CNN –
As we enter 2024, what lies ahead on the global stage may seem more uncertain than it has in years.
To help you understand, here are some key topics to keep in mind.
The new year begins with Israel further expanding its offensive in the Gaza Strip in response to the Hamas attacks on October 7th.
International pressure on Israel to limit the duration and intensity of its war is growing amid global outrage that people in the Gaza Strip are trapped in mortal danger, without vital supplies or access to health care, while disease spreads in overcrowded humanitarian camps. Nevertheless, Israel has redoubled its efforts and vowed that the war against Hamas will continue for many months.
The risk of a major Middle East conflict is escalating.
There are increasing cross-border clashes on the Lebanese-Israeli border between the Iran-backed Islamist paramilitary group Hezbollah and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
Proxy attacks by Iranian-backed groups in Iraq — like the recent attack on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad — are becoming bolder and more frequent. And further attacks by Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen on global shipping routes through the Red Sea and Suez Canal could send energy prices soaring.
There is also a risk that other extremist groups in the region will be fueled by opportunism and/or grievances. It goes without saying that a formal normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, an agreement that appeared to be done before October 7, is now off the table.
The United States' early unequivocal support for Israel's attacks on Gaza has damaged the image it projects as a guarantor of human rights and international law – reputational damage from which Washington will not recover in the short term, despite a decisive change in tone.
By 2024, the United States and its allies must strike a balance between retaliation and deterrence of proxy attacks while keeping their responses below a threshold that would trigger a major conflict.
In February, Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine enters its third year.
Neither Russia nor Ukraine show any signs of victory or are willing to compromise on their incompatible goals. Ukraine is fighting for its survival, territorial integrity and sovereignty, while Russia aims at the so-called “denazification” and demilitarization of Ukraine and preventing its desire to join NATO and other Western organizations. The fact that Russia describes its unprovoked invasion as “denazification” has been rejected by historians and political observers.
Putin is starting the year more confidently than the year before.
Ukraine's long-awaited counteroffensive in 2023 did not regain the momentum that Kiev had gained by the end of 2022. Russia's war stocks are being replenished by both Iran and North Korea. In addition, the world's largest country by area always has a troop advantage in numbers that it can rely on, unlike Ukraine, which will increasingly suffer from labor shortages next year.
Europe has limited ammunition and military hardware it can supply to Ukraine, and its own supplies are exhausted. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's worst fears of cracks in Western unity have also come true: the political division in the USA and Europe is now hindering the provision of military and economic aid. Zelensky's trip to Washington, DC in December raised $200 million – instead of the $61 billion he wanted – for new ammunition because Republicans in Congress refused to budge on border policy changes demanded in return
Days later, Hungary blocked a 50 billion euro ($55 billion) European Union aid package for Ukraine. This trend is likely to continue to hamper Ukraine's military efforts next year, as both the US and EU will prioritize domestic issues ahead of their elections.
Ukraine could then focus on a defensive approach, training new recruits and defense production. Crimea, illegally annexed by Russia in 2014, will remain the strategic target that Ukraine wants to attack and challenge Russia's dominance in the Black Sea.
Although Ukraine is now officially on the path to EU membership, allies' rhetorical and institutional support will likely continue to be at times at odds with their actual military and financial support.
Of course, the future of this conflict depends in large part on who is at the helm of Ukraine's largest source of financial and military aid – the United States. Moscow is in favor of the return of the Republican leading candidate Donald Trump in the fall.
3. Elections, certain and uncertain
Elections are always important, especially when so many key players are voting at a time of global instability. In 2024, 2 billion people will vote in a record year.
The United States' Trump could potentially return to the White House in the November 5 election. Trump has a significant lead over his Republican rivals for their party's nomination, but the Colorado Supreme Court's ruling that he cannot run in that state in 2021 because of the insurrection case, followed by a similar decision in Maine, could be a foretaste to the obstacles he will face.
There is no precedent for a candidate to be under indictment. The mobilizing effect that Trump's claims of a legal “witch hunt” had on his base is unlikely to translate to the broader electorate. However, President Joe Biden is not giving Democrats a boost – opinion polls suggest the majority of voters think the octogenarian is too old for re-election and his approval ratings are low. As always, the swing states are the places to keep an eye on.
India will hold the world's largest democratic elections in April and May.
Incumbent Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are expected to secure a third term with popular but religiously divisive policies. Despite inflation and purchasing power problems, Modi enjoys broad support among India's Hindu majority, based on patriotism and an assertive foreign policy. Critics counter that India's once secular and democratic founding ethos is fading into the background and minorities are feeling unsafe.
