The Biggest Global Risks for 2026 — with Ian Bremmer | Prof G Conversations

Maduro himself was a dictator. He was not democratically elected. They had elections. He refused to accept the outcome. He's brutal. He traffics massive amounts of drugs. I mean, all sorts of the things, right? Denmark is a serious ally of the US, and anything the US needs in Greenland, they will get those things.

I'm doing my best.

my buddy Scott. I'm here in New York City, exactly the same place I was last time I was on your pod.

28th since I started Eurasia Group. 20th year of doing the top risk reports. When you say that, it feels like a long time. But you know, I think I'm only halfway through. So who knows, you know, God willing.

It was a staggering military success operationally. The Russians wish they could have pulled this off. We'd be having a very different conversation about Ukraine if their military had, you know, a fifth of the professionalism and capabilities that the Americans do.

And the fact that they were able to pull that off over the course of a few months and put that plan together is a real operational victory for President Trump. He wanted to see the back of Maduro. He did. There are no American boots on the ground. There were no American servicemen or women that were killed in the operation. And it wasn't just removing Maduro, it's bringing him to the United States. It's having him see justice in an American court system with all of the media and the attention and the rest that will play out over the course of months. All of that is exactly what Trump and his advisers and cabinet were hoping for. So from an initial impact perspective, it was massively positive for them. Having said that, there are lots of second-order questions about Trump doubling down across the region, about how one goes about running Venezuela with the same regime still in place even though Maduro is gone. Everybody else is still there. What does that look like? And what are the knock-on implications of all of this? Because there is a level of, if you end up breaking it, you have responsibility. And even if Trump doesn't believe that that is true, that will be seen to be true by a lot of people. So, I mean, if Trump could just stop the clock right there with Maduro confined and in his, you know, sort of handcuffs and the rest, it'd be a very different story than what I think we'll be talking about over the course of the year. And that's why, of course, the Monroe Doctrine is number three, because it's not just about Trump getting rid of Maduro. We thought that Maduro was going to be out. We've been saying that for months. We didn't think he'd see the end of the year. But that's very different from how the United States is deciding that it will be the arbiter of what happens in its hemisphere, broadly defined. That's going to be a tricky one.

Well, first of all, we may need to start rethinking how we talk about adversaries. I mean, Trump does. For Trump, the top adversary of the United States are his political opponents in the United States. And when he meets with Xi Jinping, he deals with him in many ways as a peer, and he doesn't afford that level of treatment with the Europeans, for example, even though the Europeans are NATO allies of the United States. But China, he talks about having a G2 relationship. So, I mean, does Trump really see China as a core adversary? If you look at the Russia-Ukraine war, which Trump said he was going to end, he's putting a lot more pressure on the Ukrainians, who the Americans have been supporting, than he is on the Russians because he wants to bring the war to an end. But, you know, does it matter that one's an adversary and one isn't? I mean, when he invited Putin to Anchorage and he rolled out the red carpet, and when he sees Zelensky in Mar-a-Lago, there ain't no red carpet and there's no cabinet member meeting him at the plane. So, I'm just saying that, not because I think that everything is completely through the looking glass and topsy-turvy, but it is changing. It is changing, and the Monroe Doctrine implies that it's changing, and we're going to need to rethink how American power is projected as a consequence. So, China's a really interesting point. Trump wants a better relationship with China right now because he knows that the Chinese have the capacity and willingness to hit him back in a way that he doesn't want. And so I thought it was very interesting that when Maduro was captured, that despite the blockade on Venezuelan tankers, a significant number of tankers were allowed to go to bring oil to China. And part of that is, you know, want to be nicer to the new Venezuelan government because you're expecting them to do what you want. Part of that is they don't have oil storage. You don't want to destroy the economy if you're going to have to rebuild it and invest in it. But part of it is, well, we don't want to antagonize China, just like Trump called the Japanese prime minister and said, maybe calm down a little on Taiwan a few weeks ago after she made those statements that the Chinese took such exception to. So there's that aspect of it, and then we can talk about what the implications are of all of this for governing Venezuela going forward, for Mexico, for Colombia, for Cuba, for Greenland and Denmark. I mean, and I'll go wherever you want, but I mean, there's a whole bunch of regional stuff that is super important.

