Ernest Hemingway wrote in The Sun Also Rises (1926) that bankruptcy occurs gradually and then suddenly. This should be treated as a rule of geopolitical affairs.

For centuries, political structures and hierarchies of power that once were thought to be unchanging often suddenly vanished. Demise was gradual but collapse was sudden.

The Russian Empire (abolished in September 1917) and the Soviet Russian empire (dissolved in December 1991) both exhibited permanence—until they did not. So did the Austrian-Hungarian Empire (abolished in October 1918) and the Ottoman Empire (abolished in November 1922).

Only last month we witnessed the sudden collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s Syria. Rulers in Beijing, Moscow, Tehran, Pyongyang, Havana and elsewhere nervously understand the Hemingway rule, even if they have never read him.

There is another way to express this rule. After decades when nothing happens, decades can suddenly happen in weeks (a saying that is attributed to Vladimir Lenin). While we expressed hope on New Year’s Eve for a more peaceful and less chaotic world, one senses that as 2025 unfolds we will see decades suddenly happen in a blaze of geopolitical twists, turns and transformations.