2024 Geopolitical Review

2024 will go down in history as a year of significant changes across the world. The present piece is by no means comprehensive but aims to touch upon some of the top developments of the past 12 months. First and foremost among them is Trump’s historic political comeback that was made possible by winning enough hearts and minds since 2021 that his victory was “too big to rig” as his supporters described it. Americans want to improve the economy, are tired of Ukraine, and want an end to the “culture wars”.

Biden’s presidency was disastrous, and the Democrats swapping him out for Kamala turned out to be a mistake. They should have held a real primary to pick the objectively best candidate from their side. Their corruption was thus the fatal flaw that doomed them to defeat, though perhaps nobody could have beat Trump after he survived July’s assassination attempt and became unprecedentedly popular afterwards. In any case, his return to the White House will be a seismic event for the world.

He's more experienced, mature, and a much better judge of character than during his first term. This makes him more resilient to pressure from the US’ permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (“deep state”) and thus raises the chances that he’ll deliver on more of his promises. About those, he plans to massively deport illegal immigrants, improve the economy (including through new trade deals and tariffs), and get rid of “political correctness” in the government.

On the foreign policy front, it’s possible that he’ll resume his hostility against Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, the last of which just successfully held elections over the summer and thwarted yet another US destabilization plot that aimed to overthrow its legitimate government. That was another significant development over the past year which showed how resilient the state and society had become. That said, they’ll likely need to brace for more meddling if Trump reverts to its old ways from his first term.

Observers are closely watching whether Trump will be able to broker a Russian-Ukrainian peace deal or at least a ceasefire like he promised. NATO’s proxy war on Russia through Ukraine surpassed 1,000 days last month, and the military-strategic dynamics continue trending in Moscow’s favor. Slowly but surely, it’s demilitarizing Ukraine and liberating the regions that voted to join Russia in September 2022. Zelensky’s term expired earlier this year too and he’s now even more illegitimate than ever.

Another relevant development was Russia’s recent use of the Oreshenik long-range hypersonic missile, which has the power of a nuclear bomb when several are used at once but without the radioactive fallout and importantly can’t be intercepted. This confirms Russia’s conventional military superiority, but it needs to scale production of these missiles in order to better leverage this in pursuit of victory. Putin confirmed that this is underway, and the results should soon be seen next year on the battlefield.

The impending Battle of Pokrovsk and that city’s liberation by Russia could become a watershed event in this conflict since there are only open fields beyond it so Russia might finally achieve its hoped-for military breakthrough for triggering Ukraine’s collapse and ending the conflict. There’s recently been talk about Trump wanting to introduce European peacekeepers to the conflict zone, but it remains to be seen whether he’ll attempt this next year amid threats by Russia to strike any invading forces.

2024 was also a milestone year for West Asia. The wars between Israel and the Iranian-led Resistance Axis – which have been fought in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and even inside of Israel and Iran after their tit-for-tat strikes – are drawing to a close. Israel appears to have won or at least achieved more of its goals than Iran and its allies did. There were three turning points: Iranian President Raisi’s death in a mysterious helicopter crash, Hezbollah chief Nasrallah’s assassination, and the fall of Assad in Syria.

Many suspect that foul play was responsible for the first despite the government claiming otherwise, the second was the result of a large-scale Israeli strike on residential areas, while the third was brought about by a confluence of complex factors beyond the scope of this analysis. The emerging outcome is that Israel and Turkiye are replacing Iran’s lost regional influence, a former Al Qaeda leader now controls Syria, and Iran’s “reformist” government might cut a deal with Trump from a position of weakness.

2024 also saw two impressive multipolar achievements to somewhat balance out the setbacks that were experienced in West Asia. These are the strengthening of the Sahelian Alliance and October’s BRICS Summit in Kazan. The first saw Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger consolidate their security, political, and economic ties in the face of joint US-French terrorist provocations aimed at restoring unipolar influence. Their expulsion from this resource-rich and geostrategic region is a game-changer.

It's inspiring a continental-wide movement against neo-imperialism that’s breathing fresh life into multipolar processes across Africa, which is slated to become the most populous continent later this century with attendant global economic influence. Reforming its countries’ relations with their former colonizers and current neo-colonizers will deprive the West of the advantages that it’s exploited to maintain its unipolar hegemony and therefore accelerate the global systemic transition to multipolarity.

