2025: What to Expect
Welcome to the new year, and to our annual primer on what to expect in the Asia-Pacific.
Deja vu is a French phrase for the eerie feeling that you’ve experienced something that you know you haven’t. None of us has lived through 2025, yet as it dawns there’s a clear sense of familiarity – and trepidation.
A key trigger for this sense of deja vu is Donald Trump’s return to the U.S. presidency. Across Asia, governments and societies are holding their breath: What version of Trump will enter the White House on January 20? Where will his praise fall? Where will his ire find aim?
But that’s not all that dredges up memories of the pre-pandemic past: South Korea starts the year in political limbo, having once again impeached a president in December. China is again in the midst of a corruption crackdown, this time targeted at the country’s military. Japan may be heading back toward the days when it changed prime ministers with alarming frequency. Tensions are flaring in the South China Sea while militancy creeps back in Pakistan.
We’ve once again asked our authors what they’re paying attention to as the new year gets underway. If there are any true throughlines, it’s these: Across the Asia-Pacific governments are wrestling with the known unknown of a second Trump presidency; meanwhile, they’re facing domestic upheaval, whether economic or social in character, that complicates and constrains their options.
The geopolitical atmosphere is charged – where will the lightning strike next?
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SubscribeThe Authors
Ankit Panda is is editor-at-large at The Diplomat and the Stanton Senior Fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Yuki Tatsumi is a senior fellow and co-director of the East Asia Program and director of the Japan Program at the Stimson Center.
Troy Stangarone is the director of the Hyundai Motor-Korea Foundation Center for Korean History and Public Policy and the deputy director of the Indo-Pacific Program at the Wilson Center.
Sudha Ramachandran is South Asia editor at The Diplomat.
Umair Jamal is a correspondent for The Diplomat, based in Lahore, Pakistan.
Dr. Shanthie Mariet D’Souza is founder and president of Mantraya; visiting faculty at the Naval War College, Goa; and non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute, Washington D.C.
Sebastian Strangio is Southeast Asia editor at The Diplomat.
Dr. Prashanth Parameswaran is a senior columnist at The Diplomat, a fellow at the Wilson Center’s Asia Program, and the founder of the weekly ASEAN Wonk newsletter.
Dr. Patricia O’Brien is a historian, author, analyst and commentator on Australia and Oceania. She is a faculty member in Asian Studies at Georgetown University and in the Department of Pacific Affairs, Australian National University, and is Adjunct Faculty in the Pacific Partners Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Washington, DC.