Hello everyone, happy new year and welcome to an exclusive GZERO Media live stream. I'm Julia Chatterjee. 2026 is a tipping point. Those are the first words of a highly anticipated annual report released just this morning by GZERO's parent company, Eurasia Group. It details top geopolitical risks the world is facing as this new year begins. Now for 20 years the team at Eurasia Group has produced this top risks report and this edition as always brings surprises and warnings for the year but also a very clear sense I think of how much the political landscape is evolving. Some of the risks and you'll recognize them. War in Ukraine now entering its fourth year, the impact of artificial intelligence on society and US-China competition. They continue as we enter 2026, but there are also new ones on the horizon, too. And just this weekend, as many of you will have seen, a major development as a US military operation captured Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro. A move that will have ripple effects throughout Latin America and the world. And as a result of this developing story, we're going to take the list a little out of order today and bring you the latest on Venezuela and some of the big implications, too. So, let's start with the co-authors of this report. Ian Bremmer is the president and founder of Eurasia Group and GZERO Media, and Cliff Kupchan is Eurasia Group's chairman. Welcome to you both. Happy New Year. A lively start to the year, let's be honest. Ian, I'm going to start with you. Step aside, I think, the Monroe Doctrine. You've long been talking and fleshing out the Monroe Doctrine, which is our risk number three this year, and it's about Trump's growing focus on the Americas region. Just briefly if you can explain the Monroe Doctrine for those who may not know it and how it ties directly to the last 48 hours.
First, President Trump just in the last several hours has embraced it himself. He's referred to it for the first time publicly as the Monroe Doctrine. Meaning, and we saw some of this in the national security strategy that was released a month ago, that the priority, not the limitation of American ambition, but the priority for US foreign policy would be control, political and military influence and relevant strategic economic influence over the entirety of its backyard, the Western Hemisphere as defined by President Trump, because of course Greenland, it's not exactly the Western Hemisphere but Trump thinks it is. So it must be. And the fact that Trump has decided that the Monroe Doctrine is what he's doing and he's just had this wild, even if short-term success with capturing this President Maduro and his wife and bringing him not far from where I'm sitting right now in New York City means that he's now going to do more of that and he's going to want to populate. He's going to talk about the Monroe Doctrine and he's going to want to populate the Monroe Doctrine with successes. Also, last year the principal tool that President Trump used to leverage his power around the world was an economic tool. It was the tariff tool. That's the way he weaponized US power. And he put those tariffs on Liberation Day on pretty much every country in the world, and even some places that weren't countries, some that just had penguins, for example, but they had tariffs as well. That is not what we're going to see in 2026. In 2026, he's much more constrained in not being able to use that economic leverage because he's got problems on affordability, because he's underwater in the polls on those issues, because the Supreme Court is going to rule on the IEEPA tariffs and probably contain him a bit, and because China hit him in the face and he wants to have a more stable relationship with China. He doesn't like the fact they have so much leverage over him. So for all of those reasons, it's not about tariffs. It's going to be much more about the big stick, the security tool that he wields. The world is much more unipolar from a military perspective in America's favor than it is multipolar economically, and the Americans don't have the ability to tell everyone here's what the outcome is going to be. And that's going to play out, this Monroe Doctrine, not just in Venezuela, which we'll see over the course of this year. It's hardly the end of the story just because you've got Maduro out. But also we'll see with pressure against other leaders that Trump doesn't like in the region, that Rubio doesn't like, like in Nicaragua, like in Cuba, that we'll see in countries where the Americans have problems with the way that drug cartels are operating internally, like we're seeing with the US military ally in Colombia and in Mexico, as well as with Denmark and Greenland, which Trump is now saying the Americans have to have it, have to have it. And what does that mean? But for the Europeans, it means nothing good. And even more broadly around the world, the response to the United States embracing a GZERO world, embracing the law of the jungle, is going to have a chilling effect on so many countries that believe that they could rely on the United States to live up to agreements that were made that had nothing to do with how much power you have and whether or not, you know, the way you feel today is different from the way you felt yesterday. And so clearly the ripple effects from the Monroe Doctrine are something we're going to be seeing all year in 2026.
It's a more calibrated version of US interventionism. Cliff, weigh in here, please.
