Liberal thinkers saw democratic institutions as the mechanisms most able to respond to change and smooth their way through majority rule. Marxists and socialists situated the engine of change in class conflict over the material forces of production, including the associated technologies.
The dynamics of this conflict are what drive history from one stage to the next. Reformists, located between those two poles, espoused moderation, exchange of knowledge, and pragmatism as the means to safeguard humankind from folly and excess, keeping change in the realm of the rational and feasible.
Political philosophy is a quest to understand the political world: the nature of states, their relations with each other and their societies, the conditions of individuals and groups within them, the processes of change and how to measure them. This quest is also reflected in a familiar tradition marking the transition from one year to the next: taking stock of the year gone by and forecasting what lies ahead. But this is no easy task when change is so rapid and complex that it is hard to grasp in a way that enables effective analysis. The matter is further complicated by that term “uncertainty”, so common among politicians, strategic analysts, and the media. They use it to describe today’s world and the events shaping it with the implication that it is impossible to “predict” what will unfold in the following period, be it a year or longer.
I am not claiming to predict the unpredictable — namely events that have no observable beginnings or roots in reality. “Big surprises” — out of the blue — are unlikely. Most often they arise from deep-seated causes and variables that interact beneath the surface of history over extensive periods, making them hard to detect and diagnose. By contrast, forecasting is a scientific process.
It begins by identifying trends that have emerged and persisted over the past and then projecting their trajectories forward, using diverse variables and calculations to determine whether the trends will persist as they are, escalate or decline, at what pace and to what degree.
With the start of each new year — as with every major international crisis — the search for answers to the question of change in the international order grows pressing. The reason this subject attracts such interest is the role that great powers play in shaping the strategic, political, economic and technological realities of the contemporary world. International relations studies, as this field is commonly understood, focus on power centres and the dynamics of their interplay.
The rest is detail, or at best of less importance than the main structures of hegemony, spheres of influence, and competition — whether through peace, war or the various modes of deterrence and conflict management in between. In the Middle East, there are two types of regional relations: the first among Arab states themselves, and the second between these states collectively and three external actors — Iran, Turkey, and Israel. Regional relations, by definition, function within a framework of geographical proximity. This either generates cooperation and cohesion or, conversely, produces mutual repulsion that can lead to open enmity.
In light of the foregoing, the most appropriate way to frame this new-year forecast from an Arab international relations perspective is to focus on four focal areas: the Trump phenomenon, the shifting global order, the new cold war, and the Middle East.
The US has had 47 presidents since its declaration of independence on 4 July 1776. After achieving liberation from British colonial rule in 1783, passing through the confederal experiment from 1781 to 1787 and adopting the federal constitution in 1787, the US elected its first president, George Washington, in 1789.
Donald Trump’s first entry into the White House in 2017 marked the beginning of a new phase in US presidential politics, characterised by a new cohort of presidents whose impact is likely to last for the foreseeable future. The political contest that brought Trump’s first term to an end did not conclude with the usual smooth and orderly transition. Trump and his followers rejected the legitimacy of the results of the race between him and Joe Biden, and they tried to obstruct the certification of the Electoral College vote. Subsequently, Trump faced a battery of lawsuits and trials that continued into his next electoral campaign, once again against Biden.
If the accusations, trials and rulings were Trump’s main vulnerability, age became Biden’s principal weakness, as demonstrated during the first debate between them. This eventually led to Biden’s withdrawal from the race and his endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic Party’s candidate for the 2025-2029 term. This did not mean that Harris would automatically replicate the Biden White House, but she certainly embodied the same conditions and challenges associated with globalisation and its consequences in the US and worldwide.
After Trump’s inauguration for a second time on 20 January 2025, he became the single most influential factor shaping global affairs. This dynamic is likely to remain the case for the rest of his term. His norm-defying style has caused immense disruptions in areas such as trade, yet it has also produced some diplomatic outcomes, not least those related to the war on Gaza and the imposition of long-needed changes in European defence spending.
