“Trump is Going to Get a Lot of Wins:” Ian Bremmer Forecasts 2025 Geopolitics

WALTER ISAACSON, CO-HOST, AMANPOUR AND CO.: Thank you, Paula. And Ian Bremmer, welcome back to the show.

IAN BREMMER, PRESIDENT AND FOUNDER, EURASIA GROUP: Good to see you, Walter.

ISAACSON: Every year, your company, the Eurasia Group, has a global risk assessment. And this time you say, “We are heading back to the law of the jungle.” What do you mean by that?

BREMMER: I think it’s the most dangerous period geopolitically since either the 30’s before World War II or the early Cold War before the Cuban Missile Crisis. It’s a world where the strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must. And the United States is both in an incredibly strong position compared to its adversaries – China, massive economic challenges, worse since the 90’s, maybe the 70’s; Russia in deep decline; Iran having lost their empire proxies in the region – but also the US is much stronger politically, economically, technologically, and militarily than all of its all of its allies. And that’s certainly true compared to where Trump’s US was in 2017. So the fact that that power imbalance exists at a time when the United States is saying, we don’t want to promote collective security, we don’t want to promote global architecture for free trade. We don’t wanna promote rule of law or export democracy. No. We want to rip up our own global order, which is not something that we’ve seen in history. And instead get countries to do cut deals with us transactionally. We don’t care what their political or economic systems are, but they better listen to us because otherwise there will be hell to pay. That structurally is the geopolitical dynamic that is driving so much of the uncertainty in the world for the coming year.

ISAACSON: Well, you say that the Trump administration is talking about tearing up the global order that America has led, especially a global order based on free trade. But isn’t there a backlash both in the United States and in the western world against the free trade global order that left so many people out?

BREMMER: Absolutely. Trump isn’t the lead risk here. Trump is the lead symptom of something that’s been coming for decades, Walter. I mean, the fact is that the average American – Democrat, Republican, or independent leans either way – doesn’t believe that free trade benefits them, doesn’t believe that the US providing military security, and by the way, fighting wars all over the world, benefits them. And doesn’t really believe that the United States is a representative democracy, so certainly isn’t interested in trying to export that model all over the world. So yes, that is absolutely true that the Americans don’t support these things. And it’s also true that Trump has increasingly a lot of like-minded people among allies, some of whom have elected their own anti-establishment folks into office. Think about Javier Milei in Argentina. Think about Nayib Bukele in El Salvador. Heck, think about Giorgia Meloni in Italy. And even in countries that really, really oppose what Trump is standing for, you still have large percentages of their populations that are sympathetic. And Elon Musk saying that, you know, the AfD in Germany, the Alternative für Deutschland, are the only way to save the country. And he’s doing that, you know, with full support of Trump or that, you know, the King of England has to step in so that the British Prime Minister has to step down. That is a message that resonates with minority parts of those populations, but growing parts of those populations, Walter.

ISAACSON: You’ve talked about the risks of Trump coming into office, and the Democrats have said that he’s a risk to democracy itself. Do you believe there’s an imminent risk to democracy because of the Trump administration?

BREMMER: No. I think it’s overstated. And anyone that’s watched the way that Biden has comported himself in engaging with Trump, as well as his entire administration over the past transition period, would know that there was a lot of exaggeration that the Democrats were using with an imminent concern that democracy was going to fail. I don’t believe that Trump is committed to rule of law or democracy. In fact in many ways I think he finds it inimical to some of what he would like to accomplish as not having checks and balances as a president and as a person. But that is very different from what the American system would allow Trump to do. The fact is that the judiciary in the US may well be politically appointed, but still acts largely independently. The fact is that the military is still a professional military, and perhaps most important, the US is a federal system. And so many rules, including how elections are actually run, are not run at the federal system at the discretion of the presidency. They’re run by local state administrations, red and blue that are pretty well run. So, you know, all of that implies that the United States is not at the brink of dictatorship. But a Trump who is willing to act in a maximally transactional way and who feels like his political adversaries have used parts of the American government to go after him, whether its impeachments that he believes are inappropriate, or efforts to investigate him or put him in jail, or even not getting enough secret service support around him, and he almost was killed by an assassination attempt, this close. That does imply that he is going to be more willing than one would be comfortable with to use the power ministries in the US, the FBI, the Department of Justice, the IRS others to go after his enemies. To politicize them, to weaponize them because he believes they’ve been politicized and weaponized against him. And certainly Kash Patel, who has been one of the most controversial appointments and has had a rough ride in his private meetings with Republican senators because he hasn’t been able to adequately describe what he would do as FBI director, what his vision is for the FBI, but he’s been very clear about who his enemies are, his list of enemies that he would want to go after if he became FBI director. And I believe that that has the potential to have a chilling effect on how people are willing to comport themselves publicly. And I think you know that when you see someone like Mark Zuckerberg do a 180 in so many different ways after Trump and Elon by connection win, I think you’re gonna see a lot more of that among political and economic elites in the United States.

