By Stephen Nagy

December 26, 2025

In the Chinese zodiac, Jan. 29, 2025, to Feb. 16, 2026, is the Year of the Wood Snake — a time of strategic reflection, subtle influence and flexible adaptation.

Snake years supposedly favour cunning over confrontation, charm over coercion. Yet as 2025 comes to a close, the Indo-Pacific’s three great powers have delivered the exact opposite: strategic blundering, diplomatic bombast and economic turbulence that mocks everything the Wood Snake represents.

Instead of serpentine subtlety, we’ve witnessed geopolitical chaos across Washington, Beijing and Tokyo. U.S. President Donald Trump’s return brought erratic unpredictability, not stability. Xi Jinping’s China chose wolf-warrior aggression over strategic patience.

Japan, squeezed between these giants, fired Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru after less than a year in power for mismanaging both relationships, then watched as Sanae Takaichi, Japan’s first female prime minister, triggered China’s fury with her Taiwan remarks.

Xi’s 13th year as general secretary has become his most perilous. The purge of People’s Liberation Army commanders signals internal discord unseen since the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Youth unemployment exceeds 20%, while capital outflows have reached staggering proportions.

Dan Wang and Arthur Kroeber’s recent Foreign Affairs analysis, The Real China Model, reveals Beijing’s self-defeating response of “doubling down on manufacturing while strangling the service sector that employs 60% of urban workers, guaranteeing continued stagnation despite technological prowess”.

The Lowy Institute’s 2025 Asia Power Index, authored by Susannah Patton and Jack Sato, records China’s diplomatic influence at “an all-time high for any Asia Power Index country.” Yet this masks strategic incompetence. Beijing’s response to Prime Minister Takaichi’s measured statement, that Taiwan’s security affects Japan’s, was diplomatically catastrophic. The Chinese Consul General in Osaka implied Takaichi’s “dirty head” should be “cut off”.

Chinese state media questioned Okinawa’s sovereignty, invoking the Ryukyu Kingdom’s ancient tributary relationship. Bloomberg’s Gearoid Reidy captured the absurdity by noting that when Shanghai officials cut power mid-performance to silence singers Maki Otsuki and Ayumi Hamasaki performing Japanese songs, they united global entertainment fandoms against China, hardly the subtle influence promised by the Wood Snake.

Harvard’s Rana Mitter argues in his own Foreign Affairs article, The Once and Future China, that Beijing contradicts its own historical wisdom. The Qing principle of fuguo qiangbing (rich country, strong army) becomes meaningless when gross domestic product growth struggles toward 5% while military posturing threatens the economic integration China desperately needs. Mitter calculates that invading Taiwan would trigger inflation “similar to what Russia has seen since 2022,” recalling the 20% to 30% inflation that preceded the Tiananmen Square protests and massacre.

Yet Xi declared in his 2025 New Year message that “no one can stop the historical trend of national reunification.” He should have said except for China and the Chinese Communist Party under Xi Jinping.

Trump’s America, meanwhile, practices what scholar Kori Schake called “solipsism masquerading as strategy” in a Foreign Affairs article titled Dispensable Nation published in June. Indeed, the administration’s incoherence astounds.

Trump denounces Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in February, embraces him at the Vatican in March; meets Vladimir Putin in Alaska with military escorts in August, only to watch the Russian strongman lecture him and reject any deal; declares “I really like Xi” while approving Taiwan arms sales worth $3.5 billion. Each reversal, Schake warned, burns through U.S. credibility at an “alarming rate.”

Emma Ashford’s Foreign Affairs article Making Multipolarity Work, published in November, identifies Trump’s core contradiction: Proclaiming American weakness — his constant “exhausted, weak and ruined” rhetoric — while believing “unilateral action on Washington’s part can still force others to capitulate.”

Will China, Russia or North Korea test American resolve? Can Xi survive domestic pressure without external adventurism? Will Trump’s transactional brutality finally shatter Atlantic unity?

His National Security Strategy’s “Trump Corollary” and 5% NATO defence spending achieved short-term compliance through coercion. But Schake calculates the long-term cost: America risks becoming “too brutal to love but too irrelevant to fear.”

