Helen Walters (3:43)

Hello, everyone. Happy 2026, wherever you are. I am Helen Walters. I'm the head of media and curation at TED. It is January 5th. I am in Brooklyn. I have a cold, so apologies if my voice gives out. But luckily most of the talking today will be done by the one and only Ian Bremmer of the Eurasia Group, who often comes to explain what on earth is going on in the world to us. He's also here today to share the list of global risks that he and Eurasia just published. So, Ian, thank you so much for being here.

Ian Bremmer (4:14)

Helen, Happy New Year. How else could one possibly celebrate but to talk about the global risk environment?

Helen Walters (4:21)

You really are a massive downer, it turns out. But it turns out there is also a lot to talk about. And so a lot of the report, which is so meaty, relates to the United States States. But I actually think that what we need to do is start with Venezuela, which is wildly in the news at the moment. It was clear to everybody, I think, last year that something pretty major was going to happen in Venezuela, but I'm not sure that anyone really anticipated that that was going to involve essentially kidnapping a foreign leader and his wife and bringing them to Brooklyn to stand charges. Did you anticipate that and what do you think happened, or what can you tell us about what has just been going on?

Ian Bremmer (5:00)

Well, we did because we heard the story. But I have to tell you, the first time I heard it about two months ago, I was quite surprised. The idea that this wasn't just going to be Trump taking out Maduro or Forcing him under pressure to leave. And clearly there's been a lot of that pressure that's escalated, but that for several months now, there has been an effort to get more information, intelligence on Maduro's whereabouts with precise capacity, as well as get people around him that would be willing to work with the US So that he could be extracted and brought to the United States, in fact, brought to New York City, where most of the media is located and where the coverage is going to be the most dramatic. Trump gave the approval on that weeks ago, but they needed to have a proper window to make the strike and obviously not something that I could talk about or the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times could, because it would have put the mission and the people, especially the people on the ground in Venezuela cooperating with Maduro in danger. So, yeah, aware of it, but still extraordinarily striking. And I mean a few things to say here. The first is the success of this military operation. And this is not Noriega and Panama we're talking about. This is a serious military operation, well funded, well resourced, pretty loyal and entrenched, with lots of Cuban advisers providing support who are also quite professional. Russian military aid, air defense, all of that. And the United States not only went in and got him and his wife, but there wasn't a single American fatality. And so, I mean, first of all, the, the, the, the staggering nature of how successful this was for the US Military and for Trump should not be underestimated. Not talking about the legality of, I'm not talking about the knock on implications. I'm just talking about the headline of the removal and what increasingly people are asking me all the time, they're saying, well, is this about drugs? Is it about oil? Is it about, you know, all of these democracy? Of course not. Not for Trump anyway. But we should recognize that a big piece of this is what you see. It's about removing Maduro. Trump wanted Maduro out. He was having this discussion with a small group of top advisors. Stephen Miller, the Deputy Chief of Staff, Marco Rubio, Secretary of State and National Security Adviser, Dual Hatted and John Ratcliffe, Director of the CIA, were the core participants in driving this decision. And they had come to the decision that anything would be better than Maduro, literally anything. Chaos would be better than Maduro. A new military government would be better than Maduro, anything. And that was the basis of making this decision. Especially as Nicolas Maduro was taunting Trump. He was not willing to take sort of the brass ring and the golden visa and travel to Turkey and live out his days quietly. But out of power, he was doing the Trump dance and basically saying, I dare you. You're not going to take me out. And Trump was enraged by that. And so a big piece of what Trump was trying to accomplish, he has accomplished. He has removed Maduro, he has brought him to the United States, he has brought him to New York. He is going to face justice. And that will play out over months with positive headlines showing Trump, you don't mess with me. I took you out. And I think we need to start with that, because, you know, for Trump, a big part of the story begins and ends there. You don't need to go to the oil and the drugs and the elections or the Chinese and the Russians and Hezbollah and Iran. There are lots of other stories. You and I, Helen, can now unpull all of them. But we should start with the recognition that for Trump, a very large piece of this is, I'm angry about Maduro. He is making me look bad. I have given him an ultimatum. I must remove him from power. Period. End of story.

