The year 2025 was marked by widespread instability, with military takeovers, governance breakdowns, and escalating conflicts across Africa, the Caribbean, and Asia. Even as ceasefires and diplomatic efforts offered fragile hope in some regions, the overall global landscape remained deeply turbulent.
Increasingly, turmoil has emerged in countries once considered stable, as major powers wage wars against one another and reshape the global order by drawing smaller nations into their conflicts.
During a 2025 press conference, UN Secretary-General António Guterres highlighted this disturbing shift while presenting a report on the rapid rise in global military expenditure. “The world is spending far more on waging war than on building peace,” he warned. Security spending increased across all five global regions in 2024, marking the steepest year-on-year rise in at least three decades. At nearly $2.7 trillion, global military spending dwarfed the less than $300 billion required to eliminate extreme poverty worldwide.
The scale of this imbalance is stark. Arms-related spending in 2024 alone was 750 times greater than the UN’s regular budget and nearly 13 times the total development assistance provided by the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee. This highlights a troubling trade-off between militarisation and sustainable development. Guterres stressed that redirecting even a fraction of military budgets could transform global outcomes by putting children in school, strengthening primary healthcare, expanding clean energy, and protecting the most vulnerable. The UN estimates that modest reallocations could fund education in low- and lower-middle-income countries, eliminate child malnutrition, support climate adaptation, and move the world closer to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
Amid this escalating militarisation, the prospect of a third world war no longer feels remote. European nations are openly preparing for conflict, urging citizens to stockpile essential supplies. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte recently warned that Russia could launch a full-scale attack on Europe by 2030, stating that any assault on Poland or another NATO member would be met with the alliance’s full force. His warning followed a deadly Russian missile strike on the Ukrainian city of Sumy and comes as Russia’s war in Ukraine enters its fourth year with no sign of de-escalation.
Defence experts warn that if Ukraine falls, Russia may be emboldened to target the Baltic states, Finland, or Poland, potentially within the next three to five years. Such a move would almost certainly trigger NATO intervention, raising the risk of a broader global conflict. Meanwhile, another dangerous fault line lies in the intensifying rivalry between the United States and China. As both powers increase military posturing around Taiwan, Singapore’s Prime Minister Lawrence Wong has cautioned that continued escalation could push the world “to the brink of a Third World War.”
Paradoxically, this growing uncertainty has created opportunities in another domain. Global shocks, from the pandemic to wars in Ukraine and Gaza, along with political shifts such as Donald Trump’s actions in Venezuela. have fuelled booming demand for risk consulting services. Today, corporations are investing heavily in understanding geopolitical, economic, and strategic threats, driving a risk advisory market now valued at approximately $160 billion. Many of these so-called “chaos consultants” are former government officials and policy experts who advise companies on risks ranging from supply-chain disruptions to trade restrictions and political instability. As geopolitical risk becomes a boardroom priority rather than an internal afterthought, traditional firms like the Big Four are increasingly challenged by strategy-focused consultancies such as WestExec, McKinsey’s geopolitics arm, and Flint Global.
The old world order is dead
Rishi Sunak writes in his Times column that the old world order is dead, opening his argument with a pointed observation that even Keir Starmer’s attempt to set out a domestic agenda at the start of the year was overwhelmed by genuinely momentous global events.
He argues that the stability which once underpinned international politics, trade, and business has disappeared, leaving a dangerous vacuum in which power, rather than rules, increasingly dictates outcomes.
Sunak points to the end of Pax Americana, the rise of China as a formidable economic, technological, and military rival to the United States, and the growing coordination among authoritarian states.
He also highlights the shifting balance of power beyond the West, noting that while Europe is in relative decline, countries such as India and the Gulf states are emerging as influential swing states, unwilling to tie themselves fully to any single bloc.
For Sunak, this volatile transition is both perilous and transformative, demanding resilience, investment in security, and adaptation to rapid technological change, particularly in artificial intelligence.
