Sudan, Gaza, conflicts, competitive authoritarianism, dysfunctional global institutions, and the end of the era of exceptionalism!
Sudan, Gaza, conflicts, competitive authoritarianism, dysfunctional global institutions, and the end of the era of exceptionalism!
By Adem Kılıç, Political Scientist
2025 was not only a challenging year geopolitically, but also a year that could be described as the most chaotic threshold of the last quarter-century.
In summary, 2025 was a breaking point where the unsustainability of the Western-centric global order could no longer be concealed, international norms, international law and international institutions were questioned, and global alliances eroded one by one.
With Trump’s return to the White House, the world entered an era of ‘competitive authoritarianism’ shaped by the United States, China, Russia, and their respective alliances.
Now, the only thing determining developments is the immediate strategic moves of leaders seeking to usher in an ‘age of empires.’
As the Western-centric global structure lost all its ‘superiority,’ institutions such as the UN, the UN Security Council, the International Criminal Court, and the International Court of Justice were also proven to be dysfunctional, unable to find solutions to any of the world’s problems.
The end of exceptionalism
The events in Gaza and Sudan in 2025 laid bare the West’s ‘exceptionalism regarding its own interests’ in all its nakedness.
Institutions established after the Second World War, such as the UN, the UN Security Council, the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice, had been tested repeatedly, especially since the end of the Cold War.
However, the events in Gaza and Sudan have now made this reality indisputable.
The failure of this structure to prevent the genocide in the State of Palestine, recognized by four of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, and the largest humanitarian crisis in history in Sudan, has now confirmed the collapse of this global order.
More than ten Western countries have recognized the State of Palestine, despite the United States. Although this step is currently only on paper and symbolic, it has been recorded as a sign of moral and political disengagement within the West.
According to official records, more than 70,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, broadcast live. Nearly 2 million people have been displaced, and despite the so-called ceasefire, the Palestinian people are still trying to survive under hunger, cold and siege.
In Sudan, approximately 400,000 people have lost their lives, 11 million have been displaced, and the civil war continues unabated.
In light of all these developments, a difficult process awaits Gaza, Sudan, the world, and Netanyahu in 2026.
The upcoming elections in Israel, corruption cases and Trump’s pardons going unanswered are putting Netanyahu under pressure at home.
This pressure shows us that the risk of controlled or false-flag conflict with Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Iran will once again come to the fore.
The era of competitive authoritarianism
By 2025, the US had effectively ushered the world into an era of ‘competitive authoritarianism,’ with Trump’s strategy moving along a line that kept allies under control, sought to deter rivals, and completely subordinated the rule of law.
The US is no longer a global leader but a coercive hegemon, acting with an understanding that seeks to drag the world back into an ‘age of empires.’
Trump’s return also created deep fault lines in transatlantic relations, with Europe losing its global influence, caught between a position of dependence on the US for security and discomfort with the US politically.
Meanwhile, as the US sought to re-fortify its own hemisphere through Venezuela, Cuba, Greenland and the Gulf of Mexico, Trump began to pursue a strategy of tolerating similar moves by Russia and China in their own ‘backyards’ in order to protect his own ‘backyard’ and implement this modern Monroe Doctrine.
Conclusion
All these realities clearly show that 2025 will be a year of transition in which the old Western-centric global order collapses, while 2026 will be a year in which the new order has yet to be named.
While the West searches for direction amid chaos, actors with power, technology and patience will begin to write the rules of the new world from 2026 onwards.