2024 will be a stunning year: American democracy will face colossal challenges, the Middle East will face historic upheavals, and Russia will face a stubbornness that will cause it to lose as much dignity as years of economic growth.
I have always been wary of end-of-year predictions, while having difficulty controlling my curiosity. In international affairs, the issues are so often the culmination of long tangents, sometimes obscure forces and suddenly inspired (or stubborn) individuals that believing in any hypothesis is naive.
Despite everything, I offer you predictions that I have been juggling with for some time. Do I have full confidence in what I’m saying? Absolutely not! Are we likely to be in the same place in a year? I doubt it even more.
THE MIDDLE EAST, NEVER THE SAME AGAIN
Israel’s determination and the relentlessness that accompanies it will backfire. Public opinion in the democracies that have been most disgusted by Hamas’s barbaric assault will express suffocating sympathy for the Palestinian population.
Consequence: Israel will succeed in annihilating the threat from Hamas in the Gaza Strip, but will be subject to pressure that is impossible to dissipate in favor of increased, or even complete, political and territorial autonomy for the Palestinians.
THE POOR UKRAINIANS
Russia will fight against Ukraine as long as Kyiv does not comply with its demands: renunciation of its territories in the east, commitment not to join NATO, change of leadership. The Russian population will sacrifice its standard of living to the pyre of Vladimir Putin’s vanities.
Worse still, Moscow will abandon what remains of the democratic illusion to further solidify its alliances with the least friendly dictatorships on the planet, from Iran to North Korea, including China.
THE AMERICANS, BARELY BETTER
If Donald Trump manages to navigate through the legal pitfalls that await him – that is to say if he wins his cases or manages to have them postponed until after the presidential election – and if the Democrats persist with him oppose Joe Biden, the former president will make his return to the White House.
He will be able to thank the fervor of his supporters as much as the disaffection of a just large enough slice of Democratic voters – uninspired by the old president – to swing the result to the other camp; the type of disenchantment that Hillary Clinton suffered in 2016.
TRUMP HAS NOTHING TO LOSE
If Trump is stopped in his tracks by the law, his tax escapades or his authoritarian excesses, his supporters will be convinced that he will have been cornered by the Department of Justice, the state apparatus (this famous “swamp”). and all the tools within the reach of the presidency. One in two Americans will describe the presidential victory (Democratic, in this case) as illegitimate and the country will sink into a political, even constitutional, crisis.
I would so much like, in this case, to tell you that I will be wrong, that the loser will salute the victory of the winner and that the United States will sail peacefully towards full employment and inflation at 2%. This would, I fear, mislead you.
I promise you, no matter what happens, to accompany you throughout the next year, trying to understand where our world is going… and see if I was right, even just a little. Happy New Year everyone!
FIVE BIG FOREIGN POLICY PREDICTIONS FOR 2024
(according to experts at Foreign Policy)
1. United States – Presidential election
“After a rematch exhausting between Biden and Trump, Joe Biden will narrowly win a second term, during a new electoral cycle marred by misinformation.
2. Ukraine – The impasse
“2024 will look a lot like the bloody but static clashes of World War I in 1915 and 1916, with deadlier battles yielding few territorial gains.”
3. North Korea – Nuclear Power
“North Korea conducted six nuclear tests between 2006 and 2017; 2024 will be the year it carries out a seventh, causing another major diplomatic crisis on the Korean Peninsula.”
4. China – Tensions in the South China Sea
“China has spent a decade building artificial islands, real airfields and fear among the region’s residents. The Pentagon expects this trend to continue into 2024, denouncing the increasing recklessness of Chinese ships and aircraft throughout the area of operations.
5. Malaria – The great mobilization
On an encouraging note to end…
“Thanks to scientific breakthroughs leading to the development of vaccines against malaria (which is estimated to have caused 619,000 deaths in Africa in 2021, many of them children), the global health community should make real, tangible progress and verifiable in 2024 towards achieving the WHO goal of eliminating malaria by 2030.”