In 2024, two billion people will cast votes in more than 70 countries. The coming year will bring an important contest between Republicans and Democrats in America that will hugely impact the trajectory of global politics. The American presidential election will be decisive for the future direction of the Ukraine-Russia War, the Middle East peace equation and the Indo-Pacific strategic competition between China and the US. Asia is the biggest region in the world that will witness the polls in Bangladesh, India and Indonesia. Liberal democracy is in danger for various reasons in these regions. Despite his success in economic and geopolitical influence, Modi condones anti-Muslim rhetoric and disregards their institutional rights. Bangladesh and Indonesia have witnessed the consolidation of authoritarian dynasties in the last decade. The coming election in all three countries will entrench authoritarian and autocratic rulers. If Trump wins a second term in 2024, he will pursue the Monroe Doctrine of Isolationist policies that will further threaten global society. To close the statement, the coming elections can bring alarming consequences — for democracy and the world.
Moving towards the war section of 2023, this year we witnessed wars raging in Africa, Israel, Gaza and Ukraine. After these war zones and proxies, the role of international institutions and global powers steadily declined. In the last 36 months, six countries in the African region witnessed coups, Azerbaijan fought a war against Armenia, and Iran’s proxies in the Middle East expanded further. All these events showed the rising impunity of authoritarian states without any blowback from global institutions. Featuring China, Iran and Russia as the trio of trouble, the international system witnessed new alliances in 2023. In the Middle East and Asian and African continents, these alliances will bring disintegrative state alliances in which major powers of the world contend for power, influence and authority while staking the region’s peace and stability. All these events will bring multipolarity disorder and a vicious cycle of insecurity in 2024.
Technology has created an unprecedented influence in 2023. In 2024, technology will grow in three areas. Technology will increase in size. For example, Chinchilla’s LLM developed in 2022 outperforms OpenAI’s GPT-3 and increases numerical precision. Next is data. In 2024, LLM will be trained on different parameters like videos, computer code and images which will give them new frontiers of capabilities. AI’s role and commercial potential will quadruple in the coming year. This shift in AI will bring more challenges to all aspects of society ranging from culture to democracy.
The large powers are on the brink of more polarising agendas over global issues. The Middle East is massively multiplayer. Russia has proximity with Hamas; while China, North Korea and Iran share a common stance to reject US-led order in the region. Where the US and its allies face threats, Russia and China see opportunities. A war over Taiwan is the polarised perspective of global powers. The mismanagement in Taiwan could cause acute disruption in the supply chain of semiconductors and the world economy overall. It seems like international anarchy is creeping into the system in the coming years. Amid all these disruptions, it needs an hour to initiate a strategic dialogue and intersect the major powers’ roles for mutual coexistence.
Developing countries will face an economic blow in 2024. According to World Bank reports, the slow growth of America in 2024 will impact the economies of the developing countries. The second wave of inflation due to the Ukraine-Russia war could potentially hike fuel prices in the developing states. If American economy deficits continue, the dollar price will rise further in 2024.
With distorting democracies, world powers rivalry, mismanaged economies and disrupted peace in the major countries from where trade and exchange for the rest of the world is expected, 2024 will bring new challenges that need to be addressed with dexterity.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 13th, 2023.
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