Helen Walters (9:47)

So the problem, of course, is you say that it doesn't end there. And the reality is that now the US Is more involved in Venezuela than ever before. It has extracted, as you say, a foreign leader from a country. And we've seen this. We've seen this play out before where, where, you know, even if someone. Even if a terrible dictator is taken out, actually sustaining any type of force there or, like, what happens next. And. And, you know, Trump talks about running Venezuela like, what actually is going to happen next.

Ian Bremmer (10:29)

So there was an enormous amount of planning that went into this extraction, this operation, over many, many months. The US had no idea where Nicolas Maduro's whereabouts were three months ago. By the time they made those strikes, they had minute by minute sense of where he was, what he was doing. They had no intelligence coming from people around Maduro. By the time they made the strikes, they had many people that were fully compromised and providing information to the U.S. so the military plan was extremely well done in terms of strategy, and it was also exceptionally well executed. I mean, Putin wishes he could have pulled something like that off in Ukraine, and of course, he couldn't. But, Helen, there is no planning around what governance is going to look like now in Venezuela. And when you heard Trump say, well, now. Now we're running Venezuela, I think that that statement was surprising to Marco Rubio, because there's no plan for the United States to run Venezuela, not at all. And this is not regime change. This is Regime roulette. You have taken out Maduro and now there's somebody new in charge that the Americans don't have a relationship with, have no reason to believe is a friendly, have no history in dealing with or engaging with. Right. I mean, it could be. And a whole bunch of. And the US does not consider her to be a criminal, but many of the people around her are criminals, do have bounties on their heads, and they're still there. So the plan, to the extent that there's a plan, the plan is that the United States has just shown that if you don't do what America wants and you're a really weak little country, the, the costs will be enormous. Trump has made that very clear with Nicolas Maduro and has shocked many around the world, allies and adversaries. The Chinese government said they were shocked. I've never seen a Chinese public statement from a top diplomat in response to a U.S. decision that says we're shocked. And keep in mind, there was a senior Chinese delegation in town in Caracas that had just met with Maduro hours before. And then Trump didn't stop Trump from launching the military raid and he didn't tell the Chinese. He didn't give them a heads up. Right. So they were shocked. So that's, that's what has just played out. And now what's going to happen, Trump believes that because he has shown that capacity, that this next Venezuelan government is going to do what he wants, will do what he wants on oil, will do what he wants on drugs, will do what he wants on cutting off relations with Hezbollah, Russia, Iran, and we'll do what he wants in terms of accepting Venezuelan migrants, illegal migrants from the United States back to Venezuela. That is, that is the wish list that is on top of, of Trump's agenda. On top of Trump's agenda is not. I want to make sure there are democratic elections. Marco Rubio wants that over time, but that is not a priority for Trump. And you saw that Trump was, was quick to throw Maria Machado under the bus, even though she is the legitimate opposition leader, won the Nobel Peace Prize, her party took 65% of the vote in an election that was stolen by Maduro. Trump doesn't care. It's like she can't run the country. I'm going to work with these guys unless they don't do what I want. And, and I will say, Helen, over the last 48 hours. First point. The conversations that Delsey Rodriguez and others have had with the Trump administration privately have been much more sympathetic and engaging than what she has been saying, publicly condemning the actions and that Maduro is still the president. She's already backing down somewhat, talking about a desire to cooperate, but considerably more conciliatory with the Americans privately. Not surprising. She needs to maintain some level of credibility with her own inner circle until she has a sense that there's stability on the ground in Venezuela. And the Trump administration understands that and is prepared to give her some time. Time meaning a week or two, not a matter of days, that is. But the Trump administration understands that if she decides that she's not going to do what the Americans want and there's no certainty that she will again, there's no experience with her, then there's going to be further action. And the military that the US has arrayed around Venezuela will stay in position to make that threat more credible. So they're not going to suddenly move to the eastern Mediterranean to start threatening Iran. They're going to need those, those capabilities in situ. And I've already heard that, you know, the sorts of things that the Trump administration might do in the early stages would be to, for example, capture the offshore oil rigs, which aren't well defended, which the US could do with relatively low risk and which would show the Venezuelan government we really mean this. You don't have the cards. We have the cards. You don't have allies. You don't have anyone that's going to support you. The Russians and the Chinese stood by and did nothing. No one provided any real support. So we're the boss. So when Trump says we're going to run Venezuela, that is what he means. He doesn't mean that Marco Rubio is going to be pro consul. He doesn't mean he's sending Tony Blair into Caracas to run it. He means that the Venezuelan government, the new regime roulette, is going to listen to the new authority in the region, the Don Row Doctrine, or. Or else. That is what he means, and that is a presumption that will be tested over the coming weeks.

