Today, The Call presents our top risks for 2013. Click HERE for Eurasia Group's complete report.

1. Emerging markets -- The era of emerging market abundance is finished. As the United States and Europe slowly regain their economic footing, the political risk focus will return to the emerging market world, where differences among the largest players will become more obvious. Slower growth and rising expectations from larger and more demanding middle classes will create public pressure on governments, meaning that emerging markets -- including the increasingly suspect BRICs -- should no longer be treated as an asset class for outsized growth. Consideration instead should shift toward which developing country governments have enough political capital to remain on track to a more advanced stage of development.

2. China vs. information -- China's new leadership faces many challenges in 2013, most importantly the state's growing inability to control the flow of ideas and information across borders and within the country. Until now Beijing has been largely effective in isolating online discourse to focus on discrete issues without culminating in real challenges to the government's decision-making or policy. But every corruption scandal and example of official malfeasance makes the next event more difficult to navigate, and the risk is that a broad-based social movement for change will gain momentum in China in 2013, distracting the government from its domestic and foreign policy priorities and potentially weakening investor confidence in the stability of the mainland market.

3. Arab Summer -- We are far beyond the Arab Spring, and an Arab Winter, where dictators rebound and consolidate power, has not materialized. Instead we are approaching an Arab Summer, whereby the region will witness radicalized movements -- both sectarian and Islamist -- playing a much more important role. As outside powers look to avoid direct involvement in the region's risks, local powers -- Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and others -- will compete for influence and play out their rivalries. At the center of this lies Syria, whose civil war now has implications that extend far beyond the humanitarian. Syria has become a proxy conflict for Shiite and Sunni powers, as well as a magnet for jihadists, increasing the geopolitical risk overall and sparking further insecurity throughout the region, most notably in Iraq, Jordan, and Turkey.

4. United States -- Every silver lining has a dark cloud. While the fiscal cliff was averted, the process by which the deal was reached casts a large shadow over hopes that the election might create a more conducive environment for cooperation, and dysfunctional American politics will weigh on both the U.S. economic recovery and President Obama's legislative agenda. This is not about a politically induced new recession, let alone a major financial crisis. But political uncertainty over corporate taxes and a series of noisy brinkmanship episodes will generate a modest but real drag on growth.

5. JIBs (Japan, Israel, Britain) -- These are the three current global trends that matter most: China is rising, the Middle East is exploding, and Europe is muddling through. Set against a G-zero backdrop, the structural losers of these trends are the JIBs (Japan, Israel and Britain): countries influenced most directly and problematically by changes now underway in the geopolitical order. All three countries are now in a similar position for three reasons: their special relationships with the United States are no longer quite as important; they sit just outside the major geopolitical changes underway, without the means to play a constructive role; and key domestic constraints in all three countries (political, social, historic, and otherwise) make it particularly difficult for them to respond effectively to the challenges posed by a shifting global order.

6. Europe -- There will be no grand implosion, but the muddle-through approach to crisis management carries risks of its own. The eurozone is headed for neither breakup nor resolution, and in 2013 the risks shift from a threat of financial crisis to a loss of momentum in creating the institutional and policy frameworks for a redesigned union. The weak economic outlook and the politics of crisis-fighting will also remain sources of uncertainty. Simultaneously, euro-skepticism is on the rise and resistance to reforms is increasing in the face of protracted austerity and few prospects for an economic turnaround.

7. Asian geopolitics -- In 2013, geopolitical risk will continue growing in East Asia in a new and potentially more dangerous way. Facing increased nationalism in China and Japan, the United States will look to play a larger role, giving oxygen to the hedging strategies of many regional states seeking closer American ties. Territorial disputes over the East China and South China Seas will also create new friction, and at risk overall is East Asia's decades-long distinction as a zone where positive-sum commerce and economics trumps zero-sum geopolitical tension.

8. Iran -- The significant risk in Iran this year is not the one everyone's thinking about. A strike on the country's nuclear program is unlikely, but biting sanctions, other forms of international pressure, and leadership tensions make Iran less predictable and heighten the stakes of an ongoing shadow conflict with Israel and the United States -- one with the potential to rattle markets and put upward pressure on oil prices.

