Lenin’s reported quote: There are decades where nothing happens; then there are weeks where decades happen, is terribly apt for the decade of the 2020s so far. And mind you the decade is only half way through.
It all began with the COVID which broke by the end of 2019. It was as black swan as they come. The world ground to a halt and the global economy tanked. The word “zoom” became commonplace as did “work from home”. Most of all, wearing masks became ubiquitous, out of fear if nothing else. Millions perished, including in developed countries. For those of us born post-World War II, the idea of people dying in peacetime due to disease and illness was a first and a disturbingly novel experience. COVID had lasting impacts. First, the idea of resilient supply chains was born since the global value chains simply failed to deliver. Second, I wonder what would have happened if COVID had broken out not in China but say, in the African continent. Would the world have reacted the same way as it did? But then, no one said things were fair in this world. Third, the marvel of Science by which a vaccine was developed in record time and produced for mass consumption was very impressive. Last, but not least, India proved to the world that its rough and tumble democracy, for all its alleged dysfunctionality, can deliver results – after all, vaccinating a billion people twice over was no mean achievement.
Just as the world showed signs of recovering from the disruption caused by COVID, Russian President Putin decided to invade Ukraine in February 2022. This one act upended the security architecture of europe and created such geopolitical mayhem that the former German Chancellor Scholz was constrained to use the word “Zeitenwende”. For once, this was not customary hyperbole by a politician. “Zeitenwende” it certainly was with Ukraine initially supported to the hilt by the US and more broadly the West, resulting in short term gains for it. But Russia and reality imposed themselves on Ukraine soon enough and a war of attrition ensued. This, inevitably, played to Russia’s advantage.
As if the above were not enough, the Hamas carried out horrific attcks in Israel in Octber 2023 which unleashed a train of events in that most volatile of regions i.e. Middle East. With Iran under attack from both Israel and the US, the Middle East is up in flames at the time of writing. Pakistan, as is its wont, did what it does best: carry out terrorist attacks in Kashmir which brought the two countries to blows in May 2025. And China, against the run of play, attacked India in May 2020 along the Himalayan border to provoke a bloody conflict which disrupted peace that had largely held for decades.
But it was in January 2025, that the unthinkable (at least for many people if not all) happened and Trump won a convincing victory in elections to become the 47th President of the United States of America. It was a remarkable victory against all odds. A lot of people had written him off. Yet others predicted a narrow victory. In the event, it was close to a landslide. With President Trump, what you see is what you more or less get. So, in the 6 months he has spent in office, he has transformed the American judiciary, its executive, its economy and its foreign & security policy. And because it is the United States of America that we are talking about, the impact of the Trump presidency was felt all over the world in small or big measure. Every major and middle power has had to make adjustments to its foreign and security policy vis-a-vis the US. Perhaps no other power more so than Europe. Not to put too fine a point on it, the transatlantic relationship is under enormous stress and it is not clear what strategic outcome can be expected in the future. The NATO just concluded its summit in The Hague and while it just about managed to preserve itself, the proof of the funding commitments by many European countries is in the eventual coughing up of money. President Trump means it when he says America comes first for him and is totally determined to try and make America great again. History will judge him solely on how successful he is in this endeavour.
By middle of 2025, if one were to sum up the geopolitical mid-term report, it would be this: We are clearly in a post-Western world order!
Diplomacy and Geopolitics 