Foreign Policy: Predictions for ten global crises in the year 2024

Foreign Policy published an article by Robbie Grammer, in which he presents some predictions about what will happen in the year 2024, based on interviews conducted over the past few weeks and months with dozens of decision makers, law makers in parliaments, and foreign policy experts, hoping that… Most predictions are wrong!

First of all, by all accounts, 2023 has been a crazy year.

There was the Chinese spy balloon incident, the sudden death of the head of the Russian “Wagner” group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the war between Israel and “Hamas” that shook the already shaky Middle East, the continuation of Russia’s war against Ukraine, the bitter conflict in Sudan, and the attack launched by Azerbaijan on… Armenia regarding the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Looking forward to 2024, there are a lot of events in the world related to national security, and then there are the elections in Taiwan, India, the European Union, Mexico, South Africa, Indonesia, and let’s not forget the United States.

In the following lines, Grammer in his article presented some predictions for what could happen in 2024, some of which may come true, and others may not come true, but in any case, a frightening near future awaits us!

First; Let’s start with the easy prediction: the US election results.

What will happen in the US presidential elections?

We expect that after the rematch between US President Joe Biden and his predecessor, Donald Trump, the former will achieve a narrow victory for a second term, with the latter screaming about “stolen votes”.

On the other hand, we expect that the Republican Party will regain control of the Senate by a margin of two or three seats, and the Democratic Party will gain narrow control of the House of Representatives by less than ten seats, setting the stage for a complex and chaotic political headache.

second; US efforts to resume any real dialogue with Pyongyang have failed, and at the same time North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is working slowly but surely to expand his country’s nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities despite harsh international sanctions.

North Korea conducted six explosive nuclear tests between 2006 and 2017, and we expect that 2024 will be the year in which it will achieve the seventh test, which will constitute a major diplomatic crisis on the Korean Peninsula that reminds us of the decades of US pressure to force Pyongyang to surrender and abandon its quest for… The bomb had all failed.

Third; Six coups have occurred in West Africa in recent years as a result of fragile democracies capitulating to military coups amid a war against Islamist terrorist groups that are gaining ground throughout the Sahel region.

The United States and its Western allies, specifically France, pinned most of their hopes on Niger as their best hope for obtaining a stronghold of democracy and stability to participate in anti-terrorism operations, until Niger fell into the quagmire of a coup last July.

We expect that the next fall will be Chad, the next partner, “the last best hope” for the West in combating terrorism in the region.

Chad’s leader, Mohamed Idriss Deby, son of the late Chadian leader Idriss Deby, seized power after his father’s death in 2021 in a sort of coup.

Now, his grip on power is fragile, and it’s not clear whether he can overcome the odds of escaping another coup in Africa’s coup belt.

Fourth; The Sudanese military leader, Abdel Fattah al Burhan, will be overthrown.

The conflict in Sudan has taken a dark turn in recent weeks, even as the war between Israel and Hamas has dominated global attention.

Speaking of coups, we expect that Abdel Fattah al Burhan, the commander of the Sudanese Armed Forces and the de facto president of the country, will be overthrown by members of his army after embarrassing setbacks and defeats against the rival Rapid Support Forces led by Mohamed Hemedti Dagalo.

Recently, the city of Wad Madani, once a relatively stable bastion of peace and humanitarian operations, quickly fell to the Rapid Support Forces in a major blow to the Sudanese Armed Forces.

Regardless of Burhan’s prospects of remaining in power, Sudan has become one of the worst (and most tragically ignored) humanitarian crises in the world, and this is unlikely to change in 2024.

Fifth; The road will be blocked in Ukraine, partly because of slow support from the United States and other Western allies.

We all know that Ukraine didn’t have enough weapons, equipment, or ammunition to blow a hole in Russia’s well-fortified defensive lines in eastern Ukraine during its counterattack in 2023, but also that Russian forces do not have the capacity, morale, training, or effective combat prowess to make gains. Great for any counterattacks of its own.

Therefore, we expect that the year 2024 will look very similar to the bloody battles of World War I in 1915 and 1916, with the bombardment of entrenched positions with heavy artillery, and bloodier battles that don’t result in significant territorial gains, and the defeat of Russian President Vladimir Putin will be only minimally visible; The death toll on both sides rises.

Sixth; We also expect more money to be pumped into Ukraine.

Since Russia launched its invasion, Western officials have been grappling with what to do about the assets worth $300 billion from Russian oligarchs – businessmen who made huge fortunes in the Soviet republics after they disintegrated during the 1990s.

Some have called for… Countries want to confiscate those funds and send them to Ukraine, while other countries are concerned because it’s an unparalleled precedent in protecting sovereign assets in the eyes of international law, even if it comes to Russia.

Hence, we expect that 2024 will be the year in which a breakthrough will be achieved in this issue, which has been going on for almost two years, and that the United States and its European allies will find a legal way to transfer all that frozen money to Ukraine, especially after the American funds allocated to Ukraine caused a battle.

A thorny political issue in Congress, as more European Union funds were blocked by Vladimir Putin’s ally in the European Union, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

Seventh; The war between Israel and Hamas won’t expand to a full second front.

One of the biggest fears in the war between Israel and Hamas now is that Hamas’s ally – the best equipped and most solid in the fight in Lebanon – Hezbollah, will be fully immersed in the war against Israel.

However, we expect that even if Israel and Hezbollah were to exchange limited strikes on the northern border, this wouldn’t happen, thanks in part to the deterrent effect of the continued US aircraft carrier presence in the Mediterranean, and all the overwhelming firepower that comes with it.

This will make Hezbollah and its supporters in Iran refrain from delving deeper into the fighting.

Eighth; More dangerous maneuvers in the South China Sea, where China spent a decade building artificial islands and real airports, which constitutes a source of terror for everyone in the region.

As for the Taiwan Strait, it will be on the back burner, especially after the visit of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan in 2022, which prompted or perhaps coincided with a group of Chinese exercises.

Ninth; After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Finland and Sweden were quick to ignore their history of non-alignment and join NATO.

NATO countries welcomed both with open arms, or at least most of them did.

Finland joined, but Sweden didn’t, due to Türkiye’s procrastination for 18 months, as all NATO countries must give the green light for a new member to join.

Hungary, which is run by Russia’s ally as we mentioned above, also delayed Sweden’s accession to NATO as well.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan even linked Sweden’s accession to a US deal to approve sales of F-16 fighter jets to Türkiye.

Although Congress is angry with Recep Tayyip Erdogan, it also wants Sweden to join NATO as soon as possible.

Accordingly, we expect that American and Turkish negotiators will work with Sweden to overcome this impasse in 2024, and that NATO will expand from 31 to 32 member states.

Tenth; Let’s end on a happy note; Malaria remains the leading cause of childhood death worldwide, but recent scientific advances have led to the first ever invention of malaria vaccines.

There are now two vaccines that are slowly being distributed in disease-prone countries in Africa.

In 2021, an estimated 619,000 people died from malaria in Africa, many of them children.

Although supply shortages make it difficult to deploy these vaccines on a large scale in 2022 and 2023, we expect that the global health community will be able to overcome these bottlenecks in 2024, making real and tangible progress that can lead to achieving the WHO goal of eliminating… on malaria by 2030.