The forecasting on geopolitical challenges in 2016 lends a perspective on how the world order might be reshaped by the following risks to global stability.

  Economic slowdown of BRICS

    China is going through its structural transformation, from a focus on manufacturing and exporting, to an emphasis on domestic consumption and investments. This is causing a general economic slowdown in the Emerging Markets (EM), particularly among the so-called BRICS nations – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Chinese government is projected to further reform the state planned economy to maintain China’s high growth in 2016.

           Brazil’s GDP growth decreased from 2.7% in 2013 to 0.1% in 2014 (WorldBank, 2014) and is expected to be in recession for the next two years; the rising value of the US dollar and depreciation of Chinese currency this year worsens Brazil’s prospects, which heavily rely on commodity exports to China, its largest trade partner.

    Western sanctions on Russia’s annexation of Crimea and a sharp drop in oil prices have caused similar economic stagnation in Russia and the GDP growth in Russia dropped from 1.3% to 0.6% in 2014 (WorldBank, 2014) and will also suffer a recession this year. Meanwhile, South Africa’s resource dependent economy is also suffering from the downturn in global commodity prices and China’s lower appetite for imports of raw materials. Indeed, only India appears to be growing at a healthy pace among the BRICS nations, and the IMF predicts that India will overtake China as fastest-growing economy in 2016. Even so, such optimism still does not compensate for the shadow that hangs over BRICS countries and other EM economies, most of which will struggle to grow at potential this year.  

  Maritime disputes in East Asia

Last week China said it would not tolerate any violation of areas it claims as its territorial waters

in the name of freedom of navigation, a warning to the United States’ plan to sail warships close to  artificial islands China has been building in the South China Sea. Although the two sides finalized an agreement on reducing the possibility of aerial clashes during Chinese President Xi’s visit to Washington last month, no real progress regarding the South China Sea’s maritime disputes has been made.

China also has island disputes with Japan in the East China Sea that recently were the subject of security legislation in the Japanese parliament. The bills, which provoked a strong response from China and Beijing repeated its contention that Japan’s alliance with the U.S. is meant to contain China’s influence over East Asia region. China will aim to change Asia’s status quo regardless of US and Japanese views, either through a peaceful strategy or through inevitable military conflicts with the U.S. and Japan. The maritime tension will continue to be a risk to regional stability in East Asia in 2016.

  ISIS and terrorism

    ISIS’s violent extremism makes it the State of Terror, and its shocking expansion from having a presence in two to ten countries during the past year keeps the world watchful. Different from al Qaeda, whose goal focused on driving the West out of the Middle East from remote redoubts, the ISIS wilāyah acts more aggressively and reinforces its leadership through seizing territory, conducting rape and murder, recruiting and governing in its homeland to solidify the organization’s expansion. ISIS’s interference with Syria civil war worsens the armed conflicts in that region. By July 2014, ISIL has controlled a third of Syria's territory and most of its oil and gas production, thus establishing itself as the dominant force in the Syrian opposition.

    ISIS and terrorist attacks still remains as a threat to global security in 2016.

  Russia

The Russian intervention  in Ukraine and subsequent economic sanctions on Russia have aroused the country’s antipathy against the West. Putin’s promotion of Russian Orthodox Church aims to deepen the union of politics and religion to unite the Russian society. His emphasis on national identity feeds a tide of rising Russian nationalism that diverts public attention from domestic stagnant economy to foreign affairs with anti-U.S. attitudes.

Russian involvement in the Syrian civil war has reached a critical point and how the Western reacts will be crucial. While Russia supports the Assad government’s role in fighting against ISIS, Western powers argue that a new government should formed in Damascus without Assad, whose forces have been responsible for more deaths in Syria than all other factions combined.  What happened to Afghanistan during 1979-1989, whereby a failed Russian invasion left a power vacuum for terrorists to fill, threatens to recur in Syria.. States’ political interests in Syria’s ongoing armed conflicts will shape future order in the region. In both Ukraine and Syria, the Russian government’s anti-Western foreign policy will ensure instability = in 2016.

  The U.S.’s presidential election

Though whoever will be the next president of the U.S. does not directly impose risk to global stability, his or her policies indeed have impact on the world order in 2016. Since 9.11, the Bush administration had changed the U.S.’s traditional war policy that focused on preemption to a new diplomatic initiative on preventive action. The consideration of America’ costs in Iraq and Afghanistan made the Obama administration decide to withdraw troops from both war zones. Some even claim that America has stopped playing its role of world police and has become more indifferent to regional conflicts, as reflected in Obama’s seeming compliant attitude toward Russia’s intervention in Syria. Though some cointinuity can be expected if Hillary Clinton, the Democrat, wins in November 2016, the field of Republican challengers is diverse, unsettled and filled with foreign policy neophytes whose campaign slogans sound dangerously unilateral. In either case, changes will result from the next president of the U.S.will influence international stability in 2016.