In 2026, the US will likely see sharply divergent narratives about its past, present, and future. As the country celebrates its 250th anniversary, Republicans and Democrats will describe the same country in entirely different terms. In 2026, voters will give their judgement on America’s current state and future in the midterm elections in November. Yet even if Democrats win a majority in the House of Representatives, Trump’s mode of governance — based on tariffs and executive orders — will persist.
Foreign policy analysts are divided over what the international system will look like in 2026. The central question remains whether the world is heading towards a new Cold War between two camps led by Washington and Beijing, or whether a “Trumpian deal” will divide the world into American, Russian, and Chinese spheres of influence, within which each power can do as it sees fit.
If the US under Trump is the axis that determines the shape of the global order, then his preference for an instinctive, transactional approach will prevail in practice over grand geopolitical models. This, in turn, will accelerate deviation from and deterioration of the old rules-based order.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit, together with the accompanying military parade in Beijing, occasioned not only the first-ever gathering of leaders from Beijing, Moscow, Pyongyang, and Tehran, but also the first visit by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to China in seven years. Geopolitics often expresses contradiction — in this case, rising powers coming together to challenge the US-led global order.
While the Trump administration set about stirring conflicts with allies, abandoning international institutions, and violating rules the US had once defined — in short, dismantling the international system the US itself had built — President Xi Jinping used the SCO as a platform to present his country as a pillar of sound global governance and stability. This was epitomised in his appeal to countries to take a clear stance against hegemonic power politics and for genuine multilateralism.
After World War II, the US and other world powers constructed a system of rules and institutions to rationalise relations between states. Despite its flaws, this system provided both constraints and benefits that sustained its legitimacy. Systems of this sort rarely collapse all at once. Rather, as one falters, an alternative emerges. Systems change only after their gradual deterioration, often due to erosion from within by the very powers that once created and supported them. In this case, the Trump administration’s use of the American economy to launch trade wars, obstruct institutions, and violate rules has rendered the international order less acceptable.
As Washington undermines the system, China fills the vacuum, leaving the US’s aggressive behaviour to do the dismantling. Beijing removes tariffs on African imports while Washington raises them; Beijing expands the Belt and Road Initiative while Washington cuts back on foreign aid.
Ultimately, Trump’s “America First” policy may open new opportunities for China to expand its global influence, as Beijing positions itself as the more reliable partner — particularly to countries of the Global South — and succeeds in concluding more trade agreements. If this trajectory continues, the world will experience a transition from a single hegemonic power to more independent states. This period will also be marked by a stronger emphasis on such ideas as sovereignty, non-interventionism, isolationism, and alliances that reject the very notion of “great powers”.
War typically takes place between two sides. When it is “cold”, it means that all the instruments of power are deployed except for direct military engagement. The world now appears to be entering a new round of warfare that is likely to remain cold, as nuclear weapons continue to deter escalation.
2025 marked the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II. Europe and above all Russia commemorated the defeat of Nazi Germany while China commemorated the defeat of its former occupier, imperial Japan. The commemorations brought to mind the moment, all those decades ago, when the US, Russia, and China were on the same side against the Axis alliance of Germany and Japan.
The war against Japan ended when the US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Celebrations in the People’s Republic of China affirmed China’s role — under the Chinese Communist Party — in achieving victory over Japan. The Kuomintang, which also fought the Japanese, has long since retreated to Taiwan, which will become one of the focal points for the new cold war.
What is new this time is that China — the rising superpower — has managed cold war tensions in a way that structured them along a North-South, as opposed to East-West, divide. The conflict began in a distinctly Chinese manner: economic initiatives extending over the Belt and Road geography that skirts around Europe and North America, reviving Afro-Asian unity, which has been augmented by South American states such as Brazil, Venezuela and Bolivia.