Helen Walters (17:12)

So the Donro Doctrine, as you say, is actually the third top risk that you have in this report. Just give us a little bit of a context about the pun that's happening here and exactly what you mean by this, because it's obviously not just about.

Ian Bremmer (17:25)

Venezuela, not at all. And the fact that Trump himself, in just over the past few hours, has for the first time publicly said that he believes in the Don Row Doctrine, that accurately describes his foreign policy orientation towards the region, which is essentially a manifestation of America first in the Western Hemisphere as defined by Trump. And it means that in that part of the world, the United States is going to have final authority over what happens in national security and strategic interest. And there's a lot of ways that they and by the way, now that Trump has had that success in Venezuela in the near term and has embraced the Don Row doctrine, he's all about the branding. This is now what he's doing. He's going to try to find other ways to populate the Don Row doctrine, which, you know, means maybe striking some drug targets inside Colombia or maybe even in Mexico. We can talk about that. The former is more likely than the latter. It means more pressure on governments that are opposed to the United States in the region, like Nicaragua and Cuba, where Trump and Marco Rubio have already been talking about that. It means that the United States is willing to put plans in place to try to take Greenland, not with boots on the ground, but with political, economic and military pressure against a committed, erstwhile US Ally, Denmark, but a small and not very powerful one. And let's also recognize that last year, if you and I had been talking in January, and actually, Helen, you and I were talking in January last year, we were talking a lot more about tariffs. The principal US Tool to project power in Trump's hands was his tariff man, and it was he was weaponizing access to the US Market against countries all over the world, friends, foes, rich, poor, small, big to get them to cut deals that the Americans wanted. He no longer has the ability to use that tool in 2026 the way he did in 2025. He needs to cut more deals. The Chinese have shown him that they are economically capable of hitting him back really hard. And so he needs to be more cautious with the Chinese. That's playing out many ways. He he's got affordability issues in the U.S. part of why Zoran Mamdani is now mayor in my city, New York City. And he's not polling well on the economy. He's got midterm elections coming up. The Supreme Court is going to rule on IPA and probably constrain Trump's tariff authority to a degree. All of those things make it harder for him to use tariffs. And economically, the world is increasingly multipolar. The Americans are not the only player that can determine outcomes. But militarily, the world is still unipolar and the United States is still the dominant player. And that is particularly true in the Western Hemisphere. So Trump is going to lean in as he's frustrated on the economic side in foreign policy, and he's likely to lean in much more heavily on the national security side. And that will play out first and foremost in the Western Hemisphere, but it can also play out in Iran. It can also play out in other areas where the United States and Trump decides, we don't like the way you, sir, are behaving.

Helen Walters (21:09)

It's interesting to me that you bring up Denmark, and it's interesting to me that Denmark's leader has been responding in kind of increasingly stark terms, actually citing, trying to bring NATO into the picture. Picture, and actually, I think trying to establish that Denmark is not a small force that can be just kind of rolled over and by the United States. Is, Is that what you see there? Do you think that, like, what do you think is going on in Greenland?

Ian Bremmer (21:34)

