Trouble with China?

The New York-based Eurasia Group reports that 2010 is likely to be much more turbulent geopolitically than 2009, when the world was preoccupied with coping with the global financial crisis, but saw no big geopolitical crisis.

“With the world now coming out of recession, the risks are starting to shift to the challenges created by the emergence of a new global order – developed vs. developing states, the old unipolar system vs. the emerging non-polar one, and the old dominant globalized system of regulated free market capitalism vs. the growing strength of state capitalism,” according to this report from Eurasia Group President Ian Bremmer and Head of Research David Gordon.

Bremmer and Gordon identify four “Red Herrings,” or issues they think will be much publicized but are not likely to be “sources of geopolitical instability in 2010.” The Red Herrings include U.S. and British financial centers, Iraq, the Persian Gulf, and the dollar, “where really slow and steady-ish still wins the race.”

TOP RISKS of 2010
1: US-China relations
2: Iran
3: European fiscal divergence
4: U.S. financial regulation
5: Japan
6: Climate change
7: Brazil
8: India-Pakistan (no, not Afghanistan)
9: Eastern Europe, elections & unemployment
10: Turkey