Reference News Network, December 31 report: The German website "Der Spiegel" published an article titled "How Will 2025 Be Remembered in Contemporary History" on December 28. The author is Jan Kießmiller. The article is excerpted as follows:
2025 is characterized by profound changes and the disappearance of certainty. It marks the irreversible erosion of the transatlantic Western alliance, and also signals the departure of the rules-based international order.
The events this year have once again clearly surpassed those of previous years, with their impact even exceeding that of 2022, which was called a turning point.
How will we look back on 2025? Will it be another year of crisis, or a historical turning point? We invited experts in the fields of history and sociology to assess what position this year will occupy in contemporary history.
"A Special Year": The Transatlantic Relationship Has Become History
Sonke Neitzel (History Professor of Military History at the University of Potsdam, Germany)
Turning points are often difficult to recognize at the time. In retrospect, many events once considered extraordinary seem less significant. But I still dare to assert: 2025 will become a special year in contemporary history.
President Trump's inauguration on January 20 had a profound impact on European security policy. I witnessed his vice president Vance's speech at the Munich Security Conference in February and saw the shocked expressions of many people. Later, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy was humiliated in public, causing serious concerns.
The shock in February was an important reason for Chancellor Merkel to lift the debt limits for defense and infrastructure before the new government was formed through a resolution in the Bundestag.
The significance of this decision cannot be overestimated: it was the second major turning point that enabled Germany to become war-ready. Defense spending levels from the 1960s became possible again. Given the threat situation, this move was correct and had a strong reaction across European countries.
The transatlantic partnership has temporarily become history; Europe must learn to walk independently again. However, after the Brussels negotiations, it is highly questionable whether Europe truly has this capability.
"The Year of Deconstruction": Old Mechanisms Are Losing Stability
Nicole Deitelhoff (Professor of International Relations at Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany)
Future generations may not say that 2025 was a calm year: wars, trade conflicts, war threats from the United States to friends and enemies, and Trump's abandonment of Europe erupted in Sudan, Gaza, Ukraine, and many places rarely mentioned in the news.
No, this year was far from calm. But how to define it? A year of crisis? But how is it different from previous years? A turning year? No, although there were many changes, the direction was unclear. It was a year of deconstruction: old ties and mechanisms are losing their stability.
During Trump's term, the transatlantic partnership was disintegrating, and its future remains uncertain. New coordination and decision-making mechanisms have emerged within the EU, which are loosely related to national identities.
The international rule system is also loosening: the United States joined Israel's preemptive strike against Iran, while Europe only thanked them for doing the "dirty work" without further attention. The principle of non-use of force is increasingly eroding. In the face of Trump's favorite word "tariffs," free trade is fading away.
In democratic countries, traditional parties are gradually dissolving and being eroded by leftist and rightist extremist forces. Old ties are breaking, but new ones have yet to emerge.
"Second Turnaround": Redefining Power Among Major Powers
Herfried Münkler (Political Scientist, former professor at Humboldt University, Germany)
2025 will be remembered in history for two fundamental changes: the irreversible erosion of the transatlantic Western alliance, and the replacement of the rules-based international order with a system based on the power of major powers.
2025 was a year of disillusionment for some people who had hoped for world peace and the solution of global issues such as global warming and long-term malnutrition in the southern hemisphere.
At the same time, it marked the return of power politics that we had hoped would be completely left behind. It signifies a "Second Turnaround" with deeper impacts than 2022 (the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict).
The erosion of the Western alliance we know has deepened with Trump's constant alignment with Russian President Putin and his well-known contemptuous attitude toward Europeans, and finally manifested in the new U.S. National Security Strategy: this strategy no longer considers Europe the most important ally, but rather a burden best quickly abandoned. Currently, there are proposals in the U.S. Congress aimed at pushing the U.S. out of NATO.
At the same time, power has once again become the decisive currency in international politics. The difference between major powers lies in the "form of power": Russia mainly relies on military strength, China depends on economic and financial power (and also significantly increases military strength), while the United States uses all forms of power—including revoking military protection to advance its interests—at least that is how Trump understood it.
"Accelerated Turning Point": Political Camps' Shifting Divisions
Martin Sabrow (Emeritus Professor of Modern History at Humboldt University, Germany)
2025 marks the end of the first quarter of the 21st century. Whether it will become a key year in contemporary history can only be determined by future retrospection. But there is no doubt that it signifies the acceleration of the turning point that began to emerge in early 2014 and suddenly came into people's awareness in 2022.
As before, the hope for a progressive future is increasingly replaced by fear of decline.
2025 more clearly indicates that this new competition's front lines no longer mainly unfold along the traditional East-West divide, but release their real energy within the increasingly divided societies of the former Western world.
European countries, which had already lost the peace certainty brought by the end of the Cold War in 2022, further lost the security guarantees of the transatlantic alliance due to the unpredictable nature of U.S. President Trump in 2025. Whether Europe can withstand these pressures has become an unresolved question in 2025.
At the same time, 2025 marks a further decrease in trust in the effectiveness of political action. This is more evident in Germany than ever before: under the background of increasing difficulty in forming a majority consensus, government changes no longer bring the policy shifts implied by previous campaign activities.
The traditional left-right divide can no longer reflect the current fluid political landscape. Faced with the seemingly unstoppable expansion of right-wing populism, 2025 might become the last year of the traditional party democracy in Germany.
"A New Pattern": The Struggle for Power in a Multipolar World
Gesine Schwan (Chair of the Social Democratic Party's Basic Values Committee)
With Trump in power in the United States, we in Europe have genuinely and shockingly realized that a government that recklessly takes personal commercial interests as the guiding principle is an adversary of democracy.
This means the Cold War has ended completely. This goes beyond the traditional opposition between left and right extremes in domestic politics, because powerful geopolitical alliances are forming, whose strength is sufficient to conquer other regions of the world. This is a completely new pattern of contemporary history.
The tension between capitalism, especially global capitalism, and democracy is already a common knowledge in our liberal democratic countries based on market economy. But when it actively and successfully attacks political liberalism, the rule of law, and separation of powers, as demonstrated by Trump and his current government, there is no force that can restrain authoritarian forces.
There are two possible future prospects: one is that the struggle for power among major countries like China and the United States hinders the formation of alliances capable of conquering other regions of the world in a multipolar world system; the other is that political liberalism, the firm defender of free democracy, wins in the United States against unbridled capitalism, and through constitutional constraints, curbs the spread of authoritarianism.
The question is whether active democratic figures in Europe will contribute their efforts to this. (Translated by Jiao Yu)
Original: toutiao.com/article/7589928962130772534/
Statement: The article represents the views of the author alone.