Doha, Qatar

One of the few pleasant surprises of 2009 was that the world’s biggest economies were able to concentrate on healing themselves without any major wars or world-shaking political or geopolitical disruptions. What are the odds that 2010 will be so benign? I’d say quite low. No question, the world’s major economies badly need 2010 to be another quiet year politically and geopolitically, but that will require, at a minimum, that three major struggles — the banks vs. President Obama, China vs. Google & friends, and the world vs. Iran — can be defused with win-win compromises rather than win-lose confrontations.

Banks are like the heart that pumps blood — credit — to our country’s corporate muscles. If that heart is malfunctioning, any recovery will be anemic. But heart surgery is a very complex thing. After all, a year ago there was a great clamor to nationalize some major banks; that would not have been a good idea. Moreover, our financial crisis was the result of a broad national breakdown in ethics — from borrowers to lenders to rating agencies to lawmakers. Don’t think for a second that bank reform alone is a cure-all.

We need a new banking regulatory regime that reduces recklessness without reducing risk-taking, which is the key to capitalism. It’s complicated. If the leading banks had any brains, they would take the initiative and offer their own ideas. Surely, they can’t argue everything is just fine given the number of bank failures. Let the administration and other leading central banks also offer their ideas, and then let’s try to forge something smart.

A senior British Treasury official told me at a background briefing in Davos: “Even America isn’t big enough to solve this problem on its own. This is a global problem. Be sure you understand the problem before you fix it.”

Memo to China: You are playing with fire. Sure, the U.S. also has its hackers, but industrial espionage on this scale is not coming out of the U.S. If this continues, China will see more than Google pull up stakes. And how many U.S. companies in the future will ever want to buy Chinese-made software or computer systems, which might only make it easier for Beijing to penetrate their businesses? This hacking story is huge and brewing. If it explodes, at a time of rising tensions over U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, fasten your seat belts.

Finally, the U.S. and its allies are about to ratchet up pressure on Iran by unveiling a new economic-sanctions resolution at the U.N. aimed at Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps and the vast network of financial institutions it controls inside Iran. If the U.N. will not act, the U.S. and key allies intend to impose the sanctions on their own. The Revolutionary Guards have become the regime’s primary tool for suppressing the popular uprising there and for protecting Iran’s nuclear program. If these sanctions prove incapable of getting Iran to halt its suspected nuclear weapons program, the chances for a U.S. or Israeli military strike against Iran will grow very high before the end of this year. Here in the Persian Gulf, apprehension is off the charts.

The economics of recovery were always hard, but in 2010 politics and geopolitics could make them even harder. Pray that cooler heads prevail.

Thomas Friedman is a columnist for The New York Times.