Well, it really is in many respects a defining moment in US history. You have a president, a retrenchment-oriented president who has just made the domestic politics of another country priority number one for him. That's a dramatic transformation. I mean, I think part of the Monroe Doctrine that really hasn't been looked at very closely yet. So other countries are now put on notice that if the president doesn't like the way you're conducting your affairs, you're fair game, first of all. Secondly, I think we've got to have a new model of US interventionism. It could be called kind of offshore coercive governance, right? I mean, what are we doing here? We're sitting offshore on an aircraft carrier and, you know, we're telling Delcy, the vice president, that she better do what we say or else. Now, that's not nation building, that's kind of extractive coercion. And, you know, he may well try that again, you know, in Colombia and Cuba, but it really is a very different way of going about US foreign policy. So in many ways I think we are at a defining moment and it's really important to think about it, describe it, and get it right.
We're going to continue this conversation and hone in again on specifically what's happening in Venezuela. I want to bring in Eurasia Group's director for Latin America, Risa Graff Targher. Risa, good to have you with us. You were just listening to that sort of assessment of certainly what President Trump views and the direction he perhaps is heading not only in Venezuela and the region, but what does the United States, and they've sort of walked back what President Trump said about running Venezuela. What do the next days and weeks look like in your mind?
Yeah, thanks Julia. So as my colleagues mentioned, Maduro's former vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, is now the interim president of Venezuela. She was sworn in over the weekend and appears to have the backing of other senior regime officials including the military. And she has a Trump administration that seems to prefer working with her over the Venezuelan opposition, despite Maria Corina Machado's recent Nobel Prize and their clear victory in the July 2024 presidential elections. You know, Trump has announced this plan to run Venezuela, which I think as Cliff suggested is about coercing Delcy into cooperating with US interests, including a larger US footprint in the oil sector, migration and counter-narcotics. And so far it seems to be working, which isn't surprising as Delcy has a literal gun to her head. You know, she initially struck a defiant tone over the weekend, but seems to be shifting her stance and expressing a willingness to work with the US. But I think there are a lot of potential tripwires ahead. You know, she's going to have to manage internal divisions amid a fragmented movement while also appeasing Trump, who has big demands. So, not necessarily an easy task. And I think she's going to be under a lot of pressure to move toward new elections that are free and fair. That's not Trump's initial priority, but it will be for parts of his base, for other international stakeholders and Venezuelan voters who could end up taking to the streets. And many within the regime are going to resist this option because they control all institutions. This is going to require difficult power-sharing negotiations and eventual amnesty guarantees. And while Trump was very committed clearly to ousting Maduro, I think it's less clear about his commitment long term to making sure that this works out. So in sum, it feels like the start of a longer-term change process, but it's certainly going to be volatile.
Ian, what is Trump's ultimate aim here? I mean, Risa has just suggested that the eventual outcome is less important perhaps to Donald Trump than the immediacy of perhaps executing oil contracts, for example, and broader stability in the region. What is the message I think that he's trying to send? Because he was also suggesting in the aftermath of this, you know, Cuba's looking rocky now, too.