9. India -- India in 2013 will be one of the prime examples of the intrusion of political factors into what had until recently been seen as a long-term economic success story. The country's dysfunctional politics and looming elections feed the risk of an economic shock, and in 2013 the ability of the government to implement robust economic policies will decline even further, perpetuating India's "stalling or falling" outlook.

10. South Africa -- In aggregate growth terms, Africa as a whole looks to be on a trajectory to continue its recent position of positive performance. But in South Africa -- one of the continent's largest and most sophisticated economies -- the outlook is far less rosy. Populism, spearheaded by the ruling ANC party, is on the rise, and it is hard to see any real movement on labor, education, and budgetary reforms. Coming retrenchments in mining will almost certainly spur another bout of labor unrest, which has the potential to spread into other sectors as well. Taken together, all these factors increase the risk of further credit downgrades.

In addition to these, Eurasia Group's red herrings for 2013 include:

The geopolitics of energy -- 2013 isn't the year to get overly concerned about geopolitical risk spiking energy prices. For one thing, most of the Middle East risk in the coming year isn't about energy -- it's about everything else -- and the energy revolution happening in the Western Hemisphere will be a boon for consumers across the globe. 

Global protectionism -- The G-20 can afford to agree on protectionism because there's less of a threat here than meets the eye. The trend in fact is toward hints of competitive trade liberalization, especially within the European Union, which is generating a strong internal consensus on the need for a new major transatlantic economic cooperation package.

Radicalism in the developed world -- Many fear the growing gap between rich and poor will instigate class warfare and cause significant instability across the developed world. We think not. For much the same reason that emerging markets are the top risk this year, it's the underlying stability of advanced industrialized democracies that will come through in 2013.

European separatism -- There is no doubt that there are very real separatist pressures building in Catalonia and in Scotland, and national unity remains fragile in Belgium. However -- as much as we all would love to watch Barca field its own team in the World Cup -- there is almost no chance that any of these issues will grow into an actual crisis leading to separation in 2013.

? - North Korea -- Sometimes, you just can't know what's happening, and with North Korea in 2013 that's really the case. In the face of a sudden leadership transition in the world's most totalitarian state -- now run by an untested 28-year-old -- it's almost impossible to assess whether North Korea is becoming more stable. All signs point to the country remaining a perilous bet, but what causes trouble and when? It's hard not to lose sleep over it, but at the same time working harder to assess what exactly is going bump in the night doesn't feel very purposeful. Sorry.

Over the next three weeks, we'll be posting more ideas and information on each of these risks.

By David Gordon and Cliff Kupchan

"You don't want a messianic apocalyptic cult controlling atomic bombs," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a journalist in 2009, in reference to Iran's nuclear program. He wasn't the first or last Israeli official to use such inflammatory rhetoric. References to Iran as an existential threat or to the country's nuclear program as raising the specter of another Holocaust have been typical among Israeli officials. But on a recent research trip to Israel, we heard surprisingly little anxiety. No official spoke about a threshold beyond which Iran's program would be unstoppable -- a deadline that in the past was always one year off. And elites across the political spectrum for now favor sanctions and covert action, rather than military force, to deter Iran. As a result, the chance of Israeli strikes in the next eighteen months is very low.

So what accounts for the sea-change in the Israeli approach? Success, essentially. Iranian officials have claimed that successive rounds of international sanctions have benefitted the country by forcing it to adopt necessary economic reforms. But top Israeli officials stressed to us that sanctions are crippling Iran's economy and sparking debate about nuclear policy among the ruling elite. Likewise, the triumph of the Stuxnet computer worm -- credited with destroying 1,000 Iranian centrifuges and widely believed (though not confirmed) to be an American-Israeli creation -- and possibly other covert measures have encouraged Israeli policymakers. While officials wouldn't talk in detail, they said that Iran's nuclear program has been slowed.

Buying time is an important reason to stick with sanctions and covert action. For one, as the repercussions of ever harsher sanctions sink in, Tehran may be forced to make concessions at the negotiating table. Second, in the wake of Stuxnet, Israel is probably more optimistic about its ability to impair Iran's nuclear program over the long term. Third, an extended time horizon opens the door for domestically induced regime change in Iran -- a remote but real possibility that bears monitoring as disaffected crowds again take to the streets of Tehran.