Well, first of all, Greenland is not a joke for Trump. It's. It's a little painful to say that because it obviously is the territory of an allied nation. But the fact is that Trump and the White House have a number of people that are working on relevant pieces of what they want in Greenland in terms of national security, in terms of political allegiance, in terms of economic access, much of which not all. Much of which they could get by negotiating just with the Danes. But that by itself so far, is not getting to. Yes. And the reason for that is not only because Denmark is seen to be as small, but also because the Europeans are seen to be weak. And here we should broaden the aperture a little bit. There have been two acronyms that have been described by very different populations in understanding how Trump behaves, and one is Taco. Trump always chickens out. Used by his adversaries and his opponents to say, you know, Trump doesn't have a fist in his glove and he says he's going to do X, Y and Z, but then he backs down. And then the second is fafo. Fuck around and find out. And that is Trump's supporters and members of his own administration and sometimes Trump himself that says, you know, you don't do what Trump wants you to do and he's going to hurt you and the consequences are going to be serious. And, of course, the reality, like so many of these things in our very, very divided, hair on fire political environment, the reality is that both of these things exist at the same time, but they exist along a spectrum. You have, you know, certain very powerful countries that are capable and willing to, to actually respond with strength to Trump's unilateralism. And you'd put Xi Jinping's China number one in that category, but you'd also put Putin in that category and others. And they are the taco countries, Brazil even, you know, they were, the Brazilians were pushed really hard despite the Don Row doctrine. You know, Trump said, I'm going to tariff you unless you do something about your social media regulation. I don't like the way it's treating our, our companies, and I don't like the way you're going after my buddy Jerbosonaro, whose son has been lobbying me down at Mar a Lago. And you just gave him a 27 year jail sentence for fake news, you know, trying to overturn the election and organize the assassination of Lula. And so I'm going to tariff you. And Trump has backed right down, back down, because Brazil is a big economy and he needs Brazilian commodities to be, to, to be exported to the United States to bring prices down. And so Lula and Trump are actually now working towards a deal. They're on the taco side of the equation. But then we've got the FAFO side of the equation, and Venezuela is obviously on the PFO side of the equation. Maduro has figured that out. He thought he was taco until about 2:48 hours ago. I assure you that Maduro now understands that they are solidly in CAFO territory. And, and there are others. The Mexicans understand that they're in FAFO territory. The Cubans certainly should understand that in very short order. The Europeans, in Trump's mind, in JD Vance's mind, the Europeans are in FAFO territory and they need to be much more serious about what deterrence looks like against a potentially adversarial United States to prevent the US from undermining their own sovereignty. And that is what has motivated the statement by the Danish prime minister and the support from all of the Nordic leaders that this is the end of Naito. If you try to transgress our sovereignty, and that's really what it amounts to, and it's also what it amounts to domestically inside the United States is where will there be resistance and where will there be strength? You know, I mean, historically we understand this, this idea that you've got a bayonet and if you, if you hit steel, you stop and if you hit mush, you press on. And this is the law of the jungle as applied to geopolitics. And it is absolutely Trump's orientation towards foreign policy which is now being seen as, as manifest by, by countries all around the world.

Helen Walters (26:41)

So to get back to the risks report for a moment, so you, in the report, you wrote that 2026 is a tipping point year. And actually the very first risk that is about America is the fact that the world's most powerful country is in the throes of a political revolution. But I actually want to skip to a phrase that you have later on in the report, which talks about America being in its own late Gorbachev era. The country is careening towards something, but nobody knows what. And I want you to talk about that because I don't think anyone would actually willingly sign up to be sign up for a version of Russia's own post Gorbachev era. So what do you. Where are we going?

Ian Bremmer (27:22)

Well, you're right, Helen, but, but lots of people would sign up for a political revolution against the system that they believe is illegitimate and not working for them. And that, of course, is exactly how you got Trump. You and I have talked about that piece before, that Trump is not the cause of the dysfunction in the US Political system. He is a symptom, he is a beneficiary, and he is an accelerant, but he's not the cause. And more people that voted for Trump believe that democracy is an important reason to vote than voted against him in 2024. And it's because they thought the political system was so broken and had been weaponized by the Democrats against Trump, leading to his unprecedented two impeachments, leading to his unprecedented felony convictions, leading to his sadly precedented near assassination, and that they, as a consequence, had to weaponize the U.S. power ministries, the Department of Justice, the FBI, the IRS, had to politicize the administrative state to ensure that that would never happen again. So we are now in an environment where many, many Americans, and certainly including the President, believe that the principal adversary of the US is not the Russians, not the Chinese, but is inside the country is the political opposition. So that is what is driving this political revolution. Now, in my lifetime, there have been three political revolutions at scale that have had macro impact. The first was Deng Xiaoping's economic revolution, not political, in China, and that was successful. It opened China up to the global market and it led to 50 years of unprecedented Chinese growth that now shows China to be an erstwhile economic competitor and technological competitor to the United States. No one else is close. Number two was Gorbachev's revolution. I was cutting my teeth as a young political scientist as that was going on. That was both an economic and a political revolution. It failed, and as a consequence, the Soviet Union fell apart. But in 1989, 1990, you didn't know if it was going to succeed or fail. You were in the middle of it and a lot of people were signed up for it. And now we have a political revolution in the United States, not an economic revolution. Trump is driving in 2026 has clearly gone much farther than any observers at the beginning of 2025 believed it would. And the resistance inside the United States has been weaker than any observers at the beginning of 2025 believed it would be. And that's why the political revolution in the US Is clearly the top global risk out there. That's not to say the political revolution will be successful, but it is to say that it will proceed. It will become more disruptive, not less. As we move towards midterm elections and 2028 and where we see resistance, where Trump is able to break the system, I believe the consequences will be permanent, at least in part, for the United States and for the global power balance.