ISAACSON: Trump has a sort of view of the world that he can get along with people. That somehow or another, even the strongest, even North Korea or whatever he can do personal diplomacy. Do you think there’s a possibility of a natural breakthrough and a more of an accord between the US and China?

BREMMER: With Trump, never say never. I mean, Trump is going to engage with Putin directly. And since the war, the invasion started in 2022, Biden and Putin haven’t spoken. So, I mean, clearly there’s a willingness to engage. You mentioned that with the North Koreans. Even Iran, I mean, I think Trump is gonna put very tough sanctions on Iran, much tougher than under Biden. But I think there’s gonna be a willingness to hear out an Iranian offer under duress in Tehran that might be much more significant than the Iranian nuclear deal, the JCPOA. So never say never, but let’s also remember, Walter, that for all of the criticism of Trump being in Putin’s pocket, the reality of Trump’s first term is that US policy towards Russia was significantly more hawkish than under Obama. I mean, it was Trump that gave the Ukrainians the anti-tank javelin missiles. It was – Obama refused. He thought it was gonna lead to too much risk. It was Trump that added to the Obama sanction. So the fact that Trump is willing to talk does not mean that you get to a deal. And I, again, I believe that Trump will engage with Xi Jinping. I think it’s possible that Elon Musk will engage with Xi Jinping. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s met him. And Trump is happy to bring Elon into top relationships. We’ve already seen that over the past weeks. Elon has a lot of exposure to China. But ultimately, I think the strong desire to contain China among all of Trump’s key national security advisors, and among all of the Republicans in Congress make this too hard. I think the demands on China make this too hard. The desire of the Americans to use tariffs as a principle element of economic and national security policy make this too hard. So what I’m saying is that the bet that you would make this year is that US-China relations get a lot worse.

ISAACSON: Q9. So we’ve seen, it seems, a breakthrough in Gaza. Do you think that President Trump is positioned to do something significant in the Middle East, given the weakening of Iran, his relationships with the Gulf States, and the changes that are now happening with Israel and the Palestinians?

BREMMER: Look, before October 7th, Israel was clearly the dominant military power in the region. And it turns out that Israel is still the dominant military power in the region. They are the ones that can determine, you know, both escalation and deescalation on their timetable and according to their preferences. And they are that dominant in large part because the United States provides an immense amount of direct military aid, technological support, intelligence support, et cetera. Though the Israelis are also, have built out great autonomous capabilities. Trump’s best relationships in the world still are with the Israeli government and with the Gulf States. That was his first trip as president last time around, you remember, he goes to Israel, he grabs the orb you know, with the Saudis and all the Gulf states. That is still true. It’s a lot of economic engagement, a lot of political engagement, a lot of support for him. They were all very happy to see Trump win. So he’s gonna be very comfortable with the fact that the Israelis and the Gulf States are on top right now, and that the Iranians are in serious trouble having lost almost all of their allies and all the people they support. I mean, Hezbollah, six months ago, Hezbollah was the most powerful non-state military actor in the world, and they’d been functionally destroyed. And the Iranians can’t even get the more military support because the transit route was Assad, Syria. And he’s gone now too, after a two week revolution that surprised everybody. Right? So yeah, I think that Trump is in the driver’s seat on the Middle East. One big question will be what he decides to do with that position vis-a-vis America’s top adversary. Iran. Is he just gonna put, squeeze them with more sanctions, preventing them from exporting a lot of oil through the unflagged tankers – which he can do, and it’s gonna hurt China, it’s gonna hurt others – or might he consider direct military strikes even against their nuclear capabilities, which the Israeli Prime Minister would sorely like him to do? I suspect it will be the former, not the latter, at least in the opening months, because I don’t think Trump wants to risk a hundred dollars plus oil. And I don’t think he wants to risk a broader war that he, you know, played a role in starting. But it’s absolutely plausible, especially if the Iranians don’t respond well to the greater pressure they’re gonna be facing from the US and from Israel.

