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What went down in 2021?
At the start of 2021, Eurasia Group, our parent company, released its predictions for the top 10 geopolitical risk stories of the year ahead. The report tried to answer many questions. What major issues will a post-Merkel Europe contend with? Will crisis-ridden Latin America emerge from the pandemic in far worse shape? How will US President Biden govern in a country where roughly half the population deems his presidency illegitimate?
As 2021 draws to a close, we take a look at how some of the report’s forecasts have stacked up, and where things might be headed in 2022.
Joe Biden: The asterisk president
Biden won more than 81 million votes in the 2020 presidential election, the most of any presidential candidate in US history. Would it be enough to lend his presidency an air of legitimacy after his predecessor’s claims of electoral inconsistencies?
The answer became urgently clear on January 6, 2021, when Trump-supporting rioters stormed the US Capitol, leading to destruction and several deaths that will forever mar the record of American democracy.
It’s not just the rioters who have their doubts. A new poll released Tuesday found that 71 percent of Republicans – one-third of the nation – say they still don’t believe Biden’s win was legitimate.
Political polarization has deepened further throughout 2021. Getting a COVID vaccine – or not – has become a political statement. Some 60 percent of the unvaccinated identify as Republicans, compared to just 17 percent who are Democrats. This phenomenon is also reflected in vastly different perceptions of the state of the economic recovery, which remain divided along party lines.
As Trump maintains a stranglehold on the GOP, many Republican politicians realize that fealty to the former president is the only way to ensure their continued political survival (just ask Congresswoman Liz Cheney, who was removed from her leadership position after rallying against the former president for encouraging the Capitol riot).
A Merkel-less Europe
Angela Merkel has been Europe’s point person for the past 15 years, while steering the EU through a range of challenges, including the 2009 Eurozone sovereign debt crisis, as well as a massive refugee wave in 2015 that gave rise to a populist tide across much of the continent.
Now, as the omicron wave pummels Europe, the challenges facing the Union are mounting. As rolling lockdowns continue, will the promised economic relief, made possible in part by Merkel’s leadership, be effectively distributed in coming years? Who will manage EU relations with illiberal governments in Hungary and Poland whose COVID relief funds are contingent on rule-of-law reforms?
Indeed, France’s Emmanuel Macron had tried to position himself as Merkel’s rightful successor, but as Macron focuses on his own dicey re-election prospects in April, no one yet seems convinced – certainly not outside agitators like Russia’s Vladimir Putin, whose aggressive military moves toward the Ukrainian border have recently become much more brazen. Putin saw Merkel as a force to be reckoned with. It’s a problem for Europe that no other leader commands that sort of respect from the Kremlin.
US-China relations: Tense but could be worse
“Following Trump's exit, the US-China relationship will not be as overtly confrontational,” Eurasia Group analysts wrote at the beginning of the year. That hasn’t entirely proven to be the case. President Biden has made countering China his foremost foreign-policy priority, while a recent summit between Xi Jinping and Joe Biden yielded no breakthroughs.
The two sides remain at odds over trade, technology, Taiwan, the South China Sea, and Xinjiang. What’s more, Biden recently held a global democracy summit to isolate not only China, but also those who cozy up to the rising economic behemoth. Washington is also investing heavily in partnerships in the Indo-Pacific to create a bulwark against the further expansion of Beijing’s influence.
Still, over the past 12 months, both leaders have been mightily distracted by crises at home (for China, it’s been COVID and a free-falling real estate sector; for Biden, it’s COVID and, well, the near-collapse of big parts of his domestic agenda), proving wrong those who predicted a Cold War-type clash in 2021.
Latin America: Backlash at the ballot box
The pandemic has deepened many of the social, economic, and political woes that plagued the region for decades. Weak governance, poor infrastructure and economic instability have meant that by mid-2021, despite accounting for just 8 percent of the global population, one-third of all COVID deaths had taken place in Latin America. That’s changed in recent months as vaccination campaigns have expanded.
Regionally, poverty and inequality have worsened – with the employment rate now 11 percentage points lower than in pre-pandemic times.