Russia goes to the polls on March 17th. Given the imprisonment of prominent opposition leader Alexei Navalny in a remote Siberian penal colony and the widespread suppression of independent media, there will be no surprises here. However, the level of voter turnout will be revealing. If Russia While the elections provide limited evidence of the government's popularity, low voter turnout could increase pressure on the Kremlin and its stalled invasion of Ukraine. Co-autocracies Belarus And Iran also hold elections.
There will be an early election conflict if in less than two weeks Taiwan Votes that set the tone toward China for the next four years. If the winner is Lai Ching-te of the Democratic Progressive Party, previously a stubborn supporter of Taiwan independence, relations with Beijing are likely to worsen or remain frozen. The rival Kuomintang (KMT) and the Taiwan People's Party The candidates are promising less tension with China, although all three parties reject Beijing's “one country, two systems” principle.
Elsewhere, for the first time since he came to power three decades ago, South Africa The African National Congress (ANC) faces a real risk of losing its parliamentary majority in the 2024 elections. Unemployment, an unstable economy and crime have broken the ANC's dominance. Party leader and President Cyril Ramaphosa, who took office in 2018 after his scandal-plagued predecessor Jacob Zuma was effectively forced out of office, subsequently faced questions of his own over alleged corruption, which he denied.
As the wars in Eastern Europe and the Middle East show, we are at a turning point in geopolitics.
The tendency toward authoritarianism and the long-predicted break in Western hegemony have finally emerged. There has been a definitive shift away from American unipolarity, with China and Russia taking advantage of this retreat. The geopolitical axes of power are loosely realigning, with the US and the EU on one side and an anti-American axis of China, Iran, Russia and North Korea on the other. This leads to bolder, less predictable actions and a more dangerous and uncertain global environment.
We will continue to see this change, which could be exacerbated by the emergence of non-aligned countries and the rise of competing blocs such as BRICS.
Territorial disputes and revanchism are increasing. Azerbaijan's lightning conquest of the long-disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region is just one example.
India and China continue to fight over and militarize the world's longest disputed border that separates them. Smaller powers can take advantage of the West's retreat and the blind eye that rising superpowers have to their expansionist ambitions.
At the same time, the increasing use of the United Nations Security Council's veto power is paralyzing and inspires little confidence in the ability of supranational institutions to deter or respond to a world experiencing the greatest conflict since World War II.
The inability of regional and international policymakers to negotiate a rapid return to civilian rule in response to a coup surge in Africa is also a sign of a lack of effective sanctions and leadership.
This increases the risk of infection, and other countries could potentially follow suit – especially as the world's attention turns to the Middle East and, to a lesser extent, Ukraine.
In 2024, there is likely to be a tension between the exponential growth of artificial intelligence (AI) and attempts to regulate it by government institutions that are notoriously lacking in technical know-how.
Generative AI – which generates new data such as text, images or designs by learning from existing data – dates back to the 1950s (we have to give credit to Alan Turing here). But only now are we truly witnessing the paradigm shift occurring as AI technology becomes widespread and impacts all aspects of our lives.
What does this mean in practice? Huge advances in imaging, design, speech synthesis, translation and automation. The rise of AI assistants and personalizing your tech interactions. Instead of text models like ChatGPT, image generating models like DALL-E 2, and language models being separate, they are combined for a more holistic interface.
As we know, the rapid development of AI also brings with it new ethical challenges.
As AI systems become more advanced, questions about privacy, bias and accountability become more relevant. How do we ensure that AI systems respect human rights and freedoms? How do we monitor and prevent AI interference in democratic processes? How do we mitigate the risk of bias in AI decisions? These are just some of the questions that policymakers, researchers and society at large must address.
Increasingly sophisticated AI systems require significant computing power – meaning the industry will focus on expensive chips and quantum computers. The latter is the next frontier in pioneering research based on the peculiar and counterintuitive principles of subatomic physics. The information processing speeds of quantum computing and its data analysis are in a different stratosphere. The integration of quantum computing into AI will result in models being trained faster and having far better self-development capabilities.
AI experts cannot even comprehend the future scale and impact of the technology – a worrying thought given the pace of change and its pervasive impact on humanity. But in the open and uncertain, even in the pessimistic, there is the potential for surprises and unexpected progress. On the threshold of 2024, humanity can at least hold on to this proven constant.