Well, he's been thinking about this for months. This military plan has been worked out very carefully. They didn't have people working with them inside the administration six months ago. They did by the time they ordered the operation. They didn't have good intelligence on Maduro's whereabouts and his habits. They did by the time they actually made that happen. And, you know, Stephen Miller, who's been very involved in these operations all the way through, had come to the conclusion that anything would be better than Maduro. So don't underestimate the fact that a big part of the goal is just getting Maduro out. He was there. He was thumbing his nose at the American president. He was saying, "I'm never going to negotiate with you." He was, you know, doing the fake Trump dance with a bunch of civilians on stages, which was clearly only going to look like a red rag to a bull for someone like Trump that was personally offended by that. So, a big part of the goal is remove Maduro. He's out now. And he's not just out, he's out and he's in the United States. No one first heard they were planning that a couple months ago. It was shocking, right, that what they were going to do was grab this guy and bring him to justice in America, in New York, by the way, the world's largest media market. So, everyone is there covering it every day with the helicopters and all of the, you know, sort of the thousands of police and correction officers. And Trump loves all of that, right? He gets to read it and watch it constantly and that'll play out. It's going to be bigger than OJ, right? I mean, in terms of the coverage of the trial, this is great for Trump. So, do not underestimate that a big part of it has already been accomplished for Trump, which means I'm successful. I can move to the next thing, right? I can talk about Cuba. I can talk about Colombia. Let's go on Greenland. Give it 20 days. But soon we're going to start talking about that, too, right? But of course, there is no plan for Venezuela. I mean, the plan for governing Venezuela is less well constructed than the plan for governing Gaza. And that is a low freaking bar, right? So, what we're really talking about is Trump and Rubio and others believing that the "or else" is so clear and credible that we're now going to see Delcy do whatever they tell her to. Well, what are they going to tell her to do? We want the oil. Okay. But it's not like you're going to get the oil tomorrow. I mean, you can ask Risa about this. It's going to take years, right, before you actually have the political conditions, the economic conditions, the companies lined up to do it. And the rise of oil production is going to be even then 300,000 barrels a year. So this is not tomorrow. And it's not regime change. It's regime roulette, right? They removed Maduro and then that's okay. Or whoever they put in next, we're just going to work with them unless they do something we don't like and then we're going to hit them hard with the military that is still right there. So, one thing I think we can say is I don't expect that the US military is going to suddenly leave and all steam to the eastern Med to take care of the Iranians. They actually do need to have this military in place to maintain the credibility of "you're going to do what we want." But, you know, how much time, how much attention, how much focus will Trump give to Venezuela in the next three months compared to the last three? I suspect less.
Risa, I can ask you about the oil and I know you're going to tell me years. I love the idea of regime roulette, as Ian puts it. I guess there are 29 million Venezuelans, there are political factions, there are vested interests, there's corruption. Is Delcy in your mind the right person to get to fresh elections, which I guess is what the majority of people would like at this stage?
I think in terms of figures within the regime, she's kind of the only option. She's the only senior member of the regime who's not under US indictment, that doesn't have a bounty on her head, and she's generally, along with her brother Jorge Rodriguez, who's the president of Congress, been more willing to engage with US officials, been more pragmatic towards foreign companies. She's been, you know, leading this effort to bring Chevron and others back into the oil sector, whereas the other figures around her, I think, are not palatable to the US or any other. So I think within the regime she's kind of their only option and that it's incentivizing everyone to rally around her. But as I said, she has a lot of internal kind of domestic constituencies that she's going to need to be managing. And not to mention the Venezuelan voters and what they want. And I think we could see significant pressure domestically growing over time, especially if Machado decides to return to the country and try to insist on her leadership and force new elections on a faster timeline.
Yeah, you're going to be a busy woman. Risa, thank you so much.
Gotten like zero sleep in the last... literally none.
When did you find out about this, Risa? Was it like 1:30 in the morning where you were?
I was in Mexico. 2:30 a.m. Yes.
Yeah. She's like going on fumes at this.
Yeah. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you.
I'm gonna let you go. Try and sleep. Okay. We're going to take a step back before we examine some of the other top risks at this stage and just look at the big picture moment. And Ian sort of framed it to some degree, but we've sort of gone into this risk report and I mentioned it at the beginning talking about us being at this tipping point and it's been after, I could say five, I could say more, of sort of compounding crisis. Ian, what does it mean in the macro sense, this sort of tipping point that we're discussing in this risk report?