There's probably also a public relations angle to Israel's transformed rhetoric. As some sources noted, breathless statements about existential threats and points of no return likely strengthened Iran's hand, both diplomatically and publicly. Moreover, Israeli public opinion has turned its gaze elsewhere, to what it considers the more imminent threats of Gaza, Lebanon, and Egypt.

It would be wrong to read the shift in the Israeli approach as a rejection of military action, though. While no sitting politician said so, there is a widespread belief among the country's elite that the government still considers force a viable option: Netanyahu would not stomach a nuclear Iran. But unless sanctions and covert action lose their credibility in the eyes of this (or a similarly inclined) Israeli government, strikes in the next year and a half will remain unlikely.

David Gordon is head of research at Eurasia Group. Cliff Kupchan is director of the firm's Eurasia practice.

For more than half a century, relations between Israel and Turkey have provided a degree of stability in the turbulent politics of the Middle East. Turkey was among the first majority-Muslim states to recognize Israel in 1948, and the two countries have profited from bilateral trade and military cooperation ever since. Unfortunately for Israel, things are changing.

It's not that current tensions between them will destroy their commercial relationship. Turkey remains Israel's top trade partner in the region. Nor is it that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP)-led government will move Turkey into some sort of anti-Israeli alliance with Iran and Syria. Turkey remains a member of NATO. And though accession talks on European Union membership are going nowhere, neither side wants to abandon efforts to bring Turkey and Europe closer together.

Yet, there's a change underway in Turkey's regional role, a shift rooted in the country's bitter internal politics, and it's not one that Israel will like. Erdogan and the AKP have seen their popularity eroded over time as the party's battle with Turkey's secularist establishment in the military, business community, and media has polarized the political class and dominated the country's agenda. But like so many leaders over time and around the world, Erdogan has discovered that foreign-policy accomplishments that raise a country's international profile can bolster a government's standing at home.

Recent international developments have added to Turkey regional clout. The U.S. regional presence is waning as U.S. troops are rapidly withdrawn from Iraq. Europe is too fully occupied with problems within the Eurozone to take up the slack as Washington redeploys. Regional players like Egypt and Saudi Arabia are distracted to some degree by questions of political succession. It will be years before Iraq's government has the self-confidence to play its traditional regional role. Though Iran's government has forced the opposition off the streets, the turmoil of the past year has done lasting damage.

This leaves Turkey in a strong position. It's one of very few countries with influence in both Washington and Tehran. Expectations for robust economic growth -- the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) forecasts an average of 6.7 percent per year between 2011 and 2017 -- bolster the government's self-confidence and the country's reputation as a rising regional powerbroker. 

This is bad news for Israel. At Davos in January 2009, Erdogan won widespread praise among critics of Israel by storming off stage following a heated exchange over Gaza with Israeli President Shimon Peres. This spring, Turkey burnished its geopolitical credentials by joining Brazil in a plan to end the international standoff over Iran's nuclear program -- and in voting no on U.S. and European-sponsored U.N. sanctions on Tehran. When an Israeli raid on a flotilla of ships trying to break a blockade of supplies to Gaza killed nine Turkish activists last month, Erdogan again won international applause by denouncing the attack as a "bloody massacre."

The risk is real that Erdogan will make good on threats to cut off diplomatic relations with Israel. There's not much Israel can do about it, and officials in Tel Aviv are mainly downplaying the problem to avoid making matters worse for economic relations. But they know well that Erdogan is looking to play a higher-profile, more independent role in Middle East politic -- and that Turkey is a friend that Israel can ill afford to lose.

Ian Bremmer is president of Eurasia Group and author of The End of the Free Market: Who Wins the War Between States and Corporations?

To the long list of Israel's vulnerabilities, add the risk that the country won't be able to attract as much foreign investment in coming years and that the most talented Israelis will leave the country.

A generation ago, Western companies looked at the rest of the Middle East as an oil play. Israel's world-class education standards, its durable political institutions, its capable bureaucrats, and its strong rule of law earned the confidence of those looking to set up shop in other sectors.

