conflict over Taiwan”.
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Trump 2.0
The repercussions of Trump’s reelection will “affect everything from immigration and defence to economics and trade”, said Tom Standage, editor of The Economist’s World Ahead 2025.
Artificial intelligence is “the biggest gamble in business history”, said Standage: more than $1 trillion is being spent on data centres to underpin the rapidly expanding technology – “even though companies are still not sure how to use it and adoption rates are low”. Will investors lose their nerve, or will AI prove its worth?
Whatever happens, the AI arms race is “upending companies, industries, and the way people live and work”, said Quartz. The “next frontier” of AI is in “agentic capabilities”, said Sissie Hsiao, vice president and general manager of Gemini app and Speech at Google. Consumers will start seeing AI assistants “evolve beyond simple conveniences and into true, personalised, advanced experiences that you rely on every day”.
In Syria, the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group that toppled Assad can “talk the talk”, saying what Washington and Europe “want to hear”, Dana Stroul, a former senior Defense Department official, told NBC News. In 2025, they will have to “walk the walk”.
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Here’s a little merriment for Christmas: a lot of people didn’t think this year was the worst they could remember.
But there will be bellwether elections on three continents, in Australia, Canada and Germany. The latter in Europe’s biggest economy is the big one to watch. Chancellor Olaf Scholz just lost a historic vote of no confidence following the collapse of his governing coalition in November, which triggered rare early elections. The situation comes at a time of “deep economic crisis and geopolitical uncertainty” for Germany, said The Guardian.
America’s “inordinately large share” of the world’s financial markets remains “the mother of all bubbles”, said the Financial Times contributing editor Ruchir Sharma. The fact that “virtually every Wall Street analyst” predicts US stock will keep outperforming the rest of the world suggests that the bubble is “at a very advanced stage”. But at the late stages of a bubble, prices “typically go parabolic”, like US stock prices over the past six months. “All the classic signs of extreme prices, valuations and sentiment suggest the end is near. It’s time to bet against ‘American exceptionalism’.”