It means that the United States, which has been such a reliable partner for so many of its allies for such a long time, and the US is of course the most powerful country in the world, has suddenly become dramatically less so. And that's true for almost every ally. There are exceptions, but generally, and so the most transactional, like the Saudis and the UAE, I think feel equally comfortable with the Americans now as they have historically. But the closest allies of the US that have most relied on the US for collective security, for free trade, for common values, for promotion of democracy, this kind of thing, which the Americans have not always done consistently, have frequently been hypocritical, but nonetheless, these are America's closest allies. Canada, Mexico, all the Europeans, the United Kingdom, Japan, South Korea, Australia, every single one of them feel like this is a geopolitical crisis. This is a change of the global order. For decades now, Julia, the presumption was that what was happening in the world is that the Americans were eventually in decline. The Chinese were getting stronger. And that that was going to lead to a conflict between these two great powers, the Americans holding on to their old global order and the Chinese trying to create a new one. That is not what's happening at all. What's happened is that yes, China is getting much stronger and you're going to hear from Jerry Butts on that in a little bit. But the United States is still very strong militarily, still very strong technologically, still very strong in terms of the dollar and the financial system. Its allies have gotten weaker. And the response of the United States to its allies getting weaker is we no longer need these countries. We can get better deals by pushing them around hard. And it's another big point is that there's a spectrum of American action and it goes from FAFO to TACO. Okay? And FAFO, fuck around and find out, is what happens if you are weak and you are doing stuff Trump doesn't like. And you can be an ally or you can be an adversary. Right? You can be Canada or you can be Venezuela, but you get FAFOed. Right? On the other side is TACO, and TACO, right, which is Trump always chickens out, is if Trump finds out that he can get hit hard by you and that's going to hurt him. And China is right on the TACO scale, right? And Russia, it turns out, is more on the TACO scale than people thought. Brazil is more on the TACO scale, right? Because it turns out that Trump really needs those commodities and so he isn't going to punch him really hard on Bolsonaro even though that was a big deal, right? And then the big question is, well, where are the Europeans? Are the Europeans TACO or FAFO? And again, we'll talk to Mij shortly, but right now Trump certainly thinks that the Europeans are all FAFO. And if the Europeans can't figure out how to become a little more TACO-friendly, they're in very serious trouble. Right. And that's, I mean, it's kind of stupid that that's what it's about, but this is the GZERO world. This is the law of the jungle. It's not about are you aligned with the United States? Are you friendly? Do you have the same political or economic system? Did your kids go to school together? No, it's really not about that. There's definitely some kleptocracy. There's definitely some you can pay for play here, but it's absolutely about power. It's absolutely about power. And this is a big problem for the United States because the US is acting like a country that has the ability to project power through a unilateral system for decades. But it isn't. It's actually still a dysfunctional representative, more or less, democracy that has regular elections and Trump is out after 2028. And so all of this great-sounding FAFO stuff then gets undone by the next president. And meanwhile, the Americans have destroyed their alliances all over the world and their reliability. So long-term, this is a really, really damaging time, and that's why it's a tipping point.
Cliff, very quickly on this, because I think Ian's framed it brilliantly in many respects. You've been compiling this risk report now for 20 years. Is this in your mind sort of peak, at least since the risk report began, of the sort of geopolitical risk that we've seen?
Peak of the geopolitical risk. I mean, structurally, the Maduro episode represents a real sort of spike, I think, in risk because it puts so many other countries on notice that if they just keep doing the same thing they've been doing, they could get hit. But let me offer one. You know, we have been doing this for 20 years and to me the most important sort of development, tectonic plate development that has led to these spikes in geopolitical risk, and I think we just have to work this in, is that major parts of the populations of the United States and Western Europe have decided that globalist values just don't work for them. And I think that's what's led to the Trump phenomenon, to the AfD phenomenon, which Mitch will talk about, the right-wing populism. It's that change that has, I think, led to the greatest risks we're seeing now on the deepest level.
We're going to come back to much of that as we continue through the hour. I want to move on and given that we've talked about the sort of number three risk, we're going to look at the next top two. And just while I'm talking, I encourage everybody to download and read this report. It's certainly worth it. Let's bring in Eurasia Group's vice chair and senior adviser Gerald Butts for the next part of the conversation. Jerry, great to have you with us. We're going to talk about risk two. Actually, it sort of weaves in what we've already been talking about, but very much the emphasis on risk one when we get there. Risk two is overpowered and it speaks to, as we've discussed, this enormous competition between the United States and China and it's not just about innovation or building, it's about where and how you use the energy, where you get the energy from to do it. Just explain this risk for us.
Sure. Well, fundamentally, Julia, happy new year to you and to everybody who's joined us today. Fundamentally it's about what energy system is going to be the primary one for the 21st century. And for a long time this is a risk that has been in the background for a long time. Sometimes it's manifested itself as a response to climate change. Sometimes it's been a nationalist energy policy in different states. But fundamentally, it's about what is going to succeed the carbon molecule as the most important form of energy in the world. And the Chinese at the beginning of the 21st century made a very long-term, very expensive, very strategic bet that that was going to be the electron. And as a consequence, they have built an entire stack that fuels, pardon the bad pun, both their economy and their national security apparatus from their military to their AI-based surveillance system on down where they have galloped ahead of the rest of the world when it comes to advanced development of what we're calling an electrostate. China is the first electrostate in the history of the world. And in some ways, what you're seeing in Venezuela and through the Monroe Doctrine is the American response to that. It is the consolidation of conventional energy under the American security and economic umbrella. And I wouldn't be a good Canadian if I didn't use a hockey analogy, Julia. That's all pregame. That's all pregame. We're about to see the puck dropped in 2026. And it's still a very open game out there as to who wins.