Helen Walters (30:51)

Do you see any stabilizing force emerging within the US to espouse a different tack?

Ian Bremmer (31:01)

Sure, but it is still early days. So one of the things we did in this report is we took a look at all of the policies that could be seen as supporting a political revolution over the course of 2025, and we characterized them, we developed a methodology, and we looked at them in terms of the impact they had on norms, eroding political norms in the US and on impacting the checks and balances on the executive. And for those that were actually eroding in a significant way, both the checks and balances and the norms, that was the group of activities that you would see as political revolution. Those that just erode norms, but not the checks and balances are norm breaking, but not system breaking. And those that neither erode norms nor checks, a lot of them make headlines because people's hair is on fire on the politics. And so Orange man bad, and so everything is horrible. But in reality, those are things we shouldn't be paying attention to. So we did all of that and we put it on a two by two graph. And if you just look at the acts that were taken that really, truly erode norms and checks and balances over the last year, agency shutdowns, IPA tariffs, National Guard deployments Act Blue investigation, firing independent commissioners, news organization lawsuits, law firm sanctions, pocket rescissions, Lisa Cook firing, university grant freezes, Comey and James prosecutions, on and on and on. I mean, this is unprecedented in the first year, in the first year. Now, not all of those efforts have been successful. It's like you throw a lot at the wall and you see what sticks and then you Keep going. When you don't see resistance. Some of these things have been prevented. Some of these things are still to be determined. Some of them have been successful by Trump. I would say that the things, the places where you see successful resistance, number one, the courts. The Supreme Court has not been willing to rule on all things and certainly is slower in response and the courts in general, than Trump's ability to challenge. And we certainly see that with actions, most recent actions, for example, in Venezuela. But there have been many areas where the courts have shown that they continue to be independent, that the jury system, of course, continues to be independent and randomized from American citizens. And the Supreme Court itself is independent and acts as a check on the president, including as a check on the president's inability to run for a third term. The military, despite the politicization of the top of the military, despite the removal of many of the inspectors general, I would say that the solid senior corps of military professionals are loyal to the Constitution and the country and not loyal to the president individually. And that really matters. The federal system in the U.S. the fact that the U.S. is still has states and that those are red and blue states and those are governed by people that are much more technocratic in orientation, mayors as well than their colleagues in the House and Senate, and they have control over a lot of policy decisions that matter for the US Domestically, including the way elections are conducted in the US Midterms coming up, and, and federal and so, and presidential. So for all of those reasons, there are checks. And if you made me bet today, I would say I believe that Trump's political revolution will fail, But I do not have a strong level of confidence in that call at this point. It's moving quickly. I have a strong level of confidence that Trump's political revolution will continue and that things are going to break before we determine that outcome, and that it's also unsustainable that it's quite likely that we will experience some kind of constitutional or near constitutional crisis or crises well before we get to 2028.

Helen Walters (35:41)

All right, let's go to Europe, which is another of the risks that you cite. You describe it as Europe under siege. Now, you already talked about the fact that Europe kind of needs to step up and develop some form of deterrence against Trump in order to kind of show that they're not as weak as apparently the U.S. especially J.D. vance, seems to think that they are. At the same time, as you write in this report, the UK France and Germany are all facing incredible internal pressure currently and are not really able to focus on doing what is necessary to develop whatever deterrence is necessary, etc. So talk to us about Europe and what we should be looking for this year.

