January 1, 2025 | 12:00am
The world will most likely navigate along the unknown waters of unpredictability in 2025 with three powerful men making disruptive decisions and taking risky actions, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Xi Jinping. The Year of the Snake will prove to be more sneaky and unpredictable than the Year of the Dragon.
The Asia-Pacific Basin is central to the future of the world’s geopolitics in 2025 and this region will most likely become the arena of heightened tensions, as China continues in its lawless intrusions of the territories respectively belonging either to the territorial domains or exclusive economic zones of Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines. With these three nations being allies of the US, incoming American president Donald Trump is expected to double if not triple the US presence in the waters being constantly besieged by naval forces permanently being deployed by Beijing’s People’s Liberation Army. The Philippines and its economy shall become collateral damage to the clash of two superpowers, or even three if and when Moscow is going to join in the fray.
The MENA or Middle East and North African Region shall see the continuing escalation of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Israel, with even more and bigger logistical and technological support from and instigation by Trump shall even become more aggressive in pursuing its enemies that includes Hamas and Hezbollah, and potential adversaries in the region, including Lebanon, Iran, Syria, and Yemen. The troubles in this region shall also impact on the Philippine economy because more than one-half of our 12 million OFWs are working in this region, including more than a million in Saudi Arabia alone.
The Sub-Saharan Africa is now caught in the vortex of superpowers’ rivalry. There are pockets of wars of insurgency and peoples’ revolutions being instigated by either Russia, China, or America or other powers like India and some oil-rich Arabian peninsula and Gulf countries. There are internal conflicts in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, and even in the peripheries of South Africa. There are a number of raging armed conflicts and political upheavals, with ageing powerful heads of states and governments who are dying with no succession plan or a clearly-instituted succession system.
Europe will continue to be facing serious troubles with the worsening of the Russia-Ukraine war. If Zelensky remains adamant to a diplomatic solution that the new men of Trump are pushing then Ukraine is going to depend on the Europe-based NATO countries like Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and the smaller ones, including the Scandinavian or Nordic countries of Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, and Norway, as well as the Balkans which means Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Greece, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Turkey, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, and Croatia. There are increasing numbers of OFWs in Europe remitting billions to our economy.
With Trump in the White House, the Latin American countries will face some serious challenges. Mexico and the US are perennially locking horns on the issue of illegal migration and trafficking of illegal drugs, smuggling, and the nagging issues on trade and tariffs. Panama is being jolted by Trump’s high-handed demands to either lower charges of toll fees that US vessels are passing through or return the canal to America. Washington DC is also watching Chile closely as it hosts a giant port operation owned by Beijing. Xi Jinping is using Chile as its launching platform to spy on America and to undermine its domination of North, Central, and South America.
The Philippines, being a labor-excess economy, is much dependent on the stability of world politics and the global markets and economy. Whenever the global market sneezes, the Philippines develops a flu. Let us prepare for the worst-case scenario, and hope for the best.