I mean, Greenland from Trump's perspective is part of the Monroe Doctrine. And Stephen Miller made that point very clearly last night. He said, "We have to have it." And Miller was one of the three architects of the Venezuela policy along with Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, and John Ratcliffe, the director of the CIA. He would be core to a Greenland policy. And here's the weird thing about Greenland. Venezuela, you know, again, same regime is in place, still being run by the actual Venezuelan people. Their policies are going to need to change according to Trump or else there will be military action. But Maduro himself was a dictator. He was not democratically elected. They had elections. He refused to accept the outcome. He's brutal. He traffics massive amounts of drugs. I mean, all sorts of the things, right? Greenland is not just part of the territory of a clear and steadfast ally. I mean, this is a country that immediately was sending troops to help the US in Afghanistan, right? And died in larger numbers per capita than the Americans did, right? So, like, Denmark is a serious ally of the US, and anything the US needs in Greenland, if the US wants more access for bases, if they want intelligence listening posts, if they want to give Elon a launch pad for SpaceX and Starlink, if they want access to exploitation of critical minerals and resources, fish, right? Anything they want, if the Americans are prepared to just pick up the phone, call the Danish prime minister and negotiate, they will get those things, right? No problem. So why is there a problem here? Right? Because with Venezuela, it was very clear why there were problems, right? I mean, you know, you had Maduro who's dancing and making fun of Trump and saying, "I'm never going anywhere." You've got the drugs. You've got, you know, the immigration, the 8 million migrants, 8 million migrants from Venezuela legally destabilizing the region, all these things. Last I can tell, there ain't no fentanyl coming from Greenland, right? We don't have that problem. So, what the [__] is it, right? I'm legitimately angry about this because it's so stupid. And as best I can tell, someone showed Trump Greenland on a globe and he's like, "Wow, it's really big." Even though it's not, right? And we should have that. And he wants it to be American. And Trump, there isn't a plan, but they are developing a plan. There are many people in the administration that have been tasked with coming up with a plan for Greenland to no longer be a part of Denmark, for it to be sovereign territory of the United States. That is the intention, and that is under no circumstances workable for Denmark or its Nordic allies or, I think, most of Europe. Yeah, I think this is an incredibly stupid own goal in my view, especially because Trump is not a dictator. Like anything Trump does, another president comes in in 2029, they can undo all of it. So why are you destroying decades of goodwill with committed allies and actually, you know, putting in jeopardy the transatlantic alliance, the NATO alliance, because you've decided that you need to paint Greenland as part of the United States? I, for the life of me, I have no idea why they think this is so important, why Trump has decided this is so important. It feels like madness, but it is the actual plan. We're not making this up. That is the intention, and they are not talking to the Danish government about this, that they intend to talk directly with Greenland. Now, the good news, there's not been much good news here. The good news is there is truly no intention to invade Greenland. They're not going to take it militarily. They believe that through a combination of inducements and threats, overt and covert, information and disinformation, some plan will come together that will get them Greenland. We will see. But they intend, this is absolutely a priority.

Well, that was a talented squirrel, to be fair, right? I mean, I understand why you would want one of those squirrels. And it was only one squirrel. There were lots of squirrels.

There were lots of squirrels.

No, not at all. So the Monroe Doctrine was in the Trump National Security Strategy Document a month plus ago, which is why we put Monroe Doctrine in the risk report. It's very clear that this is a foreign policy priority for Trump, but it is not in any way a limit of his ambition. The United States is doing more, not less, with the Gulf States now. They're doing more, not less, with Israel. They are certainly exercised with Iran. For example, they've just approved the largest ever sale of military equipment and componentry to Taiwan. I mean, there are lots of other examples like that. So I don't think it's a limit, but I also think that Trump's in 2025, if you and I had been having this conversation, and Scott and I did back in January, we were talking about tariffs and how much tariffs were going to be the principal US tool to project power internationally. Well, that's run a lot of its course. The United States has now done a bunch of deals. They've been hit back by the Chinese. They are worried about affordability, so they have to actually get prices down. And Trump's worried about midterm elections. So he's not going to have the same ability to project economic power. And that's even before we talk about the Supreme Court's ruling on the IEEPA process, which is likely to constrain him somewhat in my view. So how is he going to project power? How is he going to get his wins around the world? And the answer is much more militarily, where the US actually does have an asymmetrical advantage. Intelligence, where the US does have an asymmetrical advantage. Cyber, where the US does have an asymmetrical advantage, especially against smaller countries all over the world. And the Monroe Doctrine, I think, really does play into that because, of course, in America's backyard, I mean, China may be the largest economic trading partner for most of these countries, but militarily the Americans clearly call the shots.

