The year volatility went mainstream: 10 forces that defined 2025
From Washington to Gaza, Kyiv to Caracas, 2025 surged with overlapping shocks that reshaped politics, markets and lives. Donald Trump’s return to the White House accelerated protectionism and hard-edged security policies. A Gaza ceasefire halted, but did not end, one of the century’s deadliest conflicts. A boom in artificial intelligence drove record investment alongside job cuts and legal fights. And climate disasters left their signature across continents. Here are the 10 storylines that set the year’s course—and what they reveal about the world now forming.
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1) Trump returns and resets Washington’s posture
Back in the Oval Office in January, President Donald Trump pursued a protectionist offensive, mass deportations of undocumented immigrants and efforts to roll back diversity and inclusion programs. He deployed the National Guard in Democratic strongholds and intensified attacks on media adversaries. Even as he tightened the policy screws, polling showed mounting voter frustration with the cost of living. Republican defeats in local races underscored the peril ahead of next autumn’s midterms: a base still energized, an opposition newly galvanized and an electorate that increasingly measures governance by grocery bills.
2) A fragile ceasefire in Gaza
U.S. pressure yielded a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas nearly two years into the Gaza war, where famine had been declared and the death toll would reach 70,000 by year’s end. The truce returned the last surviving hostages and most of the dead to Israel in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners and detainees. Displaced residents arriving in Gaza City found neighborhoods leveled. Aid flows increased but remained far short of need, according to the United Nations and humanitarian groups. The next steps of Trump’s proposed peace plan—especially Hamas’s disarmament—proved fraught amid renewed Israeli strikes, continued Hamas attacks, regional flare-ups with Hezbollah and Israeli raids on Iran’s nuclear facilities during a 12-day war in June. In September, Israel targeted Hamas officials in an unprecedented strike in Qatar, underscoring how tenuous the truce remains.
3) War diplomacy and stalemate in Ukraine
Trump’s return energized efforts to stop Russia’s war in Ukraine, launched in 2022, even as his sympathies appeared to seesaw between Kyiv and Moscow. He berated President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office in February, accusing him of risking World War III. A Trump-hosted August summit with Vladimir Putin in Alaska ended abruptly, with Washington accusing Moscow of negotiating in bad faith. The administration followed with its first major sanctions package against Russia, and multilateral talks in late November moved forward on a U.S. draft plan initially viewed in Kyiv and European capitals as too favorable to Moscow. On the ground, Russian forces edged forward at punishing cost, while missile and drone barrages pummeled Ukrainian cities at record pace.
4) A global trade war refashions the playing field
Waves of U.S. tariffs hit sectors deemed strategic—steel, aluminum, copper—rattling supply chains and triggering retaliation. Intense talks produced deals with the European Union and China, while negotiations with Mexico continued. Discussions with Canada were suspended after a Canadian province funded an ad criticizing U.S. tariffs. Under pressure to lower prices, Trump lifted levies on selected food imports, including coffee and beef, in mid-November. The year’s lesson: protectionism is now a durable feature of economic policy, a lever to pressure adversaries and, increasingly, a domestic instrument to wrestle down inflation.
5) A new pope, a familiar mission
On May 8, Chicago-born Robert Francis Prevost became the first American pope, taking the name Leo XIV after a conclave that concluded in less than 24 hours. A veteran missionary who spent nearly 20 years in Peru, Leo XIV has emphasized continuity with Francis on the poor, migrants and the environment, while reassuring conservatives by ruling out—for now—women’s ordination as deacons and recognition of same-sex marriage. In a year of hard power, the papacy’s soft power reasserted itself as a moral counterpoint—and a reminder of how global institutions can still shape debates far beyond Rome.
6) Gen Z uprisings redraw the protest map
From Asia to Africa and Latin America, under-30s led mass movements against corruption, censorship and grim economic prospects. Governments offered mixed responses: Morocco promised social reforms even as more than 2,000 protesters faced prosecution. In other places, crackdowns hardened dissent into broader challenges to power. Nepal’s Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli and Madagascar’s President Andry Rajoelina were forced from office. Post-election protests in Tanzania were met with brutal suppression. A pop-culture icon—the straw-hatted skull from the manga One Piece—morphed into a transcontinental emblem of defiance, proof that youth politics is boundaryless, creative and hard to contain.
7) The AI boom crests—and alarms grow
Artificial intelligence soaked up capital at historic scale: spending is expected to reach about $1.5 trillion this year and $2 trillion next year, according to Gartner. Chipmaker Nvidia briefly topped $5 trillion in market value. Yet the exuberance came with turbulence. Markets fretted over a speculative bubble. Copyright lawsuits multiplied. Companies cited AI adoption in announcing layoffs, while the technology’s role in spreading misinformation deepened public skepticism. The arc of AI in 2025 is a paradox—transformative tools arriving faster than guardrails, with productivity gains offset by social and legal shocks.
8) A spectacular Louvre robbery stuns Paris
On Oct. 19, thieves disguised as workers used equipment to access the Louvre Museum, fleeing on scooters with Crown Jewels valued at €88 million and dropping a diamond-studded crown along the way. Three suspects were charged and jailed, but the treasures remain missing. The heist became a referendum on security at the world’s most-visited museum and a cautionary tale about the vulnerability of cultural heritage in an age of meticulous, high-speed crime.
9) U.S. strikes at sea roil Venezuela and the region
The United States deployed a sizable force off Latin America’s coasts, saying it aimed to stop drug trafficking bound for U.S. markets. More than 20 strikes in recent weeks targeted vessels suspected of carrying narcotics, leaving several dozen people dead. The Justice Department called the operations lawful, rejecting a senior U.N. official’s charge that they were extrajudicial. Tensions with Venezuela spiked. Caracas cast the strikes as a pretext to topple President Nicolás Maduro and seize oil reserves, while U.S. authorities offered a $50 million reward for his capture and accused him of leading a cartel. The episode spotlighted a larger trend: the expanding use of force outside traditional war zones, and the diplomatic blowback it invites.
10) Record-breaking weather, relentless consequences
Hurricane Melissa devastated Jamaica and flooded Haiti and Cuba, while the Philippines endured typhoons Ragasa, Bualoi, Kalmaegi and Fung-wong in quick succession. Vietnam suffered storms, floods and landslides, with rainfall topping 1,900 millimeters in some areas. Europe baked under soaring temperatures as wildfires torched a record number of hectares; France’s Mediterranean coast endured its worst blaze in 50 years. In the United States, lightning-sparked fires closed the North Rim of the Grand Canyon in mid-July for the season. Storm Éowyn tore across Ireland early in the year, prompting a rare nationwide red alert, with gusts reaching 183 km/h in Conamara. Scientists’ verdict held: climate change is driving more frequent, deadlier, costlier extremes.
The pattern behind the headlines
What binds these stories is a world reorganizing around hard edges: protectionist economics and performative sovereignty, ceasefires that pause rather than end wars, and technologies that both power profits and destabilize labor and information ecosystems. Youth took to the streets with new symbols and old grievances. Museums learned that prestige is not security. And climate disasters, once seasonal anomalies, now define entire years.
As 2026 approaches, the open questions are urgent. Can a Gaza truce become a durable peace? Will Ukraine diplomacy catch up to the battlefield? Can governments harness AI’s productivity without hollowing out jobs or rights? Can the global economy adapt to a tariff-first era without calcifying into blocs? The answers will determine whether 2025 was the peak of a turbulent cycle—or merely its prologue.
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