This ongoing economic deterioration has provided an opening for political outsiders who’ve capitalized on disillusionment with incumbents. In Argentina, the ruling coalition, led by the Peronista party, lost control of both houses of parliament for the first time since the restoration of democracy almost 40 years ago. In a similar sign of frustration, the small Central American nation of Honduras recently booted out President Juan Orlando Hernandez – who governed the country for close to a decade – in favor of a female leftist who has never served in elected office before. Meanwhile, Chileans, also disillusioned by inequality exacerbated by the pandemic, recently voted in a 35-year old former student activist.
Sigh… 2021 was supposed to be the year of hot vaxx summer, maskless vacations, and unruly office Christmas parties. That wasn’t to be. Here’s hoping that 2022 will be kinder to us all.
Keep an eye out: On January 3, 2022, Eurasia Group will be dropping the Top Risks report of 2022.
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World leaders weigh in on 2021 Top Risks
Are Biden, Merkel and Putin happy with their ranking on Eurasia Group's Top Risks report this year?
Watch more PUPPET REGIME here.
2021's Top Risks: global challenges intensify
Eurasia Group today published its annual list of the main geopolitical threats for 2021. For the second year in a row, the #1 Top Risk is rising political polarization in the United States, which not many years ago was deemed one of the world's most stable nations, with strong institutions and — as the sole global superpower — with a clear mandate to lead the world on many fronts.
That's all gone, for now. Why, and what does this mean for America and other countries?
As outgoing US President Donald Trump continues to undermine democracy by questioning his recent election loss to Joe Biden, and Republican lawmakers heed Trump's call to erode the legitimacy of US political institutions, we've reached a new normal in American politics, Eurasia Group Chairman Cliff Kupchan said during a livestream discussion to launch the 2021 Top Risks report.
That new normal is that in future US elections, the American president will be rejected by half the country no matter his agenda, Kupchan explained: in the current political environment, the world simply cannot look to the US to solve any global problem, much less a once-in-a-generation crisis like the coronavirus pandemic.
For Ian Bremmer, president of GZERO Media and Eurasia Group, America is in no position to provide global leadership at a moment when other countries would have hugely benefited from it, so other rising powers may fill the void created by the US abdication from its own role as superpower. The prime candidate to do so is China, which is increasingly competing with the US for global influence.
Indeed, Kupchan expects US-China rivalry to intensify — albeit in a different way than under Trump — when Biden takes office. There'll be a bidding war between both sides to win global hearts and minds as the new US president attempts to "multilateralize" US competition with China on issues such as COVID-19 vaccines or green technology.
Bremmer believes that China has the upper hand in vaccine diplomacy, and that unless Biden's US vaccine rollout is a roaring success, China is better positioned to exercise its soft power throughout the developing world with jabs that are cheaper and easier to distribute than the American vaccines.
Sustainability will be another arena for competition. Biden will try to clip China's wings on Chinese quest to benefit economically from the world's renewed push for renewable energy due to the pandemic, Bremmer added.
A longer-than-expected recovery from COVID-19, furthermore, is poised to make the world even more "GZERO" than it was a year ago. Kupchan said that the lasting scar tissue of the pandemic will create haves and have nots between and within countries in a leaderless world where the US is simply too divided to govern itself — let alone the international system it helped create after World War II.
For Bremmer, the coronavirus did not spur a more "GZERO" world, which we were already in before COVID-19, but underscored its urgency by accelerating all other geopolitical risks. It made everything a lot worse, a lot faster.
Watch the above video for more insights from both experts on other 2021 Top Risks, including why we'll see huge inequality in how different parts of the world recover from the 2020 public health crisis, and questions posed by readers. Check out the full report here and GZERO Media's summary here.
Watch Ian Bremmer explain the "Top Risk" of 2021: divided US domestic politics
Today, GZERO Media's parent company, Eurasia Group, released its annual report on the top 10 geopolitical risks that will shape the year.
In a GZERO Live discussion, Ian Bremmer explained why US domestic politics were named the "top risk" for the second consecutive year, as we enter an era when every Oval Office occupant is seen as illegitimate by roughly half the country — including lawmakers that election skeptics send to Congress.
Willis Sparks explains the implications to US foreign policy when Republicans and Democrats disagree so sharply, as allies and potential partners are left to wonder whether the next "America First" president and foreign policy are just four years away.
Watch the full GZERO Live discussion here.