ISAACSON: Iran’s on the ropes, as you say, and I think Secretary of State Blinken said in some ways they might just be able to have just a two week breakout period before they could create more enhanced nuclear capabilities. Do you think Iran is now gonna do that because it’s on the ropes?

BREMMER: There’s a very big difference between that and an operational nuclear bomb. All of the experts say it’s six months minimum to that, and probably a year before you could actually have that bomb with some form of delivery system attached to it. And the period in which they would be making an effort towards that breakout would be very clear both to the international inspectors and of course to the people that could stop them. So I think that the Iranian government would be very, very hard pressed to take on that kind of a direct risk to their own regime, because if anything were going to incentivize the Israelis and the Americans to try to take that regime out, it would be that behavior.

ISAACSON: What about Ukraine? Do you think now that there’s gonna have to be a settlement or ceasefire in place? Or is there some other way this can be resolved?

BREMMER: I think a ceasefire is very likely. Trump certainly very strongly wants one. And the European allies and NATO mostly recognize that’s where we need to go, because the Ukrainians just don’t have the capacity to continue to fight and to continue to raze the young men that they have over the course of the last three years. And by the way, not so young men in Ukraine are doing a lot of the fighting right now. So yeah, there’s gonna be a push, but it’s a lot easier to get the Ukrainians to negotiate right now than it is the Russians. I thought that one of Trump’s posts in the past few weeks, very interesting that he said maybe the Chinese can help on Ukraine specifically because he understands that he does not have the personal leverage with Putin that the Chinese do. And so, look, the idea that Trump is gonna be in Putin’s pocket I think is a myth perpetuated by his opponents. He does want to end the war, and I think that that willingness to end the war will include Ukraine recognizing that they’re not gonna get a significant component of the land that Russia occupies back. They’re going to be defacto partitioned. But Russia is gonna have to accept continued security guarantees for Ukraine. They’re gonna have to accept that, you know, the rest of Ukraine is sovereign as and is aligned by and armed by the West. And that’s not gonna be easy for Putin to accept. A temporary ceasefire, sure. We’ve got a 42 day ceasefire with Gaza, but will that really end the fighting long term? Will it really end the war, the proxy war that Russia is now fighting essentially with NATO? And there, I think the answer is no. That’s a much bigger long-term concern.

ISAACSON: You say that Trump says that maybe China can help on the Ukraine situation. Is that a good thing? Do we want China to help there and even help in the Middle East?

BREMMER: I think what we don’t want is for the Chinese to be pushed into a corner where they feel like they have no choice but to ally with some of the worst chaos actors in the world. Russia, Iran, North Korea. The Chinese ultimately, they’ve done a lot with Russia we don’t like, right? I mean, they’ve engaged in a lot of dual use technology export. That’s a problem. They’ve supported the Russians much more on the global stage. But the Chinese ultimately want stability. They want an end to the war. They also want better relations with their trade partners, including the Europeans who are much more willing to decouple from them, especially the frontline Europeans that need the Chinese capital the most, the Polish government, for example, the Romanians, because the Chinese have been supportive of Russia on the Ukraine war. So I think that Trump is correct to say there’s no, we should be looking to engage with the Chinese to try to push them in favor of stability.

ISAACSON: You always put out the global risk report this time of year, but let me ask you a more optimistic question. What’s a bright spot that you see? What is a global opportunity that’s surprising to you?

BREMMER: Well, one is that Trump is gonna get a lot of wins because he is actually very powerful both domestically and globally and that will address some issues that need to be addressed. Like, for example, illegal immigration in the United States. It’s been broken. It’ll be less broken. You might not necessarily agree on every, every tool he’s gonna use to address it, but everyone agrees it’s broken. That’s one of the reasons he was elected. There are so many things that are so exciting when I look at what you can do with AI, when I look at scale, just how much we’re getting out of new energy and infrastructure, whether it’s electric vehicles or solar or wind, all of that to me at a global level is very, very exciting for our kids and for our grandchildren. So this, it’s still the most extraordinary time to be here. It’s just there is a lot of china that’s gonna be broken, both literally and figuratively as we’re making our way through it.

ISAACSON: Ian Bremmer, as always, thank you so much for joining us.

BREMMER: Thank you, Walter.