The report frames it really beautifully. It says the US is looking to sell 20th century energy. Trump's made it very clear sort of prosperity is the future, but China's selling 21st century infrastructure and certainly where things like AI are concerned. That's critical for how you engender partnerships going forward. And that of course is part of the strategic competition between the United States and China. It's sort of pivotal to their relationships around the world too.
Oh, absolutely. It's pivotal to the competition between those two states and also their ability to project power both in their near neighborhood and around the world. It's going to be a fundamental question that we'll be following for years.
Jerry, thank you for that. We are going to reveal number one risk now, but I do want to pull in the fact that Eurasia Group surveyed followers across social media and they did ask this question. Which of these regions, countries, or issues do you think will top the list for top risks in 2026? United States, China, AI, or climate? And we can reveal the answers. 51% of people said the United States, China 13%, AI 29%, climate way down there at the bottom. No one cares about the climate anymore, just 7%. Ian, very quickly on this, are you surprised that China is so low relative to something like AI?
I'm delighted that AI is getting the attention that it deserves because it's so momentous. It's so transformative. It is affecting everyone's lives individually in ways that a lot of these other things feel more distant. And a couple of years ago, you wouldn't have gotten that AI response at all. So it's the sharpest trajectory, but I mean look, China is not getting the attention it should either on the global stage or from the Americans, right? I mean you go and talk to the people in the national security apparatus in the United States, they're worried about the 800 lb gorilla that's China. You talk to members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Republicans and Democrats, I was talking to one of them this morning, they're worried about China, but that is not where the US priorities are. That's not where the Trump administration is right now. And so, as Jerry just said, what we're seeing is that the Chinese are playing the long game. And the US is not. The US is racking up enormous numbers of very short-term headline wins. And the Chinese are not going to be distracted by that. Not at all. And I think that is going to be, if we were looking at 2026, where US-China is a red herring. It's not even a risk. Taiwan isn't even on the list. You know, when the Japanese came out and they said, "Hey, we'll defend Taiwan." And Trump did nothing. He calls Takaichi, the new Japanese prime minister, who had just been jumping up and down in Okinawa saying, "I'm so happy to be with the American president." He's like, "Ah, just calm it down a little on Taiwan. We don't really want any problems with them right now." I mean, US-China is not even on the list. It's a red herring, right? And that is because the Americans have become enormously short-term, right? Transactional with a president who is driving a different set of preferences than the long-term interests of the US national security, economy, and population. And the Chinese are authoritarian. They're controlled by Xi Jinping, but the Chinese leadership is thinking long term about how to ensure that China becomes stronger and they actually have a system that's oriented towards executing on that strategically.
You're teasing China, AI and some of the red herrings for later. I'm going to stop you there and I'm going to talk about...
I see that Jerry wanted in though.
Yeah, I just wanted... Sorry about that. You just looked down when I politely put my finger up there. Canadians, you got to just jump.
Tacos just dropped, dude.
I'm still reeling from our placement on the FAFO-TACO continuum there, Ian.
Oh, I slipped over the swear word as well. We apologize for that.
The thing about that continuum is you better be right about your assessment because if you put someone on the wrong end of it, you're in trouble.
I think it's worth taking a step back and just making the overall macro observation that is reflected in that poll. You know, the United States has gone from being the world's most important shock absorber of political risk to its most significant generator of political risk. And so much of what we're talking about in the report and so much of what we talk about with our...
Clients is a reflection of that large macro change. And I do think Cliff is right that its root cause, if I dare use that phrase, is in a bunch of Westerners, in particular in the United States, deciding that globalization was a scam that didn't work for them. And whether they're right or not is immaterial at this point.
