POLITICS IN 2025: BEYOND THE VISIBLE

The year 2025 comes to an end, and every political newspaper and organisation that summarises this year cannot stress enough how special, challenging or somehow otherwise extraordinary 2025 was – like every other year. For us at Essydo Politics, it was a very special and successful year. However, at the surface level, 2025 was neither filled with surprises nor did developments arise that fundamentally reshaped politics. Of course, our competitors are in the uncomfortable situation of needing to sell their writings, ideally via emotions, because their funding sources want them to do so – whether corporations, political entities or the general demand of a target group that values entertainment over understanding.

We are fortunate to operate beyond these superficial needs. This is, therefore, maybe the only political summary on 2025 that does not come to the conclusion that all the developments this year were “critical junctions” or “defining moments”. Instead, we stick to our core expertise, which is to analyse politics from a structural point of view. This means that we are not looking at an event, let us say Event A, and trying to explain the operative side of this event, such as relevant numbers or related legislation. We are aiming to understand the intended goals, supported by related preparatory work and strategic context. From here, our predictive model helps us to sketch future courses of action. Finally, from the nature of the goals, paired with our predictions, we can derive meaning from political actors’ behaviour and craft structural policy solutions that are sustainable.

Looking Outward In 2025

From a simplified perspective, what most political developments in 2025 had in common was that they were outward-looking. With a few exemptions, such as Australia’s social media ban for youths, nearly no significant national policymaking innovation was made – nations focused more on others than themselves. Israel exemplified this theme with its aggressive foreign policy this year. Next to the genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza, Israel attacked Iran, Yemen, Lebanon and Syria, and already prepares for conquering other Palestinian territories. Although there is an ongoing trial against the Prime Minister of the Sub-Anatolian state due to corruption and fraud, as well as widespread protests against the ruling government, Israel decided this year to fully direct its state’s focus on external affairs.

However, other states also focused more on what is happening outside of their borders than inside of them. Japan, quickly after electing its first female Prime Minister, started to tackle China diplomatically. The United States of America, earlier this year, imposed unreasonable tariffs on many states to extort better international trade agreements. Further, the North American nation was strategic about its presence in a variety of diplomatic settings. While they were present at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (hereinafter: ASEAN) Summit, they missed the G20 Summit. They displayed a bipolar stance in the ongoing Ukraine war and planned their return to Syria – all while industrial capacity utilisation dropped and unemployment rose in 2025.

There was, however, also positive external engagement in 2025. The Turkic states of Central Asia have concluded a series of agreements with different states and deepened economic ties with existing partners across Asia, Anatolia and the Americas. Further, a variety of states managed to set their problems aside and agreed to ceasefires, such as most recently for the second time, Thailand and Cambodia, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Even though these agreements are fragile, they show that agreement can be possible but needs work.

Why Did Nations Look Outwards In 2025?

All of the states that we have mentioned so far as examples have domestic problems. Even if there were no problems at the national level, all states can and should always aim to improve the standings of their nations. So, what is the reason for the heightened international activity? As mentioned before, we approach this from the structural perspective, and from here, state behaviour can be explained with an answer to the question of their primary motives: threat or benefit? These are the two drivers behind state behaviour in non-devletist political systems.

In both cases, actors can choose between “strengthening themselves” or “weakening others”. In 2025, many nations turned outwards more usual, which leads us to the assumption that regardless of whether they were driven by fear of threats or by the anticipation of benefits, they tended to decide to weaken others rather than strengthen themselves. Wars are the most explicit examples of this strategy, but also diplomatic isolation of other states, dependency agreements and public diplomacy aim to decrease the capacities of other states. Again, why?

There is no specific reason why this happened in 2025, but the explanation for the increasingly outward-looking state behaviour that we could observe this year stems from an exhaustion of national capabilities and an increasingly saturated societal landscape. What this means is that technological advancement and wealth have reached such levels that nations are facing marginal diminishing returns – each investment has lesser and lesser positive effects on society and politics. In other words, there is little left at the national level that can be done to create value (at least that is the implicit perception). With this, harming other nations becomes a more attractive option to stand out at the international level as a relevant power.

What Does That Tell Us?

This development has nothing to do with 2025 in particular – this has been mounting for a long time. 2025 is the only year in which it is glaringly obvious that state behaviour is driven by superficial, relative and exhaustible goals. Politics has reached a point at which development at home does not add to international power as harming others does. Accordingly, we are set to see further intensification of detrimental international political developments. Even though many events in the past years were much more structurally significant for this assessment, such as the beginning of the Ukraine war, the Syrian Civil War or the Corona pandemic, the nature of small and mid-sized policymaking at the international stage shows a deep adaptation and internalisation of the motives outlined above.

This tells us that we can be increasingly sure about the statement that “contemporary democracies are not the pinnacle of political systems and are equally bound to be overridden by another innovative system, just like all past political systems have been”. Again, this only coincides with 2025, and we are potentially repeating ourselves with more confidence in a year from today; however, this year was characterised by this theme that emerged incrementally as a response to diminishing returns with an equal amount of work. A behavioural adaptation, triggered by the perceived necessity to measure the value of statecraft on the relative axis of comparison.

Looking Back & What To Change

2025 was not a special year, as many proclaim when emotionally blowing up tangible events within their predictable agenda. But just as in all other years, there was an underlying theme that accompanied us. This year, it was the look at the plate of others. This will intensify and potentially lead to the development of more detrimental developments – potentially at a larger scale. Maybe this warning by the International Monetary Fund needs to receive more attention. From a purely structural standpoint, a global political and/or economic crisis is likely.

Even with changed state behaviour, we can expect global statecraft to still fall a bit deeper into more externally oriented policymaking; ultimately, this is the result of structural pressures that have been existent for nearly half a century. Then, we must also acknowledge that big socio-political change in the nature of things and actors rarely occurs in periods as short as a year; therefore, it will take time.

What is important, in the name of sustainable societal development, is that inward-looking policymaking does not stop, despite slowing down. There is much more to develop and many more limits and boundaries to push farther than we can imagine. It is simply enough to move away from the comparative measurement standards of socio-political success. As long as this is the case, detrimental behaviour towards others will always remain an option for policymakers, and they will take it at some point. Take it away, and they only have the inward-looking approach and the productive approach to the outside, with the intention to strengthen the inside.

Regardless of whether we discuss 2025, 2026 or any other year on the timeline. Politics is predictable. Politics is logical. Politics never happens by accident, but it is also not always planned or intentional. This is just as true today as it was thousands of years ago, and as it will be in a thousand years – given that we do not change.