This is a work in progress to be sure and some serious challenges might soon present themselves, which could lead to unexpected setbacks depending on what follows, but the point is that nothing like this has ever happened in this part of the Global South before. The combination of Russian security assistance and Chinese economic assistance is helping to stabilize the anti-imperialist states at the forefront of this continental movement and creating a new model for promoting multipolarity in Africa.

As regards the latest BRICS Summit, while expectations of them unveiling BRICS Bridge, BRICS Clear, and BRICS Pay turned out to be premature, the event itself was a stunning success in that it brought together several dozen world leaders who all share the multipolar worldview. This proved that Russia isn’t isolated like Western propagandists claimed but has become the center of the emerging world order. The participants also released a joint statement covering a wide array of issues on which they all agree.

Although BRICS is more of a forum for sharing insight about financial multipolarity and networking between its members’ elites, it still serves an important purpose in that it’s becoming a mini-UN of sorts. It’s still in its infancy and hasn’t yet developed a working culture like the UN has, but it has enormous potential to shape the future due to the growing number of participants. The latest summit saw around a dozen countries become BRICS partners, which further expands the group’s reach.

With time, BRICS will develop its own mechanisms and momentum that’ll empower its members and partners to collectively effect more tangible change, particularly with regards to reforming the global financial system so that it becomes more equitable and just for the Global Majority. India and South Asia as a whole will play a major role in all of this due to their humungous demographic weight and rapidly growing economic influence, but the latest year’s events presage potential turmoil there.

India accused the US of meddling in its national elections, which followed the US accusing it late last year of conspiring to assassinate a dual American citizen on US soil who Delhi designated as a terrorist. Charges were also filed against business magnate Gautam Adani, which India considers to be politicized and an unfair attempt to undermine the competition that his firms pose to Western businesses. There’s also the US-backed regime change in neighboring Bangladesh that placed ultra-nationalists in power.

This new ruling arrangement has taken a very tough stance against India despite India being Bangladesh’s traditional ally and largely responsible for the success of its independence struggle. In parallel with these developments, the latest phase of Myanmar’s long-running civil war is spilling over into Northeastern India, which has a history of identity-driven separatist conflicts. This trend could be exploited by the US, which backs some anti-government groups in Myanmar, to threaten India by proxy.

Other regional fault lines include Myanmar and Bangladesh after the Buddhist nationalist Arakan Army seized control of the joint border earlier this month and reiterated its accusations that Dhaka backs Rohingya jihadist groups. Pakistan, despite being a traditional US ally and whose current government was placed into power by what some allege was an American-backed post-modern coup, is also under pressure after Washington just imposed another round of sanctions against its ballistic missile program.

On top of that, Pakistan has been afflicted by a sharp upturn in terrorist attacks by the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), who’ve reportedly allied and are accused of receiving support from the Afghan Taliban. This has worsened Afghan-Pakistan ties and raised concerns about the possible outbreak of a conventional war between them. To make matters even more unsettling for Pakistan, Trump’s special missions envoy Ric Grenell is advocating for Imran Khan’s release from jail.

The former Prime Minister alleges that he’s being politically persecuted for his multipolar foreign policy and particularly his desire to comprehensively expand relations with Russia. His scandalous ouster in April 2022 triggered cascading crises that ruined the economy and politically destabilized Pakistan. Khan had pretty decent relations with Trump so it’s no surprise that the returning US leader’s new envoy supports him. Any serious pressure to secure his release could further complicate bilateral ties.

As Trump prepares to “Pivot (back) to Asia” in order to more muscularly contain China in the Asia-Pacific, US influence will sweep across South Asia from Eastern Europe and West Asia, thus explaining why South Asia is now a theater of competition in the New Cold War. This trend poses serious risks to India’s security and stability, but there’s also the possibility that Indophilic members of the incoming administration like DNI nominee Tulsi Gabbard might reverse Biden’s adversarial policy against India.

To summarize 2024’s top geopolitical developments, Trump’s return to power is by far the most significant one, followed by everything that unfolded in West Asia as well as the Ukrainian Conflict’s approaching endgame. Venezuela’s thwarting of yet another US regime change attempt is also significant as is the further strengthening of the Sahelian Alliance and the successful BRICS Summit. Looking forward, 2025 is poised to be equally significant, especially if the situation in South Asia worsens.