2025: A World Without Resolution

Monday, 15. December 2025

Rufruf Chaudhary

As the year draws to a close, one thing is clear: we did not move towards stability collectively. Instead, we moved sideways, fractured without a clear direction. The world splintered into multiple crises that evolved so quickly that the systems designed to manage them struggled to keep pace and peace. The year 2025 can be defined less by resolution than by the accumulation of pressure points, conflicts, and raising the unresolved questions about power, responsibility, and restraint.

Questions about who really shapes outcomes today? Is it still states or increasingly technology, markets, and military leverage? The year showed that power is no longer concentrated or predictable. Who is expected to act when crises erupt? Should major powers intervene, mediate, or stay out? 2025 exposed how often responsibility is deferred. Lastly, what limits still matter? Deterrence, international law, and norms once imposed a red line. This year showed those limits are being tested. We collectively have yet again failed to agree on who holds authority, who must act in crises, or how far states are willing to go before pulling back.

Early in the year, South Asia reminded the world how quickly dormant rivalries can turn kinetic. The brief but intense confrontation between India and Pakistan shattered the assumption that nuclear deterrence guarantees stability. While a large-scale war was avoided by both, the episode exposed the fragility of crisis management mechanisms in the region. The takeaways were sobering: restraint still exists, but it can no longer be taken for granted.

In the Americas, geopolitical lines hardened. Washington’s military strike against Venezuela marked a sharp escalation, pushing it closer to the Cold War-style alignments. The fallout extended beyond Caracas. Diplomatic relations between the US and Peru collapsed. Latin American politics became more polarized, with diplomatic space for compromise, neutrality, and mediation positions no longer being rewarded.

Europe, on the other hand, spent much of 2025 confronting the reality that war on the continent is no longer an exception. Ukraine remained unresolved, and the debate shifted from how long support can last to how prepared Europe is itself. The European Parliament’s Defense Readiness 2030 report captured this shift with unusual clarity.

Another defining trend of 2025, including Europe, was the tightening of immigration and asylum laws. Governments moved to restrict access, accelerate deportations, and externalize border controls. What was once framed as temporary crisis management has now become a permanent policy. Migration shifted from being a humanitarian and labour-market issue to being a question of domestic security. The cumulative effect is a world where movement is more regulated, more politicized, and more unequal.

Asia is closing the year with fresh uncertainty. Tensions between Cambodia and Thailand flared, reviving the long-standing border and political dispute that was believed to be contained. This conflict serves as a reminder that Southeast Asia’s reputation for quiet diplomacy masks unresolved fault lines and that regional institutions are stronger at managing optics than outcomes.

In addition to the abovementioned, one of the most consequential developments of 2025 was the publication of the US’s new National Security Strategy. The documents formalized what had been visible throughout the year: a harder framing of global politics as long-term competition rather than crisis management. China is positioned as the central strategic rival, economic and technological dominance is treated as a security imperative, and allies are explicitly expected to shoulder more military and financial responsibility. The strategy retains commitments to Taiwan and deterrence in the Indo-Pacific, but it also signals a more transactional approach to partnerships. For Europe, and Germany in particular, the message was unmistakable: alignment with Washington will increasingly come with expectations, not guarantees.

Meanwhile, the war in Gaza remained a persistent source of instability throughout the year. Despite repeated diplomatic efforts, ceasefire talks failed to translate into a lasting political process. The conflict deepened regional polarization, strained relations between Western capitals and the Global South, and exposed the limits of international leverage when major powers remain divided. For Europe, Gaza was not a distant crisis. It reverberated through domestic politics, migration debates, and relations with Middle Eastern partners, while raising uncomfortable questions about consistency, humanitarian norms, and credibility in international diplomacy.

As the year ends, the world stands neither at peace nor at collapse. It stands in between a state of managed tension where the old rules no longer fully apply, and the new ones are still being written. The question for 2026 is not whether crises will emerge. It is whether states, alliances, and societies have learned enough from this year to meet them with coherence rather than reaction.

At Diplomacy.Berlin, that is the conversation we carry forward: not chasing headlines, but tracing the deeper patterns shaping the world we are stepping into.