Ian Bremmer (36:20)

Yeah, I mean, the Europeans have basically made a bet that the world was going to continue with an exceptionalist, indispensable America that would promote free trade and collective security and that the transatlantic relationship would be critical for the U.S. they made that bet. They've made it for decades. That was a bad bet, and it's painful to say that because I would like it to have been a good bet, but it wasn't. And when I wrote about the Gzero world for the first time in 2012 and I wrote about independent America as opposed to indispensable America as the more likely trajectory for the US The Europeans clearly did not believe it. And if they did believe it, they weren't prepared to act on it. And now it is getting very late. I do think the Nordics, the Baltics, the Germans, the Poles, I do think that they now understand and accept the urgency. I am not sure that they are capable of responding sufficiently strongly to make it matter. They have the Draghi report. They are trying to become more competitive. They're trying to improve their productivity and growth, support entrepreneurship, invest more in research and development and infrastructure, bring energy costs down, and develop technology companies that can compete with the United States. They're not remotely close to that. They are trying to spend much more on defense, and they're trying to integrate that defense across Europe and with the Canadians and with others so that they don't need the Americans as much. And they are spending all the money on Ukraine. The American taxpayers are not supporting Ukraine. Today they were. A year ago it was almost 50 50. Today the Europeans are doing all of it. But do I believe the Europeans will be able to do enough, given the extraordinary pressures externally from Russia, directly from a US that does not believe that a strong European Union is good for the U.S. wants the EU to fragment, wants more Brexits, wants to support Euro skeptic parties like the AfD in Germany, like reform in the UK, like the national rally in France. No, unfortunately, I would not. If you made me make the bet, I would not make the bet that the Europeans will succeed through this process. And in a way that I would make the bet that the Chinese will succeed through this process. That is not the bet I want to make. I would rather say that the Europeans are going to succeed and the Chinese have a harder time and they have to align more with, quote, unquote, Western Political system, economic system. But as you know, this is not about what I like, this is not about what I would prefer. Nobody really cares. This is about what I assess what Eurasia Group, 250 people, analysts all over the world, what we believe on the basis of our analysis and the basis of the people that we talk to, the leaders all over the world, what we believe is going to happen. And that's why Europe is such a significant risk in the report this year.

Helen Walters (39:35)

So I have a follow up question about that. And of course we all care deeply what you think. And let's be, let's be very clear.

Ian Bremmer (39:40)

But what I want, very different from what I think.

Helen Walters (39:44)

What do you want? That's right. Sorry, my head is very foggy. But I'm curious, what does it look like if Europe doesn't do what is necessary, what is the next, what I don't even understand what the implications of that really are.

Ian Bremmer (39:58)

The EU becomes more divided. It is, is becomes more of a failed experiment. They become makers as, I mean takers as opposed to makers of technology and of rules. The Europeans have been a regulatory superpower that have been able to make rules that a lot of the rest of the world have to align with. If you want access to the European market, they will have to tolerate rules that are basically being set by other countries or else they won't get access. And that means that their growth will continue to diminish. And it also means that the social contract in Europe will start to fall apart. The thing is, if you think about the global economy and how economic systems work, the United States is not like a free market and China is state controlled. It's the way it's worked has been in China the state captures corporations. In the US the private sector captures the regulatory environment. And in Europe the state acts as an independent, strong arbiter for regulation and bureaucracy. And that allows the Europeans to promote a much more robust social contract. The problem is that there isn't significant growth that goes along with that. So they can't afford it, they can't pay for it and they lose influence globally. And as that gets worse, the European citizens start opposing that system and oppose the transfer of their sovereignty to Brussels and the European Union and start voting for Euro skeptic parties that would decentralize power to the Germans, to the French, to the Dutch, to individual, the Italians to individual countries. But of course the fact is that the reason that Europe has had the ability to help set rules globally is because the EU has influence in a collective way. Well, the Americans don't like that. The Americans want to be able to cut their deals that advantage the US with individual, much smaller, less powerful European states. The Chinese feel the same way. The Russians feel the same way. Those countries now prefer law of the jungle, right? They don't want rule of law. They want law of the jungle, where the powerful do what they want. The Europeans need a system to thrive where everybody accepts basically the same values and rule of law and multilateral agreements and architecture. That world is falling apart. And if the Europeans don't make it, that means that the European model is no longer going to have influence globally. And so instead, individual European countries will increasingly get picked off by the Americans, by the Chinese, by the Russians, or some constellation of them, and they're going to have to make very uncomfortable choices.

Helen Walters (43:08)

That's something to think about. All right, so you mentioned both Ukraine and Russia. And Russia shows up on the list of global risks, but actually, interestingly, not because of the hot war with Ukraine, but actually because of what you term as being an escalation against NATO. So Russia's second front. So talk to us about that.

