“A politician is a person who approaches every issue with an open mouth.”
-Friedrich Nietzsche
Leaders entered 2025 with thunder in their voices and renewal on their banners—at home, abroad, and in the fragile spaces in between. They promised closure, courage, and change. As the year now closes, what defines it is not achievement but absence. The unfulfilled. The abandoned. They were quietly shelved. The true story of 2025 is not what happened, but what never did.
We are trained to catalogue calamities—wars, floods, scandals, triumphs—as though history were merely a ledger of eruptions. But societies are more often undone by voids: the spaces where leadership should have stood and did not. This year, that void yawned wide.
Consider the United States. Donald Trump promised Americans they would “get tired of winning.” Instead, they have grown tired of watching promises evaporate. He pledged to end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours. The war grinds on. The only discernible “solution” appears to be one that coerces Ukraine into surrendering to Vladimir Putin’s demands. The world continues to wonder what binds Trump to Putin—kompromat*, admiration, or the gravitational pull of authoritarian power. The rumours read like pulp fiction; the geopolitical consequences are deadly serious.
Trump also boasted that he would end Israel’s devastating war. Not only did peace fail to materialise—he now claims he deserves a Nobel Prize for brokering what never occurred. On the ground, settlement expansion proceeds unchecked. Roughly 42 per cent of Palestinian land is now effectively under Israeli control, with settlers claiming new territory through force. Palestinian blood quietly flows; devastation
Grinds on, even as Trump’s much vaunted ceasefire exists only in rhetoric - announced, applauded, and abandoned while lives are lost beyond the cameras. The region edges closer to irreversible fragmentation while the language of peace dissolves into dust.
Trump insisted Iran’s nuclear capacity had been neutralised. Subsequent assessments showed the strike fell short of its stated aim. He celebrated having secured lasting peace between Thailand and Cambodia; this very week, shells began falling again. Promises, proclamations, declarations—noise without delivery.
This pattern, however, is not uniquely American. Across the democratic world, 2025 exposed a widening gap between electoral vows and governing resolve.
In Canada, the contradictions have been stark. Oil executives who once booed the prime minister now applaud him. Climate experts and business leaders alike are baffled by Mark Carney’s abrupt fossil-fuel pivot. Pushback against U.S. tariffs remains a work in progress. A transformative housing buildout is promised—but deferred into the long term, where political accountability goes to rest. Each item is explained as pragmatic, incremental, or complex. Collectively, they form a portrait of hesitation masquerading as strategy.
Back in Washington, Trump and his allies thundered about the “communist threat” posed by Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral run in New York. Then came the reversal. Mamdani was welcomed into the Oval Office, congratulated on his victory, praised for having “run an incredible race,” and assured he would “do a very good job.” When asked about previously calling Trump a fascist, Trump jokingly interjected, “That’s OK—you can just say yes… it’s easier.”
The moment was light, even affable. It was also revealing. What evaporated was not hostility but conviction. What vanished was not rhetoric but meaning. In the theatre of politics, yesterday’s existential threats become today’s photo opportunities. Principles are not defeated; they are simply set aside when inconvenient.
To be fair, this late pivot suggested something else too: that 2025 may yet close on a gentler note than it began. Civility flickered. Dialogue reappeared. But even this modest hope underscores the deeper indictment. We are now relieved not by progress, but by tone. We celebrate gestures because outcomes remain elusive.
And so, as we look back on 2025, we must widen our lens beyond the crises that did occur. The harsher judgment lies in what did not: wars not ended, reforms not enacted, climate promises not honoured, justice not upheld. History is not shaped only by explosions and elections, but by the choices leaders evade—and the futures they quietly forfeit.
Nietzsche warned us about open mouths. What 2025 exposed was something more corrosive: closed wills. When speech outruns substance, democracy does not collapse—it hollows out. And hollow systems, eventually, cannot bear the weight of the people they claim to serve.
* Kompromat is a Russian term that literally means “compromising material”. It refers to information collected on a person – often politicians, public officials – that can be used to manipulate, control, or discredit them. Typically used to gain leverage over someone, force them to act in a certain way, or damage their reputation if they resist.
Javed Akbar is a freelance writer with published works in the Toronto Star and across diverse digital platforms.
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