WHAT CAN WE EXPECT FROM 2024?

In his New Year’s mes­sage, the Sec­re­tary Gen­eral of the United Na­tions, António Guter­res, stressed that 2023 had been a year of great suf­fer­ing mainly be­cause of cli­mate change and war, and he urged a change of course to make 2024 “a year to re­build trust and re­store hope”.

Yet there is lit­tle ev­i­dence to sug­gest that those good wishes will be­come re­al­ity. The fore­casts of the Barcelona Cen­tre for In­ter­na­tional Af­fairs (Cidob) says 2024 will be a year of bal­lot boxes, with up to four bil­lion peo­ple vot­ing in some 70 coun­tries. Cidob also pre­dicts it will be a year of weapons, after 2023 was one of the most vi­o­lent years in re­cent his­tory with wars in Ukraine, Pales­tine, Sudan, Congo, eth­nic cleans­ing in Nagorno-Karabakh (South Cau­ca­sus) and Myan­mar and the sixth coup (Niger) in West Africa since 2020.

In short, we are see­ing an ac­cel­er­ated process of the “dereg­u­la­tion of the use of force” in par­al­lel with the “ero­sion of in­ter­na­tional norms”, in Cidob’s words, and di­min­ish­ing trust in the lib­eral order and the UN, which seems un­able to im­pose peace and in­ter­na­tional law. Nor can much be done by the In­ter­na­tional Crim­i­nal Court, which is­sued an ar­rest war­rant for Vladimir Putin, who will at­tend the G-20 meet­ing in Brazil, and which is pro­cess­ing a case brought by South Africa ac­cus­ing Is­rael of geno­cide in Gaza.

The fact that half of the world’s pop­u­la­tion will go to the polls in 2024 does not mean any great ad­vance for democ­racy, be­cause many elec­tions will be held in coun­tries with au­thor­i­tar­ian or hy­brid regimes (Rus­sia, Tunisia, Iran, Rwanda, Be­larus, Al­ge­ria...), where the elec­tion re­sults only serve to mask the re­peated vi­o­la­tion of human and civil rights.

Mean­while, in the United States, the duel be­tween de­mo­c­rat and con­ser­v­a­tive val­ues will come to a head in the US pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, with the polls pre­dict­ing a vic­tory for Don­ald Trump, if the courts do not pre­vent the for­mer pres­i­dent from stand­ing. That elec­tion will de­cide which of two oc­to­ge­nar­ian can­di­dates, who sup­port the Is­raeli gov­ern­ment de­spite the mas­sacre in Gaza, will pre­side over the home of democ­racy but with­out any pro­ject ca­pa­ble of lead­ing a world in­creas­ingly under the grow­ing in­flu­ence of the Chi­nese to­tal­i­tar­ian regime. The fear is that the US will con­tinue to over­see the de­cline of West­ern hege­mony and gov­er­nance based on the lib­eral order that emerged at the end of the Sec­ond World War.

Equally de­ci­sive will be the Eu­ro­pean Par­lia­ment elec­tions in June (there will also be elec­tions in 12 EU mem­ber states), which will re­veal how will­ing the Eu­ro­pean Peo­ple’s Party (EPP) is to do a deal with the rad­i­cal right and there­fore in­flu­ence the fu­ture of the EU in es­sen­tial as­pects such as cli­mate chal­lenge, the bloc’s en­large­ment, aid to Ukraine, and so on.

Also im­por­tant will be the elec­tions in the United King­dom, India, Tai­wan (with the im­pact it will have on China’s for­eign pol­icy and se­cu­rity in the South China Sea), In­done­sia, Mex­ico and, the on­go­ing war per­mit­ting, Ukraine.

It seems clear that cer­tain trends that have been noted in re­cent years will con­tinue in 2024. Among them is the grow­ing lack of in­ter­est in pol­i­tics and tra­di­tional par­ties, dis­trust of the con­ven­tional media and the pref­er­ence of the younger gen­er­a­tion for so­cial net­works, which can be fer­tile ground for fake news. There is also the emer­gence of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI), which will in­evitably pro­lif­er­ate no mat­ter how much we try to reg­u­late the harm­ful use of the tech­nol­ogy.

Dis­in­for­ma­tion and the volatil­ity of in­for­ma­tion, where new is­sues are con­stantly over­shad­ow­ing pre­vi­ous ones (Gaza has largely dis­placed Ukraine in the news), ex­ac­er­bate the feel­ing of po­lit­i­cal fa­tigue, weaken party loy­alty and can lead to un­pre­dictable elec­tion re­sults. This and a grow­ing lack of read­ing com­pre­hen­sion favour sim­plis­tic mes­sag­ing and po­lit­i­cal po­lar­i­sa­tion, fer­tile ground for the growth of pop­ulist and rad­i­cal po­lit­i­cal move­ments.