Not, I mean, I understand the question, of course, and it's a very logical question to ask, an important question to ask. I would say not really. It's not the way I think about it. So, I mean, and we should take both of these in turn because they're different. Taiwan is considered by China, not by the United States, but considered by China to be a domestic issue. And so it's not a matter for international law to determine. And China fully expects to take and integrate Taiwan into, reintegrate as they would describe it, into mainland China. And the reason they're not is because it's heavily defended. It's heavily fortified. It's an island, and it's because they have technology that China really needs in terms of TSMC and semiconductors, and it would be a disaster for the Chinese to try to take that risk at this point. But they're doing everything they can to ensure that in the future, maybe the not-so-distant future, that that won't be the case. And so no, I don't think that the US-Venezuela action changes that. I do think that China's recognition that they can give back as good as Trump gets on critical minerals and on tariffs, and that they can squeeze the Americans and leverage the Americans, and that works, makes the Chinese feel more comfortable that they can incrementally ratchet up pressure on Taiwan and the Americans won't do much. I do think they feel that. But that's not because of Venezuela. That's because they think that they've now got a better power position on the United States. Russia invaded Ukraine before this. And it's not like, you know, they're going to get any more emboldened. They're emboldened because they see the United States wants to end the war no matter what. And they're willing to cut the Russians a good deal while pressuring Ukraine. Why are they pressuring Ukraine so much more than Russia? Because Ukraine's weaker. So, I mean, I think that I would answer your question differently. I don't think that America's engagement in the law of the jungle emboldens bad actors to act bad. They're bad actors. That means they act bad. They do that anyway. What America's embrace of a G0 world means is that America's friends who have relied on the United States for upholding rule of law now feel that the United States is not reliable. And so they have to hedge. They have to do more things themselves. They have to play defense. And they have to decouple themselves so that the United States can no longer have the same amount of influence and power over them that they have presently. And I see that when I talk to the Canadians, when I talk to the Europeans, the Japanese, the South Koreans, the Australians, everyone has that view. So this is much more of a behavior-changing inducement for America's allies than it is for its adversaries.

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We don't think that the US political revolution is a possibility. We think it's happening. We just don't know if it will be successful or not. And some people want it to be successful and others don't, but we think it's happening. What is it? Trump believes, and his supporters agree, that the political system was weaponized against him, leading to unprecedented two impeachments, felony charges and convictions, and a near assassination. And that justifies urgently Trump taking political control of the administrative state, making it fully loyal to him, answerable and accountable to him, weaponizing the power ministries of the US, specifically the FBI, the Department of Justice, the IRS, other such organizations, and ensuring that there are no further checks and balances that constrain the president so that the principal enemies of Trump and therefore the United States, not Russia, not China, but the Democratic Party in the US, can no longer come to power. That is what Trump is intending to do. I think he will likely fail. We can talk about why, but it is very clear through his actions and his efforts that he is on a number of different fronts attempting to bring about such a revolution. And it is also clear that the US political system has only partially been able to constrain that breakage, erosion of norms as well as of actual checks and balances. And, you know, in my lifetime, I've seen now three revolutions that have mattered on the global stage. The first with Deng Xiaoping in China opening the economy to the global system, leading to 50 years of unheralded Chinese economic growth that was successful. Then we saw Gorbachev's political and economic revolution changing the nature of that system over the course of six years that led to the fall of the wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. That revolution was unsuccessful. Now we see Trump's political revolution, not an economic revolution. Only the second revolution really attempted by a US president. The first was FDR. Trump's is much more structurally significant than FDR's, and we make that comparison in detail in the report, and we don't know if it's going to be successful. It's actually in process right now. But given that the US is the most powerful country in the world with more allies than anyone else has that rely on it, then obviously that kind of uncertainty and structural change in the US is going to be the top risk.

It's an awesome chart. It's scary, but it's awesome.

Well, these risks are rated, and they're rated on the basis of likelihood, imminence, and impact. And since the US is by far the most impactful thing on the global stage, if a US risk is only number six, right, then that implies that it's nowhere close to the stuff that we've been talking about so far, just to be clear. So, I mean, yes, we are seeing state capitalism and industrial policy play a much bigger role in certain aspects of the US economy. So when Trump says there's going to be a golden share for US steel and the American president will decide how that will be used or not. So, no, you're going to keep that factory open that actually, you know, you otherwise would have closed because it doesn't make any economic sense. And that's normally a private sector decision, but now it isn't. And we're going to allow Nvidia to sell these chips to China because they just effectively lobbied me as the president. We're going to take a stake directly in Intel because we already bailed them out. But that's going to be retroactive. Now we're going to actually say that we're just going to take an equity share. And by the way, Japan, if you want access to the American market, you're going to have to invest $550 billion in a facility, and we're going to decide which those companies are going to be. All of those things are injecting Washington and the person of Trump into the investment process, into the capital process. And it's also, there's also kleptocracy. There's also, well, Pakistan is investing in Trump's family's financial crypto company, and so the US is going to give more access and more time to the...

Pakistanis, and that'll damage the US-India relationship, and there's a lot of that going on too. Now, again, there's a political revolution underway in the US that I think will fail. There's not an economic revolution underway in the US. The US has long been, um, a system economically where the private sector captures the regulatory environment, where money speaks loudly in the political system, where the lobby is extraordinarily powerful and undermines competition. Um, and it's a country that has had industrial policy before, but we have not seen this level of personalization of industrial policy well beyond strategic sectors that we're now seeing under Trump. It's not structurally changing the system, but it's adding a lot of incremental costs and uncertainty as you inject the politics.