Today, other countries in the region offer attractive opportunities for retail, tourism, health care, light-medium manufacture, and a host of other investments, and Israel's small size and political isolation are becoming real weaknesses. Persian Gulf and other Middle Eastern governments are letting would-be investors know that companies with a large-scale presence in Israel aren't going to fare as well inside their borders. Over time, this subtle (in some cases, not-so-subtle) pressure could have an impact.

Israel has outlasted many such threats in the past. The country's comparative excellence in advanced technology -- an area requiring limited long-term capital exposure and where the Israelis have little competition in the region -- will offer lasting advantages. Second, Iran's nuclear program provides a seriously destabilizing element to the politics of the region, but it doesn't pose much direct threat to Israel's economic development. Israel's military capabilities, including its own nuclear weapons program, make direct conflict with Iran highly unlikely.

Other threats are more serious. One day soon, Hezbollah will have access to missiles with the range and accuracy to effectively target Tel Aviv from anywhere inside Lebanon. That will be a game-changer for Israel's security, its economy, and its politics. More than half of Israel's population and the heart of its economy are centered in and around Tel Aviv. As the city becomes more vulnerable to the threat of precision-guided missile attacks, those Israelis most directly involved in the country's economic and financial life will be the most vulnerable to attack -- and some may well leave the country.

Tel Aviv's vulnerabilities to ballistic missile attack will strike at the heart of Israel's technology and pharmaceutical industries. Consider the recent history of Armenia. Once the best educated of Soviet republics, a steadily deteriorating security environment, better opportunities elsewhere, and a strong Armenian diaspora presence in Russia, France, the United States and other countries made it easy and attractive for the best educated Armenians to leave. And leave they did -- about a third of the population emigrated within 15 years of the Soviet collapse. The exodus hollowed Armenia out, and the country has yet to recover its economic dynamism. With an almost certain-to-deteriorate security environment, Israel's greatest long-term risk may be a serious brain drain, just as its Arab neighbors are opening for business in so many non-energy-related sectors.

That's a lot more dangerous for Israel's future than a surprise attack from Tehran.

Ian Bremmer is president of Eurasia Group and author of The End of the Free Market: Who Wins the War Between States and Corporations? (Portfolio, May 2010)

By Willis Sparks and Geoff Porter

As the world focuses on the diplomatic tug of war over Iran's nuclear program, Israel lives with the worrying hum of all those centrifuges spinning just a thousand miles to the east. Yet, Benjamin Netanyahu's government knows that if Israel launches airstrikes, there's a limit to how much damage can be done and how long Iran's progress can be delayed. It therefore has to persuade the Obama administration -- and anyone else who might help slow Iran's march -- to see the risks from Iran as Israel sees them.

It helped that Iran recently revealed the existence of an undeclared nuclear site near the city of Qom. At the very least, that revelation of Iranian dishonesty might have made it a little more difficult for Beijing and Moscow to justify continued resistance to sanctions. Yet, Israel remained quiet. Suddenly it appeared Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, and National Security Advisor Uzi Arad might have a wind at their backs. Though they'd like the wind to blow a bit more steadily and to get them to their destination quicker, they can't risk the rhetoric that might label them as blowhards.

But now there's talk of a diplomatic breakthrough. Following talks in Geneva with negotiators from the United States, China, Russia, Britain, France, and Germany, Iran has signed on to a tentative "interim agreement" to accept a U.S.-Russian proposal (that has been on the table for more than a year) to ship much of its low enriched uranium outside the country for reprocessing. Ensuring that this uranium is processed outside the country would help verify that it's used for civilian, not military, purposes. And then over the weekend, Iran ostensibly agreed to allow IAEA inspectors into the Qom facility on Oct. 25.

This leaves the Israeli government in a bind. First, because the details have yet to be worked out and Iran could renounce a completed agreement at any time, Israel can't take much comfort from it. Second, the fact that others treat it as a potential diplomatic breakthrough makes it even less likely than before that Israel could justify military strikes or that the US can persuade Russia and (especially) China to support sanctions tough enough to make any difference in Iran's strategic planning.

