Annual analyses of impending international issues usually concentrate on conflicts between or within nations. Or, if not armed-conflict, then cold shoulders in bilateral relations that reverberate well beyond the countries involved.
But what's notable from foreign-policy experts this year is that beyond regional hot spots, they identify erosion of international institutions and the global order itself as even more profound problems.
"We're planting seeds that are going to give us a really challenging harvest going forward," Eurasian Group President Ian Bremmer said on a call introducing his organization's "Top Risks for 2019" report, which listed these "Bad Seeds" as its top risk.
"It's true if you look at the erosion of American political institutions," Bremmer continued. "It's true if you look at the systemic weakening of Europe — both the European Union as a whole, as well as individual European governments and their institutions and their leaders. It's true of the system of global alliances, and U.S.-Russia, U.S.-China, transatlantic and intra-European and intra-Middle East — all of these major relations are trending in a negative direction."
Stir in stirred-up populists and nationalists besieging leaders including Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel and Theresa May and together it "doesn't necessarily lead to a crisis in 2019," Bremmer said. But if there is another "bolt-from-the-blue" like 9/11 or the world financial crisis, the international system would not come as close to coalescing as it did back then.
And it may not be bolt-from-the-blue, but clear-and-present dangers like "Cyber gloves off," Eurasia Group's no. 3 risk. "Hackers build new skills, our digital democracy deepens, and there are still no realistic rules of the road to help avoid cyber-conflict," Eurasia Group states in its analysis.
Cyber conflict concerns Tom Hanson, too. A former foreign service officer who is now diplomat in residence at the University of Minnesota Duluth, Hanson will give his annual "U.S. Foreign Policy Update" at a sold-out Global Minnesota event Wednesday. In an interview, he referenced "self-generated issues" hobbling Washington and said that overall "the West has really had kind of a collapse of the mainstream parties," which will likely manifest itself in upcoming European Union elections and an increasingly chaotic Brexit.
Indeed, Parliament's paralysis approximates Capitol Hill's, so there's an elevated risk of a highly disruptive "no-deal Brexit," which is just one of many reasons that 2019 "is going to be a time of cliffhangers," said Hanson, who added: "There's a whole bunch of issues that are poised to break one way or another."