So important and so perfect for what is our top risk this year, which is US political revolution. And Ian, I go back to last year's report and you warned about what you called the rule of dawn. This sort of tactical norm breaking. We are so far beyond that at this stage and it permeates all segments: the corporate world, the legal world, the media world, and the checks and balances that there should be in the United States simply aren't there or they're weak.
That's right. And if you go back to the beginning of 2025 and asked people, okay, what sort of decisions do you think Trump is going to make that will really challenge the norms and the checks and balances on the US executive? They all underestimated what would happen over the course of the year. And if you ask them if those things were to happen, what kind of responses would there be? What kind of resilience and resistance would there be in the system? They all overestimated the resistance and the resilience that there would actually be in the system.
So what we wanted to do was take a look, a very careful look, at the actual risks that we saw over the course of the year and say how does this reflect a political revolution? An ability and willingness to fundamentally change the political system, to weaponize the political system, the administrative state, as well as the ability of the executive to act without checks and balances, to weaponize it the way that Trump believes that the system had been weaponized against him, leading to his two impeachments, unprecedented, all of his convictions, felony convictions, unprecedented, and his not unprecedented near assassination.
And what we see over the course of the year, right? We looked at just a number of the actions and we put them on a two-by-two grid which is in the report, where you see that some of them are on how much are the norms eroding and some of them are how much are the checks eroding. And if the norms and the checks are both eroding severely, you get a revolutionary outcome. If it's the norms and not so much the checks, it's norm breaking but not system breaking. And if it's neither the norms nor the checks, you get a whole bunch of headlines because people in the US have their hair on fire all the time, but in reality, not something you need to spend that much time on.
And you know, when you go back over the year and you look at the agency shutdowns and the AIPA tariffs and the National Guard deployments and the ActBlue investigation and the firing of independent commissioners and the pocket rescissions, the university grant freezes, the Comey, the James, Letitia James prosecutions, the law firm sanctions, the news organization suits, the Qatari jet suit, the NSC firings, the Jimmy Kimmel affair. I mean, I'm not just getting that was only one quadrant. I'm just getting started.
We've never seen anything like this in the US. The only president that is comparable that has made an effort at a political revolution was FDR. So we did some research on FDR and we compared him to Trump. He tried to pack the court. He failed. He tried to purge his own Democratic party. He failed. He massively expanded the administrative state that allowed for the passing of the New Deal. But that administrative state under the executive actually had significant constraints in how it could behave. It was not at the hands of an individual president. He actually codified the administrative state, where Trump is actively trying to ensure that there aren't constraints on a president that should act above the law, him.
And in my lifetime, there have been three revolutions at scale that have had macro impact. There's been the Chinese revolution under Deng Xiaoping, which succeeded, an economic revolution, and led to 50 years of unprecedented growth in China's rise. There was the Gorbachev revolution in the Soviet Union, political and economic. It failed wildly, and it led to Soviet collapse. And now there is the political revolution under Trump. And we don't know if it's going to succeed, but we certainly know it's being tried and it is going to gain momentum this year.
And if it turns out that Trump starts losing influence because his popularity is down and the economy is not doing as well right now, that's the trajectory. If that continues, we do not believe that he's going to say, 'Okay, okay, I'm done.' He's going to double down because he understands, as does Steve Bannon, as does Stephen Miller, as do Kash Patel, as do so many of the inside circle, that if they lose, given all the things they're doing, they're probably going to jail, right? They're going to lose a lot. And so I mean, they are weaponizing the system.
And the United States today is by far the most politically dysfunctional advanced industrial economy in the world. And that of course, a political revolution describing that with the country that is the most powerful, when our risks look at impact, imminence, and likelihood, is number one. It drives all the things we've talked about so far, underpins them, but it's number one and the trajectory is not sustainable.
So I personally, we do not collectively think that the political revolution in the US will succeed. We think it will probably fail. We do not have high confidence, but we think it will probably fail. But we are quite confident that it will get worse and more disruptive before it gets better. More things will break and that breakage will have permanent implications for the US political system and for its relations around the world and for the global order such as it exists, which is kind of extraordinary.
It's an amazing time to be alive geopolitically. I'm not sure it's great, but it's amazing. Every day there's something new. You get to believe, you know, 10 things that you thought were impossible before breakfast. It's very Alice in Wonderland like.
