India has been ranked among “The Eight Great Powers of 2025” by a renowned American geopolitical scientist, with India placed fifth in the list above France and the UK.
The eight powers chosen by Dr Robert Farley, author and who has taught security and diplomacy courses at the Patterson School in the US, are: The US, China, Russia, Japan, India, France, the UK, and South Korea.
He is the author of works including “Grounded: The Case for Abolishing the United States Air Force,” “Patents for Power: Intellectual Property Law and the Diffusion of Military Technology” and the latest, “Waging War with Gold: National Security and the Finance Domain Across the Ages.”
Some of the conclusions are obvious. For instance, the US continues to be the first of the great powers. It is followed by China on the second spot. Russia and Japan follow in the next two spots.
India is fifth and France and UK, are behind it, with Sout Korea coming last. It is significant that for the first time in such a study, India is recognized as an emerging ‘great power’.
This list also indicates the beginning of an already-palpable shift in geopolitics, from the West to the East, specifically Asia. India, China, Russia and South Korea are four Asian powers in the list of eight.
Farley describes India as one of the few countries with a “healthy demographic foundation” and which has over the past two decades begun to “find its feet as a great power”.
He says the Indian economy has largely escaped the (complicated) “Hindu rate of growth” period, and is expanding at a rate higher than any country on this list.
India’s relatively open political system has allowed it to give a home to innovative technology firms, tightly linked with the global economy and increasingly able to throw their weight around, according to the author.
In military terms, Farley says India trails China substantially but has strong relationships with the UK, France, the United States, and Russia that give it access to the most modern technology.
He refers to certain obvious problems India faces. According to him, “India remains too closely linked with Russia in defense issues, a relationship that even Indians are beginning to realize represents more of a burden than an asset”. His observation about India’s economic status is that “parts of India’s economy remain sclerotic and impoverished, generating political and social unrest”.
He acknowledges that India remains “more democratic than Russia and China”, adding that India’s nuclear weapons program is “one of the world’s most advanced”.
About the US, Farley describes it as “a huge, profoundly wealthy, and remarkably powerful country that looks poised to remain at the top for the foreseeable future”. America’s federal system leaves substantial power to states and localities, ensuring a degree of local democratic control but creating all manner of “not in my backyard” problems.
However, Farley believes it is “in serious question” how committed the incoming Trump administration would be to democracy and internationalism.
The key weakness of the US, according to Farley, “is its political system, which is archaic and has been racked by partisan conflict”.
Demographically, the United States faces an uncertain future (especially given growing anti-immigrant sentiment), but it is in a better position than nearly all of its major competitors.
Farley analyses China’s rise in the context of its “overblown” claims about China’s “one hundred-year plan” which tend to omit or ignore the “often brutal infighting between China’s political elites”, a tendency that the rise of President Xi Jinping has “obscured but hardly eliminated”.
Russia, for Farley, is “desperately hard to categorize in the lineup of great world powers”.
Here is his assessment of the challenges Russia faces: “The invasion of Ukraine seemed poised to restore Russia’s international swagger. The failure of that initial attack and the grinding war of attrition that has followed have both highlighted Russia’s weakness and exposed its population and its economy to dreadful damage.”
Japan is “slowly re-establishing itself near the top rank of world powers” although “plagued by high debt and sclerotic economic growth”. Japan remains one of the world’s most technologically advanced countries, and Tokyo is increasingly linking the innovative aspects of its economy to its defense industrial base.
France “lost the position in the Sahel (in Africa) that it had held for nearly two centuries, driven out by residual anti-colonialism and local frustration with imperial interference”.
Farley feels France’s demographic position is okay relative to its competitors, but not great from an absolute standpoint. French politics remain as charged and caustic as ever, with tensions over religion and immigration coming to dominate the scene, he opines.
Farley is not impressed by the UK’s current position in the international community. He says that “sometimes, it seems as if the United Kingdom wants to push itself off this list”.
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He lists out three mistakes the UK made to end up in its present situation. “Brexit is one of the three great geostrategic mistakes of the 21st century, taking pride of place with the US invasion of Iraq and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”
As a result, he understands, “the British economy is weaker than it has any right to be, and the political system suffers from dysfunction and residual separatism in Scotland and Northern Ireland”.
Unlike India which Farley assumes can no longer be omitted from any listo f global powers, he had several countries to choose the eighth and last country. The choices were Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Brazil, and Germany with Malaysia, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Canada “not far from the mix”.
However, the Republic of Korea “gets the nod this year, as it has become a pivotal player in several areas critical to global security”, he announces. South Korea has built an innovative, successful economy around the integration of its industries with its larger neighbors and with the United States.
He predicts South Korea may be the “most likely state to join the nuclear club in the not-too-distant future”. He points out that the country It is building a large military capable of expeditionary operations, and still has a defense industrial base capable of manufacturing the basic logistical requirements (artillery shells) for conducting a major war.
On the flip side he finds South Korea’s “demographic position is the very worst of any developed or developing country”.
Farley concludes his assessment for 2025 saying that while India and South Korea “can be regarded as newcomers”, there is a situation “where we can at least imagine the passing of some of these countries from the center stage”. Policymakers in Paris, Moscow, and London will struggle to maintain relevance over the next half-century, their precious nuclear arsenals notwithstanding – that’s his prediction.