The BRICS grouping began with China, Russia, and India, then expanded to include South Africa and Brazil, and later additional countries. The SCO, which emerged around the same time, has also expanded. The first of these two groupings seeks to reorganise the US dollar-based global economic system and to dismantle US unipolar military and economic hegemony.
The second further tipped the global power scales after Trump returned to office and started doling out insults and tariffs in every direction. Immediately after the last SCO summit came the Chinese military parade featuring 10,000 troops and a display of the latest high-tech weaponry.
Meanwhile, the conflict in Ukraine will continue while elsewhere the line between war and peace grows increasingly blurred. Already tensions are rising sharply in the Caribbean and South America where Washington seeks to reimpose its former influence.
A decade ago, several Arab countries drafted comprehensive development “visions”, setting 2030 as an initial horizon for their ambition to catch up with the progress achieved by other nations. The region was worn and weary from the Arab Spring and its violent repercussions in the form of terrorism and civil war. The only alternative was to initiate a renaissance project.
The process began in Cairo and Riyadh, then other Arab countries followed suit, setting more distant deadlines extending into the 2040s to make up for their delayed start. Although Egypt had a 2030 vision, it added a further ambitious urban development plan extending to 2050.
Obviously, it is difficult to predict what these projects will look like when they reach their last stop, since we cannot tell what the world will look like in 2030. But we do know that the Arab world is now in a phase that can be described as post-Arab Spring. In this new phase — as we look around at the ongoing fires and smoke, the still glowing embers of recently extinguished ones — the path that enables us to look forward and offers hope of reconstruction and modernisation may not deliver us from the current tragedy, quite, but it renders the future promising.
The so-called Arab Spring that marked the beginning of the 2010s precipitated an earthquake across the Arab region and the Middle East, wreaking total disruption in the balance of power. The havoc whetted the appetites of regional and international powers, leading to direct occupation, the creation of settlements, repeated breaches of national sovereignty, and the formation of armed militias that presented themselves as alternatives to states.
The Middle East came to embody two concrete realities. First, the region is divided between reformists who seek peace and stability as prerequisites for development and the opponents of peace and stability driven by historical or religious reasons or due to disinterest in peace and development.
Second, these two camps are in open or tacit competition. The fifth Gaza war, like other conflicts involving armed militias, underscored the imperative of encouraging states of this region to achieve peace and stability through self-reliance, while denying radical forces the ability to undermine those efforts.
Expectations regarding the future of the Middle East are complex and opaque. This is in part because of the challenges of global climate change and technological revolutions and in part because of the ongoing impact of Arab Spring warfare and disruption and the ways various powers have exploited them. Egypt has not been immune to the repercussions of the upheaval, especially given the war still raging in Sudan and the disputes in neighbouring countries.
In light of the foregoing, the Middle East requires a strong regional order, one that is not captured by grandiose ideas, but rather is grounded in a comprehensive strategic vision capable of overcoming challenges.
This requires cooperation among all parties to produce a shared regional identity rooted in common interests, the formation of an Arab bloc, the building of both hard and soft power and a harmonised diplomatic discourse. Moreover, all this must be integrated into a reform process consistent with current levels of political development and maturity. The bloc must simultaneously strive for an effective presence on the international stage.
As for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the fragile peace in Gaza will hold. Still, given the intractability of this conflict, there is an urgent need for strategies to deal with spoilers of peace efforts that periodically resurface. I refer here to Hamas, whose statements indicate that it will not comply with the next step of any peace plan, namely disarmament. This, in turn, gives Israel the pretext to continue killing Palestinians.
To conclude, the Middle East in 2026 may witness militias that present themselves as alternatives to the state or raise the banner of “resistance”. Hizbullah is part of this scenario. It divides Lebanon, refuses to disarm, and is prepared for civil war. In Yemen, the Houthis advance a similar resistance narrative. Meanwhile, the conflict persists in Sudan and Libya remains divided.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 8 January, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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