After previous years had made humanity suffer to a level that made it open to accepting new development paths, 2024 could open the door to the establishment of international management processes that would allow better adaptation of the countries of the planet to the world that comes.
The historian, demographer and sociologist Emmanuel Todd, who announced the fall of the USSR in 1976 by focusing on its infant mortality index, considers that the defeat of the West is underway and that the world is at risk. on the eve of a shift, the disintegration of the values of the old world order leading to wars and violence. He predicts this fall in the context of the conflict in Ukraine.
This is somewhat the same vision held by the academic and former diplomat Gilles Andréani, who also considers that the new world order which began to take hold after the fall of the Berlin Wall dissolved in the rivalries between powers in recent years. In 2024, he sees a fractured and chaotic planet, on which there is a return to high-intensity interstate wars, international organizations no longer allowing tensions to be channeled and being openly contested by a growing number of states, victims of nationalist forces. and populists.
Geopolitologist Bruno Tertrais, deputy director of the Foundation for Strategic Research, is a bit more optimistic and considers that “2024 will be a year of trials for democracies”, which will have to resist waves of disinformation. According to him, there is currently a “lukewarm war” between autocracies and democracies, blocs which are not homogeneous and with shifting contours. However, he is skeptical of the idea of de-Westernization of the world, since all the major institutions created after 1945 by Westerners — the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank — remain essential for the developing countries.
He further notes that so-called Western standards are even more attractive for a majority of the planet’s inhabitants than those defended by Russia or China. If individual freedoms do not please autocratic governments, they continue to appeal to populations, as shown by the direction of migratory flows.
A note of hope
According to the Franco-Lebanese writer Amin Maalouf, for the first time in the history of humanity, it has the tools to solve its problems, but must decide to modify its way of organizing the world as well as the relationships between countries and between individuals so that everyone can face the challenges together. With the United Nations running out of steam, a revival of humanity, currently without a model, would have become vital.
The implementation and acceptance of new ways of doing things go through three phases, namely the unfreezing of the processes to be changed, the implementation of the desired modifications and, finally, the crystallization of new management techniques. The recent series of global crises shows that the old ways of doing things are no longer effective enough for today’s needs.
Already criticized for the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and the war in Gaza in 2023 — all while the Earth enters a destructive phase due to climate change — , international regulatory mechanisms are currently weakened to the point where a new restructuring of the world that appears coherent and capable of being viewed favorably by part of humanity could begin to take hold in 2024.
The fact that half of the planet’s inhabitants will be called to participate in elections this year opens the door to concrete changes in the way relations between people and with the planet are managed. As these elections are held, the year will lose its malleability and the outcome of the polls could bring important changes for future generations.
In 2024, can we find new processes for managing international relations and global conflicts that will force both Israel and Russia to silence their weapons in Gaza and Ukraine?