Israel has no faith that the potential for diplomatic détente between Iran and the US and EU is anything more than an Iranian stalling tactic, buying Tehran more time to speed toward the nuclear finish line. Likewise, Israel doesn't believe that sanctions -- no matter how tough they are -- will back Iran down. For Israel, diplomacy and sanctions are merely different forms of delay, but Netanyahu has little choice but to wait them out.

He'll be waiting for some time. First, diplomacy has to run its course. Following the tentative agreement in Geneva and the announcement that Iran will allow inspection of its Qom facility, the diplomatic track seems to be gaining momentum. Once that momentum slows and stalemate resumes, sanctions will be debated and some of them will be implemented. That won't happen before spring 2010 at the earliest.

In the meantime, Israel has little choice but to sit on its hands. Netanyahu knows that strikes on Iran's nuclear sites during delicate negotiations would inflict much more damage to Israel's international reputation -- and its relations with Washington, in particular -- than to Iran's nuclear program. Nothing brings this home more clearly than the U.N. Human Rights Council's report investigating Israel's military campaign in the Gaza Strip in 2008-09, which came very close to launching a legal process within the UN that could have produced a referral to the U.N. Security Council -- and possibly a war crimes tribunal. That's not going to happen, but it underscored already shifting international attitudes toward Israel.

Former Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz has said 2010 would be the year of sanctions. His government was hoping for a year of action. Instead, Israel will wait.

Willis Sparks is Global Macro Analyst and Geoff Porter is Middle East & Africa Director at Eurasia Group. 

Alex Wong/Getty Images

By Eurasia Group analysts Geoff Porter and Willis Sparks

The new Israeli government has wasted no time in confirming its hawkish reputation on both Iran's nuclear program and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Blunt comments from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman signal a risky road ahead -- and an increasingly uneasy relationship between the U.S. and Israeli governments.

Netanyahu entered office with a warning: If the U.S. administration does not lead the charge in halting Iran's nuclear ambitions, Israel may decide that it has no choice but to attack Iran's nuclear facilities. And his new foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the hard-line Yisrael Beiteinu party, has argued that Israel is not bound to abide by understandings reached between the previous Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority. He added that Israelis should perhaps prepare for war rather than peace.

Whether he is truly prepared to give the order to target Iran's nuclear facilities any time soon, Netanyahu's comments on Iran represent an effort to influence the Obama administration's approach to Iran, one that has begun with a call from Washington for a more constructive relationship with Tehran. The new Israeli prime minister wants to ensure that the Obama administration keeps its pledges to block Iran's nuclear program at the top of its agenda -- that it understands Israel can't afford to allow negotiations with Iran to drag on indefinitely. Israel will deliver that message again in June with a civil defense exercise that simulates multiple missile strikes on Israeli territory.  Israel will also probably try to weaken Iran's regional proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah -- particularly if a U.S.-led diplomatic track makes airstrikes on Iran less feasible.

The next three months will represent a period of heightened risk ahead of Iran's presidential elections on June 12. In addition to the Israeli warnings, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could face a tough challenge from Mir Hossein Mousavi, a popular former prime minister who has criticized Ahmadinejad's mismanagement of an economy plagued by high inflation and gasoline rationing. Aggressive Israeli rhetoric could provide Ahmadinejad an opportunity to provoke an international crisis to rally Iranians to his government -- and to boost his position in the polls.

If Netanyahu's comments were predictable, Lieberman's were much stronger than expected. Though consistent with his previous positions on the Palestinians, Lieberman's statements offered a sharp contrast with Netanyahu's recent pledge that his government would work to ensure continuity on the Palestinian issue from the previous government to his own.

It's no surprise that the choice of Avigdor Lieberman will add an element of friction in US-Israeli relations, but his assertion that Israel is not bound by commitments made during the U.S.-brokered Annapolis negotiations will cause some serious heartburn in Washington. The Obama administration believes that a visible commitment to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will restore U.S. credibility across the Middle East and help it advance its diplomatic agenda in other countries. Lieberman's comments will make the Obama administration's goal that much harder to achieve for as long as this new Israeli government remains in power.