Looking into a Cloudy Crystal Ball at 2025

It seems we’ll enter the coming year with a full plate, as the world faces challenges from Africa to Latin America, Belarus, Myanmar, and beyond.

By Anil Madan

The major hotspots of the world that we have viewed with fearful apprehension continue to be such: the Middle East, where Israel’s attacks on Gaza continue, and the Iranians and Houthis inject varying degrees of uncertainty; Ukraine, where Russia’s ongoing war continues to obliterate its infrastructure and make life miserable; Taiwan, where China continues to threaten a blockade or worse and carries out naval and air maneuvers. We can add Syria to these.

Add to these geopolitical issues, universal concerns about the future of Europe and NATO, catastrophic weather and climate events, plastics pollution, famines, repression, human rights abuses, and disease, and it seems that we will enter 2025 with our plates full. From Africa to Latin America, to Belarus, to Myanmar, and beyond, the world is beset with problems. If Donald Trump’s second term as President generates what his detractors fear as their worst nightmares, we might see full plates heaped to overflowing.

Generating a sense of foreboding is easy, but fear is not necessarily predictive. The irony-laced apocryphal Chinese curse — “May you live in interesting times” — suggests, with its predicted overtones, that the year ahead will indeed be “interesting times”.

An earth-shaking turn in the Middle East

Events in the Middle East have certainly taken an earth-shaking turn. The fall of Bashar al-Assad, as welcome as the fall of any inhumane tyrant ever was, is much better understood as a wider collapse of the Axis of Discord and Hate championed by the twin pillars of evil, the Ayatollahs of Iran and Putin of Russia.

For a while, it appeared that Iran and Hamas, aided by Hezbollah and the Houthis, had achieved a breach in Israel’s defenses. But that all fell apart as Israel systematically decimated the leaders of both Hamas and Hezbollah, degraded and destroyed their respective destructive capabilities. The fall of Syria is widely attributed to the failure of Russia and Iran to continue their support of Assad, but this does not explain why his forces suddenly capitulated. Somehow, the Syrian opposition to Assad, led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), collaborated with the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (comprising detractors from Assad’s forces) to overthrow Assad.

This, of course, has thrown Syria into turmoil. Turkiye is a major player and views the Kurdish YPG militia — the dominant player in the Syrian Democratic Forces supported by the US — as nothing more than a part of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militia. The PKK is banned in Turkiye and has been engaged in a rebellion in that countryfor 40 years. Complicating all this is the fact that the leader of HTS, Abu Mohammad al-Julani (also known as Ahmad Hussein al-Sharaa), was a member of the Islamic State group ISIS. So, we have Turkiye and Israel vying for control of parts of Syria, the US ambivalent about embracing a former ISIS leader notwithstanding his declarations that he is inclined to make Syria an inclusive and democratic state, Russia anxious to reclaim its air and naval facilities, and Iran viewing with alarm the severing of its Shia Crescent and supply routes to Hezbollah. Add to this the uncertainty of what Biden will do as he exits and Trump as he assumes the presidency, and the situation remains fluid.

Who will prevail in Syria? Perhaps Turkiye? It is not clear. For now, absent major changes, the losers appear to be Iran and Russia and perhaps even the US. Will Donald Trump see his way clear to establishing a presence in Syria and an alliance with al-Sharaa? I am skeptical. Trump has not shown any appetite for alliances especially those in which the US is providing military support for third parties. It seems that Israel and Turkiye will stake out their respective areas of control. From a western standpoint, at best, Turkiye will be a proxy for NATO, but at worst, Erdogan will have delusions of reconstituting at least part of the Ottoman Empire and act independently of NATO and Europe. Who knows what alliances he may make with Russia or Iran? The wildcard here is that Erdogan is not likely to want to be seen as supporting a Syrian nation that is not committed to Islam. And whether Ahmad Hussein al-Sharaa is truly secular or putting on a good act, remains to be seen.

This brings us back to Israel which had two imperatives and now three. The first two were to defang the Iranian threat while finding a way to cabin Hamas and Hezbollah. Now, we must add the Houthis to that mix. It appears that Hamas and Hezbollah have been dealt major blows by Israel. By the confluence of events described above, Iran has suffered a setback. Will we see the end of the Iranian clerical theocracy? Many commentators suggest precisely such an eventuality. Whether there is enough organized opposition within Iran to bring that about is unknown. Can such opposition spring up and coalesce? That too is unknown, but it can happen in Iran as it did in Syria. If Israel can successfully attack Iran’s nuclear installations and further destabilize the Ayatollahs, the odds of such an uprising increase.