As for the medium term (up to 2030), the inter-in­sti­tu­tional work­ing group of the Eu­ro­pean Sys­tem for Strate­gic and Po­lit­i­cal Analy­sis (ESPAS) pointed out in 2016 a trend that is now con­sol­i­dated: the shift of eco­nomic and po­lit­i­cal weight to­wards Asia. Ac­cord­ing to the World Trade Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WTO), in 2022 Asia con­tributed 35.1% of world ex­ports (China, 14.8%); North Amer­ica, 13.3% (the USA, 8.5%), and the EU, 29.4% (Ger­many, 6.8%), while in 2003 the re­spec­tive per­cent­ages of these three re­gions were 26.1%, 15.6% and 46.2%. In ab­solute terms, China has be­come the world’s lead­ing ex­porter, sur­pass­ing the US by 30%.

At the same time, the sus­tained de­vel­op­ment of the world econ­omy has be­come more vul­ner­a­ble to the weak­nesses of glob­al­i­sa­tion, be­cause global in­ter­de­pen­dence does not run par­al­lel to the strength­en­ing of global gov­er­nance and the United Na­tions can­not cope with eth­nic cleans­ing, hu­man­i­tar­ian cat­a­stro­phes and the breach of in­ter­na­tional law. At the same time, the emer­gence of new re­gional pow­ers points to­wards a more mul­ti­po­lar world, al­though that does not mean that less con­flict and mul­ti­lat­eral poli­cies based on con­sen­sus are more likely.

As for the econ­omy, the world is still suf­fer­ing from the ef­fects of the crises of the last decade and a half: the sys­temic eco­nomic cri­sis of 2008 to 2014, the re­sult of the fi­nan­cial dereg­u­la­tions ini­ti­ated by Mar­garet Thatcher and Ronald Rea­gan 40 years ago (be­tween 1986 and 2004, world GDP – the real econ­omy – tripled; but fi­nan­cial prod­ucts mul­ti­plied by 98), the cli­mate cri­sis, which has wors­ened in re­cent decades and is di­rectly re­lated to the health cri­sis caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus (en­vi­ron­men­tal changes cause al­ter­ations in the virus reser­voir in an­i­mals, they mu­tate and through a mech­a­nism of zoono­sis peo­ple are in­fected with new dis­eases), which also dis­rupted world trade, and the war in Ukraine, which in 2022 led to an in­crease in the prices of fuel and ce­re­als.

The con­se­quences of the war and the pan­demic were global debt and an in­fla­tion­ary process that has forced a rise in in­ter­est rates to deal with the biggest in­crease in in­fla­tion in 40 years. Con­se­quently, weak growth (2.9%) is fore­cast for 2024 as long as in­ter­est rates re­main high and if the price of oil be­comes a source of ten­sion again in a con­text of high geopo­lit­i­cal un­cer­tainty.

In the short term, we can­not ex­pect much progress in en­ergy tran­si­tion after the semi-fail­ure of COP28 (United Na­tions Cli­mate Change Sum­mit). There are also no good prospects for the adop­tion of in­ter­na­tional com­mit­ments on the issue of forced dis­place­ment (at the end of Sep­tem­ber 2023 there were 114 mil­lion dis­placed peo­ple world­wide and 1.6 mil­lion new asy­lum seek­ers)or for re­duc­ing the ex­trac­tion of coal and hy­dro­car­bons.

In 2024, food prices will con­tinue to rise, new hu­man­i­tar­ian emer­gen­cies will occur and the El Niño phe­nom­e­non, which causes the Earth’s tem­per­a­tures to rise, will make the sit­u­a­tion worse by caus­ing ex­ces­sive pre­cip­i­ta­tion in some areas of South Amer­ica and the United States, the Horn of Africa and Cen­tral Asia, and con­versely se­vere droughts in Aus­tralia, In­done­sia and parts of South­east Asia. The World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO) fore­casts that food in­se­cu­rity and mal­nu­tri­tion are likely to be ex­ac­er­bated by the ef­fects of El Niño. And it also warns of “the threat of an­other emerg­ing pathogen with an even more deadly po­ten­tial [than Covid-19].”

In con­clu­sion, the prospects do not look great de­spite a pos­si­ble UN agree­ment to end plas­tic pol­lu­tion or the process to make gen­der apartheid a crime against hu­man­ity. There is a glim­mer of hope in the will­ing­ness of many young peo­ple to mo­bilise to de­fend the en­vi­ron­ment, and women’s and LGTBI+ rights or against racism, the crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of im­mi­gra­tion, the arms trade and the war in Gaza.

analy­sis in­ter­na­tional