Domestically, the picture darkens further. Steven Levitsky, Lucan Way and Daniel Ziblatt document America’s descent into “competitive authoritarianism” since Trump’s January inauguration. Their Foreign Affairs investigation, The Price of American Authoritarianism, out this month, details politicized prosecutions. These include figures ranging from Sen. Adam Schiff to philanthropist George Soros, while the U.S. Federal Communications Commission investigates ABC, CBS, PBS, NPR and Comcast.

Reid Hoffman, once Democrats’ largest donor, publicly acknowledged scaling back contributions fearing retribution. The Ford Foundation now “scrutinizes grants it has distributed that officials fear could be criticized.” This is precisely the chilling effect autocrats seek.

Pivoting to Japan, Tokyo’s predicament exemplifies why political scientist Phillip Lipscy calls Japan “the harbinger state” — previewing challenges other democracies will face. Takaichi enjoys 75% approval (exceeding 80% among working adults per Nikkei polling), yet faces an impossible position. Her statement that Japan must “consider what we can do within constitutional limits” if China invades Taiwan was diplomatically reasonable. Beijing demanded retraction and launched economic retaliation — cutting 40% of December flights. Washington offered silence — Trump was pursuing his “great deal” with Xi.

The Lowy Institute’s metrics are sobering. America records its weakest position since 2018, China narrows the gap despite economic turmoil, India achieves major power status surpassing Japan, while Russia — bolstered by authoritarian partnerships — reclaims fifth place. Japan “recorded negative results for all resource measures except military capability,” and is trapped in relative decline.

All three powers hemorrhaged soft power in 2025. China’s cultural vandalism — cancelling concerts, censoring animé, threatening artists — squandered decades of patient cultivation. America’s democratic erosion has German Chancellor Friedrich Merz declaring Europe must achieve greater independence from the United States. Japan retains cultural appeal but lacks hard power.

The approaching Year of the Fire Horse — symbolizing passion, independence and rapid change — portends escalation. Xi faces a Catch-22: Invading Taiwan destroys China’s economy, but continued stagnation risks domestic unrest. Trump’s midterms could either supercharge his authoritarian tendencies, as Levitsky warns, or force compromise. His threatened interventions — Venezuelan naval operations, Iranian bombing runs, airstrikes against Nigerian targets — risk actual warfare.

Japan navigates between impossible demands. Beijing wants Takaichi’s removal (yes, they interfere in domestic politics, ask Canada if you don’t believe Japan) and Japanese submission. Washington expects military burden-sharing while offering neither protection from Chinese coercion nor exemption from American tariffs. When protection rackets raise prices — as they invariably do — Tokyo must question the alliance’s viability.

Will China, Russia or North Korea test American resolve? Can Xi survive domestic pressure without external adventurism? Will Trump’s transactional brutality finally shatter Atlantic unity?

The Japanese proverb Taifu no naka de wa, take no yo ni magaru koto (In typhoons, bend like bamboo) offers the only wisdom. As stability collapses, middle powers from Seoul to Singapore must demonstrate flexibility where great powers show only rigidity. Another proverb proves prophetic. Arashi no ato ni wa kanarazu nagi ga kuru (After the storm comes calm.) But first, we must survive the storm.

The Wood Snake promised strategic subtlety but delivered chaos. The Fire Horse threatens conflagration. The serpent that should have glided silently roared like a dragon. In this gathering typhoon, only nations that bend without breaking will endure. The great powers, locked in their rigidity, may discover too late that in abandoning the Wood Snake’s wisdom of adaptation, they’ve invited the Fire Horse’s destruction.

For Tokyo, bending like bamboo means cultivating alternative partnerships with India, the E.U., Canada and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations while maintaining formal alliance structures, speaking softly on Taiwan while quietly preparing defences — using Takaichi’s domestic popularity to pursue strategic autonomy without provoking a giant’s wrath.

This article was first published in The Japan Times on December 26, 2025.

Stephen R. Nagy is professor of politics and international studies at the International Christian University in Tokyo. He is a senior fellow and China project lead at the Macdonald Laurier Institute and a visiting fellow at the Japan Institute for International Affairs. The title of his forthcoming book is Japan as a Middle Power State: Navigating Ideological and Systemic Divides.