Ian Bremmer (43:28)

Of course, the Ukraine war is essential here, but the United States has already shown that they are willing to put much more pressure on Ukraine, a more aligned country, but a weaker one than they are with Russia. And the reason for that is because Trump is interested in a cease fire, no matter what the consequences. And if that's all you care about, then it's easier to press the Ukrainians to get them to capitulate. And Trump has had success in his policy of doing that, where his effort to put pressure on Russia, which has not been as nearly as strong, has led the Russians to say, not going to bother, not going to help you. Not doing a ceasefire. Now, the Russians are losing a lot of men fighting Ukraine, and their economy is increasingly in structural trouble, and they're having a hard time selling oil, exporting oil, with the Americans pressuring India, for example, to not buy it in a lower energy price environment where the Americans and others are going to keep producing more and more. So the Russians understand that they need to get the Europeans to stop doing this, and they think the best way to accomplish that is, is to make this costly for the Europeans, who are right now shouldering the entire burden. But not all the Europeans want to. Right. The Spaniards are less interested. The Italians are less interested. The Serbs are less interested. The, the Hungarians, the Slovaks. A number of European countries in the EU and outside the EU are less interested in providing that support. And so what you See is the Russians more willing to engage in asymmetric attacks into NATO's frontline states. You see the weather balloons going into Lithuania, the drones going into Poland and Romania. You see the Russian ships that are dragging anchor and destroying fiber optic lines. Finland just caught one of them just over the last 72 hours. You see the Russians that are paying using telegram locals in these countries to engage in vandalism and espionage and attempted destruction and sabotage and even assassinations. And NATO has done very little to respond to that. And what we now see is a group of NATO countries that are starting to say we can't tolerate this. We have to create a cost for the Russians to engage. If the Russians continue to engage in these strikes in the same way that you have the Nordic States saying there has to be a cost if the US tries to take Greenland. We see these countries saying we need to think about offensive cyber attacks against Russia. We need to do military exercises in areas where the Russians are, well, are ill defended to respond to what they're doing against us. We need to scramble our fighter jets when they're coming into our territory. And those risks are escalating. So the likelihood of an accident, the likelihood of a conflict that suddenly becomes greater between the two sides for the last almost four years now, it's going to February next month, it's going to be four years of this war. A lot of people see how much damage is being done to Ukraine, of course, and the civilian population. They see the meat grinder that the Russians are throwing their own soldiers into. But they're starting to think that while the war doesn't really have so many consequences for other countries around the world, that I think is underappreciated. And I think that the pressure that Europe is under that the Russians well understand as this war continues to grind on with greater costs for the Ukrainians and the Russians and both become more risk acceptant means that the likelihood this spills over into NATO frontline states is going up. And of course, if that happens, that's a much bigger risk than Ukraine losing a little more territory. Because remember Helen, the way we think about the risks in these reports are threefold. It's likelihood, imminence and impact. And Russia, Ukraine, war inside Ukraine when the supply chains have already been, you know, sort of moved to avoid the sanctions and move to avoid the Black Sea and move to avoid Russian energy gas transport into Europe, those risks have been mitigated. But the risk of NATO's frontline states being involved in conflict with Russia, that is not the case at all. So that's becoming a more significant risk, even though this year it's only in the, barely in the top five. But it is significant.

Helen Walters (48:19)

Yeah. It's interesting to me, this whole, the rise of the strongman and kind of people making these gestures that who knows where they end up, right? It makes me wonder about Taiwan. I don't think that you really mentioned that in this risks report, but what do you think is happening there right now?

Ian Bremmer (48:36)

