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AI in 2025: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

By 2025, artificial intelligence has shifted from disruptive innovation to strategic infrastructure. It is boosting productivity, accelerating scientific discovery, and expanding access to knowledge, while simultaneously intensifying labour disruption, market concentration, and governance gaps. More troublingly, AI is eroding trust in information, enabling surveillance, and compressing decision-making in ways that strain democratic and security systems. AI is no longer a neutral tool; it is a force multiplier whose impact depends less on capability and more on the strength of institutions that govern it.

2026 Geopolitics: Power Without Dominance

Geopolitics in 2026 is defined by power without dominance. Major states retain significant military and economic capacity, yet lack the ability to impose durable outcomes unilaterally. Strategic competition has shifted toward chokepoints in technology, energy, and finance, while unresolved conflicts are increasingly managed rather than resolved. Fiscal constraints, alliance recalibration, and regional power assertion are reshaping global behaviour, producing a fragmented international system marked by calibrated escalation, persistent friction, and heightened strategic uncertainty.

The Sixteenth Council to Release Global Strategy Outlook 2026 in February 2026

Global Strategy Outlook 2026 examines a world moving beyond emergency management into a decisive phase of structural redesign. As geopolitical fragmentation deepens, economies rewire, technology becomes a core arena of power, and institutional trust erodes, reactive leadership is no longer sufficient. The report offers a strategic framework for governments, executives, and institutions seeking resilience, legitimacy, and long-term performance in a volatile decade. The future will reward foresight, system-building, and disciplined strategic choice across global, regional, and sectoral decision-making environments worldwide.

Global Trade in 2025: From Efficiency to Power

By 2025, global trade stopped pretending to be neutral. Efficiency gave way to resilience, markets to strategy, and institutions to power. Shipping routes, carbon rules, currencies, and data flows became tools of statecraft rather than technical details. Trade did not collapse; it realigned around security and political trust. The era of frictionless globalization ended quietly, replaced by a world where who you trade with now matters as much as what you trade.

Economies to Watch in 2026

The global economy entering 2026 is no longer governed primarily by growth cycles, but by strategic stress. Fiscal exhaustion in advanced economies, geopolitical fragmentation, energy realism, and uneven technological diffusion are reshaping economic outcomes. The most consequential economies in 2026 will not be those expanding fastest, but those sitting at critical inflection points—capable of transmitting shock, absorbing volatility, or redefining alignment. Economics has become an instrument of power, constraint, and contest.

Anti-Corruption Agencies in Transitional Democracies: Ukraine and Georgia

Anti-corruption agencies remain pivotal in transitional democracies, but their impact is context-dependent. In Ukraine, NABU and SAPO resisted political encroachment in mid-2025, with civic mobilization and EU pressure restoring independence, enabling high-level corruption investigations in defense procurement. In Georgia, the Anti-Corruption Bureau is being dismantled, with powers absorbed by a state audit office under executive control, suppressing civil society and signaling democratic backsliding. These cases highlight how anti-graft institutions can either bolster resilience or enable authoritarian consolidation, depending on political context and external leverage.

South Africa, the G20, and the Limits of Host-Nation Power: A Geopolitical Analysis

South Africa’s G20 membership is not America’s to revoke, but Trump’s attempt to bar Pretoria from the summit exposes a deeper crisis in global governance. It signals a sharp downturn in U.S.–South Africa relations, threatens the credibility of the G20, and risks pushing emerging economies closer together against unilateralism. By standing firm, South Africa defends not only its place at the table but the principle that multilateral forums cannot be controlled by any single host.

Development of UK Trade Deals since Brexit

Since Brexit, the UK has pursued new and amended trade deals to expand market access and strengthen international partnerships. Agreements with the EU, US, India, and Pacific nations reflect efforts to boost exports, attract investment, and drive growth under the Invest 2035 strategy. Despite ongoing economic instability, these trade deals support diversification, innovation, and employment across high-growth sectors such as technology, clean energy, and manufacturing—positioning trade as a central pillar of the UK’s long-term recovery and competitiveness.

Recognition Without Reconciliation: The Palestine Recognition Shake-Up

Britain, Canada, and Australia’s recognition of Palestine has upended the diplomatic balance. While Palestinians hail the move as overdue legitimacy, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu vows there will be “no Palestinian state,” framing the decision as a reward for extremism. This Western shift pressures Washington, unsettles Arab capitals, and raises expectations for Palestinian governance. Recognition does not create statehood, but it changes the political calculus—forcing Israel, its allies, and its critics to rethink their next moves.

Is Europe About to Be Colonized?

Europe stands at an uncomfortable crossroads, squeezed between Washington and Beijing. As the U.S. reasserts its security dominance and China deepens its economic reach, the continent risks drifting into a 21st-century form of colonial dependency—ceding sovereignty over defense, technology, and supply chains. Without a coherent, purpose-driven vision of its own, the EU could end up reacting rather than leading, becoming a strategic pawn instead of a power in its own right.

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