From the bunker of Xi Jinping to the Ukrainian maneuvers of Vladimir Putin, from the excessive power of big tech to Iran’s nuclear bombs. Eurasia Group, the consulting firm founded by Ian Bremmer, publishes the ten main geopolitical risks of 2022.
More unstable, more insecure. Those who hoped that 2022 would exhaust the long wave of the pandemic must change their minds by reading the ten “Top Risks” published in a report by Eurasia Group, the consultancy and risk analysis company founded by the American political scientist Ian Bremmer. “2022 will make G-Zero even deeper”, reads the opening. That is, it will aggravate the global leadership vacuum and the isolationist tendency of the two superpowers called to fill it, the United States and China. A vacuum that leaves many unknowns: from the ability to govern the exit from the pandemic to negotiations to avoid a military confrontation in hot areas of the world, from Ukraine to Taiwan.
La top tre: Covid, big tech e Usa 2022
At the top of the ranking of risks stands the pandemic declined in the Omicron variant. There are those who, like Europe and the United States, already see the light at the end of the tunnel. The infections have increased tenfold but the unprecedented vaccination rate gives hope that “for industrialized countries” the pandemic “will become endemic within the first quarter of the year”. Not everyone can say the same. China’s zero-Covid policy of Xi Jinping “Is doomed to fail”. If the bunker of restrictions imposed by Beijing stopped the first wave of the virus, in front of Omicron there is no wall that holds. The bill will come and it will be huge: disrupted supply chains, inflation, an omnipresent central state. “The most effective policy to fight the virus has become the least effective.”
In second place Bremmer and the director of Eurasia Cliff Kupchan they bring “a techno-polarized world”. Now similar if not superior to real states, big techs “exercise a form of sovereignty over an entirely new dimension of geopolitics: the digital space”. The metaverse of Marc Zuckerberg, the race for digital currencies rewrite the very concept of sovereignty. It is an unstoppable process, it can be regulated. The authorities of the EU and the United States have already thrown the gauntlet, China has chosen the hard fist as evidenced by the Alibaba case. For all, “an ineffective governance of big techs will impose costs on society and business”.
The November mid-term elections in the United States close the podium. Three days after the anniversary of the assault on the Capitol, America is rediscovered more torn than before. Bremmer draws a severe assessment of Joe Biden’s first year, “crushed by the weight of the pandemic and the unfulfilled promise to“ annihilate the virus ”. If, as he himself declares, Donald Trump is ready to run for 2024, “no Republican will be able to deny him the nomination”. The mid-term elections will be decisive for the presidential clash: with a House in the hands of the Republicans, the risk of a divided Congress over the certification of the vote is real, with a stalemate with unpredictable outcomes that “would make the 2020 uprising seem docile” .
The big rivals: China, Russia and Iran
Fourth, fifth and sixth places in the standings are occupied by the three great rivals of Washington DC: China, Russia and Iran. With re-election to Congress in the run-up to next fall, Xi cannot afford setbacks to his program. However, it is endangered by the wave of Omicron and by the closure of the country-system imposed by Beijing: “The zero-Covid policy will weigh on consumption and growth and will produce new social frictions”. Throughout 2022, “foreign companies will encounter an increasingly difficult environment in China”.
Vladimir Putin it will not remain idle. A war in Ukraine is unlikely for Eurasia Group, “diplomacy will probably avoid a direct confrontation”. But the “tsar” will demand concessions from NATO. If not, “it will act in some way, with some form of military operation in Ukraine or with other dramatic actions in another part of the world”. The mid-term elections in America, then, offer the Kremlin secret services “an irresistible opportunity to stir up tension in an already deeply divided superpower”.
Watch out for Iran’s Ibrahim Raisi: the new president was to facilitate an agreement with the United States, “he chose the opposite way”. In a month, Tehran will have enough enriched uranium to build a nuclear bomb and the Biden administration “has failed to come up with a plan in case Iran is not interested in a deal.” If Biden “is reluctant to step up military pressure against Tehran”, Israel risks lighting the fuse with “sabotage attacks” and “potentially even military strikes against key Iranian sites”.
Nobody’s land
Transition, where to? For seventh place Eurasia Group chooses the green transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Why is it a “risk”? Because there are no free meals. “In 2022, the long-term goals of decarbonization will clash with short-term energy needs.” The earthquake on energy markets, especially in Europe, proves that the transition to green energy will not be a walk in the park. “Costs soaring retail e wholesaleenergy at the end of 2021 will undermine the economic growth of large parts of Europe and north-east Asia in 2022 ”. And there are those who will take advantage of it: “Leaders like Vladimir Putin several times in the past have used their levers to alter the energy market”.
Three different “risks” close the list. The first: from Afghanistan to the Sahel, from Venezuela to Ethiopia, the world is littered with “no man’s lands”. With the United States reluctant to take on the role of “policeman of the world” and China forced into its borders, the global leadership vacuum casts a veil of uncertainty over these countries tormented by wars, dictatorships and famines. In penultimate place Bremmer places the “culture war” of multinationals. The overwhelming power of social media also has positive sides: it raises public awareness. Which is now asking big companies in the world to account for human rights, forced labor, fake news and respect for diversity. A pressure that can force these companies to carry out a drastic, and very costly, overhaul of the production chains. Finally, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The “sultan” is “less popular than ever” in his own home. Thanks to a failed economic policy that has dropped interest rates and pumped inflation, with the lira skyrocketing. Weaker, more unpredictable: the crisis “could derail the efforts of Ankara and Washington to maintain a constructive bilateral agenda”.