Well, you know, China, US which is the most consequential bilateral relationship in the world geopolitically, is not a risk at all this year. It's a herring. And that means that, you know, Trump, understanding that the Chinese are capable and willing in causing real damage to the US and taking damage and not bending the knee has meant that Trump has had to focus on how to stabilize that relationship. And looking forward to his trip to China to meet with Xi Jinping in April and a reciprocal trip by the Chinese to the US later in the year. And he's been willing to listen to lobbyists like Jensen Huang from Nvidia to provide the H200 advanced AI chips to the Chinese, which has been a significant choke point that the Americans have had an advantage over the Chinese on because they're concerned about the choke point the Chinese have on the US on critical minerals, rare earths and related supply chain. Taiwan is related to this. The Japanese prime minister, the new, the newly elected Prime Minister Takaichi Sanai, who's quite popular in Japan just in the high 60s right now, after being advised by mid level US policymakers, publicly said that the Japanese would support Taiwan if they were attacked by China. And the Chinese, you know, you know, were very angry about this and escalated against Japan diplomatically and economically as well as some military exercises. And Trump didn't support the Japanese publicly. Instead, he called up the Japanese prime minister who had just, he had just visited her and they went to Okinawa and she's jumping up and down and so happened to be with Trump and he's saying you should cool it down on Taiwan right now. So, I mean, the reality is that China understands that they're in more of the driver's seat in the near term on Taiwan as long as they don't do anything so provocative that they, that they lead to a forced escalation by American allies in the region and maybe even put the question to the United States. So this does not look, I mean, if we were doing a five year risk horizon, Taiwan would clearly be on it, Helen. But looking just at 2026. It's not there.

Helen Walters (50:50)

Got it. All right. There's so much in this report. So actually what I would like to do is recommend highly that everyone go and read it. But I want to move to the conclusion that you have in the report, which is where you say we are not optimistic, but. But we are hopeful. And I'm just curious, after all of that, after everything that we've discussed, you really are still hopeful. Why? And how should we be?

Ian Bremmer (51:14)

I guess I'm hopeful because we need a crisis. I mean, the United States for the last several decades has had large numbers of people that increasingly feel like their leaders don't represent them. And when I say their leaders, I don't just mean the Democratic and Republican leaders in the party and the elected officials. I also mean the media leaders, I mean the university leaders, I mean the business leaders, the financial leaders, all of these people. And we are now, this, this political revolution that we're seeing, which is playing out in the United States, but is also playing out in the way that the United States is projecting power all over the world, reflects a crisis. And I don't know what the outcome of that crisis will be, but I'll tell you that the crisis is not just being driven top down. The crisis has also been driven bottom up by a whole bunch of Americans, voters and people willing to get in the streets that are saying, we feel like this country does not represent us. And that needed to happen, that this system was heading for a crisis. It's happening faster than people expected, but it's necessary, and in that crisis, the seeds of opportunity, to create something that better reflects the interests of the American people and perhaps better aligns the United States with the rest of the world. As it has changed, not the 1945 environment, but the 2026, the 2030 environment becomes much more plausible. And it's happening at a time that we are developing the tools, including most importantly, the AI tools, that will afford individual citizens extraordinary opportunities if they're used for good. And I know you agree with this. Our friend Chris Anderson agrees with this. I mean, so much of what Ted is about is about trying to deploy these technologies in times of uncertainty to do more for the people around us. The necessity, the urgency is there. We just have to seize it. And you know me well enough to understand that if I have an opportunity to share my ideas on what that means to people around me and people around the world, I'm going to do that. Of course I'm hopeful. You can't be optimistic looking at where the present trajectories are. But pessimism is not hopelessness. And as long as the agency is in the hands of human beings and the tools that we have to deploy, then I think that we have to be helpful.

Helen Walters (54:03)

Can't think of a better message to send us out with. Thank you so much for your time. Ian thank you to you and all of your team for this extraordinary report. Recommend that you go and have a look. As I say, you can see it@eurasiagroup.net Ian we will, I'm sure see you soon. But for now, thank you so much again and Happy January.

Ian Bremmer (54:21)

Happy January.

Host/Announcer (Elise Hu) (54:27)

That was Ian Bremmer in conversation with Helen Walters. This conversation was recorded on January 5, 2026. If you're curious about Ted's curation, find out more at ted.com cur curation guidelines and that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This talk was fact checked by the TED research team and produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Greene, Lucy Little and Tansika Songmanivong. This episode was mixed by Christopher Faizy Bogan. Additional support from Emma Tobner and Daniela Balarazo. I'm Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening. Hey, this is Paige from Giggly Squad. We all have way too many subscriptions and bills and no good way to manage or track all of them. But now we have Experian. It's the best place to manage your finances because you can connect all of your accounts in one place, track all your spending and you can let Experian do the work of finding ways to save you money. January is the perfect time to get your finances in order. It's the perfect New Year resolution. Let your big financial friend Experian do the work for you. So get started today with the Experian app.

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