The Houthis have been emboldened but have the shown poor judgment in making missile attacks on both Israel and US warships. It is unlikely that either Israel or the US (whether it is President Biden as he exits or President Trump as he assumes control) will let these actions go unanswered. It is but a matter of time before Israel and the US silence these attackers. If there is anything I am reasonably sure of in 2025, it is that the Houthis will be brought to heel.

Two-state solution

As for Israel, Hamas, and the West Bank, I simply do not see a two-state solution as being viable in the short-term. Neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians seem enthusiastic about the conditions required to make it happen. The Palestinians know that Israel will never accept an armed state on its border. Israel knows that the Palestinians will demand the right to arm as a necessary condition of sovereignty and to maintain their security. It is a non-starter. Meanwhile, it is not clear to what extent the Israeli hard right wingers are emboldened about the prospect of annexing parts of Gaza and the West Bank. This situation is just too volatile to allow any predictions.

Ukraine presents another mess that seems incapable of resolution so long as Ukraine and Russia have the capacity to continue fighting. The Ukrainians have defied all odds and stood up to the Russians. But recent reports confirm what I predicted shortly after Putin started his attacks: that Ukraine would run short of manpower and supplies. Reports from Ukraine confirm that there is a severe shortage of manpower, and the Ukrainians are increasingly using drones to counter the Russians. Meanwhile, Russia has suffered massive casualties among its forces and lost significant military material.

Enter Donald Trump and who knows what will happen. He has boasted that he will be able to stop the war in short order. To most observers, this means withdrawing support for Ukraine and pressuring Zelenskyy to cede territory in exchange for peace. The problem with such an approach is that Ukraine will be left without security guarantees that have any meaning. Recent reports show that Putin continues to chart his own course and showing no inclination to accommodate Trump’s presumed approach to a cessation of hostilities. Whether that will motivate Trump to make even more concessions or to harden his negotiating position is unknown. For now, the sad truth is that the devastation of Ukraine is likely to grind on.

Trump, an unknown commodity

Trump remains an unknown commodity when it comes to Taiwan and NATO/Europe as well. He has declared that he will not come to Taiwan’s aid if China attacks and offered the laughable explanation that Taiwan has stolen America’s semiconductor business. How allowing Taiwan’s semiconductor business to fall under Chinese control helps his cause is not explained. But then Trump’s logic is difficult to discern if it exists at all.

Will Trump see an independent Taiwan as a key part of America’s strategic need to keep the waters of the Pacific, and the so-called South China Sea free, and to keep ocean-based trade flowing? These are the unknowns about Trump and cause for the unease and trepidation that people around the world have.

Going beyond the question of Trump’s support for Ukraine, Trump’s intentions vis-à-vis NATO are also unknown. But there is some indication that his continuing talk about breaking NATO up is just bluster. He has pivoted to demanding that NATO members spend an even larger percentage of GDP on defense. Ultimately, the defense of NATO depends on American technology and America’s ability to deploy the military might of a coordinated NATO. Calling on NATO members to dedicate more of their spending on defense is a boon to the US defense industry and reduces the ability of European countries to compete with the US. Does Trump calculate this way? Who knows?

Meanwhile, Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer is not sanguine about security. He is calling for a more robust alliance between Britain and Europe to provide for common defense and security. This shows the seriousness of concerns about Trump’s unpredictability.

COP29 and climate change

As I have previously written, the COP29 climate change meeting in Azerbaijan produced little of any value and no more progress on the goals set by the Paris Climate Accords. Trump seems likely, once again, to withdraw the US from those accords and this will likely put the COP29 “commitments” which were anything but binding in further disarray. The poorer nations will have to wait for another day before they can convince the richer nations to allot more funds for their perceived needs for mitigation and adaptation to climate change.

The plastics pollution treaty also seems unlikely to gain any traction. So long as we continue to see de facto blame-shifting among the factions that represent the feedstock stage, the design stage, and the waste management stage of plastics production and design, and disposal, we will make no progress. Each of these sectors must acknowledge that it has a shared responsibility for the problem. Even so, we must not assume that recognition of a shared responsibility for creating a problem necessarily leads people to accept a shared responsibility for its solution.

That seems to be true of most problems that humans have caused.

Cheerz…
Bwana

Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 27 December 2024