Geopolitical Risks & Hopes of Change – Welcome to 2024
© AP Photo / Themba Hadebe
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Geopolitical analyst S.L. Kanthan looks at global geopolitical shifts in the coming year in his column for Sputnik India.
What will happen in 2024? To quote Leo Tolstoy from War and Peace, “We can know only that we know nothing.” The world is experiencing turbulent times, with conflicts in Europe and the Middle East potentially exploding out of control into WW3. At the same time, a peaceful multipolar world – led by BRICS expansion – is dawning, Russia is emerging victorious, China is constantly making breakthroughs in technology, India’s economy is growing rapidly, Africa is decolonizing, and even countries such as Iran and Saudi Arabia – caught in the midst of geopolitical storms – are pursuing their peaceful, long-term objectives in parallel. Let’s look at all the possibilities – the good, the bad and the ugly – that may happen in 2024.
The Two Powder Kegs
The Ukraine conflict and the Israel-Hamas war present the most serious risks to global stability, although the former is on the cusp of ending soon.
For all practical purposes, Russia is winning in Ukraine, which has run out of funds, weapons, ammunition, and even soldiers. More importantly, the US – the main sponsor and instigator of this NATO's proxy war in Ukraine – has lost faith. US support for Ukraine has been downgraded from “as long as it takes” to “as much as we can.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who was feted as a hero by Congress in Dec 2022, was ignored by the same lawmakers during his trip to the US exactly one year later. Last month, Zelensky left Washington with a minuscule $200 million, rather than the $60 billion he had requested.
A quick look at the headlines in Western mainstream media portray the bleak reality:
Ukraine counteroffensive plans marred by miscalculations (Washington Post)
Ukraine war: Western ammunition stocks at ‘bottom of the barrel’ (Telegraph)
US and Europe are running out of weapons to send to Ukraine (CNBC)
Ukraine is running out of soldiers on the front line (DW)
Gloomy mood hangs over Ukraine's soldiers as war with Russia grinds on (AP)
Ukraine’s hopes for victory fade in the face of waning Western support (CNN)
This is the same media that once uncritically regurgitated propaganda about Russia running out of weapons, ammunition, and soldiers; or that Russian missiles were using semiconductor chips from washing machines. Western elites, living in an echo chamber, arrogantly claimed that their unprecedented sanctions would cripple the Russian economy and even force a regime change in Russia. Instead, the Russian economy grew at a robust pace of 3% in 2023 -- compare that to nearly 0% GDP growth in the UK and a recession in Germany. Russian President Putin has incredibly managed to mobilize the industrial base, secure geopolitical alliances throughout the Global South, and singlehandedly defeat the mighty US-EU-NATO cabal. Putin will certainly will the re-election in 2024, while Biden is badly trailing behind Trump in all the polls.
Thus, most likely, the US would force Ukraine to surrender in 2024. The proposal would be to let Russia keep Crimea and the new regions that have voted to join Russia since the SMO began. However, it’s unclear if Russia would end the offensive without liberating regions leading up to and including Odessa, a city with historic significance.
Some hawks in Washington DC would like to escalate the war further by supplying F-16 planes and longer-range missiles that could attack cities deep in Russia. However, that would be improbable, considering that the US would be mired in another war this year.
If the Ukraine conflict is winding down, there is another more ruinous war that started with Gaza but is quickly spreading elsewhere. This one has the potential to draw in the US, Israel, Europe and numerous countries in the region – Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran and more. Particularly, Iran is such a strategic country for the multipolar alliance that Russia and China may get involved.
Gaza Strip
© AP Photo / Leo Correa
Such a war will also be complicated by militant/resistant groups such as the Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthis, who will be hard to defeat in conventional warfare. Thus, the US and its allies would end up killing hundreds of thousands of civilians. Plus, given the religious dimensions – Muslims versus Christians and Jews – such a senseless war would destroy the US soft power in the Islamic world for generations. Finally, such a conflict will also disrupt global trade significantly, leading to worldwide recession.
The US has trapped itself in a lose-lose quagmire. A Pyrrhic victory will ensnare the US in a long, futile war in the Middle East when Americans should be focusing on China, the biggest challenge to American hegemony. On the other hand, dual defeats in Ukraine and the Middle East means an embarrassing loss of face from which the US empire can never recover.
Of course, the simplest solution would be to negotiate a two-state solution and give the Palestinians their own country. However, current Israeli and American politics are so toxic that nobody would dare to bring up diplomacy.
Relatives and colleagues of two Palestinian journalists Hasouna Slim and Sari Mansoor, killed in an Israeli strike, mourn over their bodies during their funeral in Deir al-Balah in the southern Gaza Strip on November 19, 2023
© AFP 2023 BASHAR TALEB
America, the Mad Empire
If you draw a Venn diagram of all the major wars in the world, you will find one country at the intersection: the USA.
Venn Diagram
© Photo
The US is the Empire of Chaos. Run by the Military Financial Complex – this is my new term, because the US has been deindustrialized since the days of Eisenhower – the ruling elites do not have any constructive solutions for the future. Their goal is money and power at all costs. This means endless conflicts and chaos, which are designed to weaken and destabilize countries and societies. To be #1, the US must keep others down. And driven by quick profits, Western financial elites prefer bombing infrastructure than building them.
Despite its misplaced and distorted values, the US has managed to be a superpower since WW2. For the average person around the world, the US is still a land of freedom, wealth and innovation. However, that façade is quickly disappearing.
The US today resembles the late-stage Roman empire. Poverty, inequality and drug addiction are skyrocketing in the US – last year, there was record homelessness, record deaths from drug overdoses, and record suicide rate since WW2. Life expectancy has dropped to a shocking 76.4 years – more than one year shorter than in “communist” China. However, the US does rank #1 in the use of antidepressants and other psychiatric medications.
A homeless man sits on a suitcase on the side of a street lined with tents housing the homeless in Downtown Los Angeles on November 22, 2023.
© AFP 2023 FREDERIC J. BROWN
The top 0.1% of Americans own as much wealth as the “bottom” 90%. More than half of all Americans have practically no savings in the bank; and American households are drowning in $1 trillion of credit card debt.
While coastal cities like New York and San Francisco may look good in photos, there are towns dying all across middle America. Cities that once used to be thriving manufacturing centers – some world famous such as Gary, Indiana – are now abandoned or full of poverty and crime. Infrastructure all over America is crumbling. Even in New York, the subway systems are filthy, outdated and horrifying; and San Francisco has rampant homeless people and drug addicts on the street.
Not surprisingly, 73% of Americans say that the country is going in the wrong direction; and Congress has an abysmal approval rating of 15%. The country is also deeply polarized, ripe for a civil war.
Despite all these systemic problems, the US manages to portray itself as a beacon on the hill due to two reasons: propaganda and the unique status of the US dollar. I described in my previous Sputnik article how sophisticated US propaganda works.
As for the global reserve currency status of the dollar, this exorbitant privilege allows the US to print and borrow trillions of dollars to prop up the economy, use sanctions to punish countries who refuse to obey American diktats, attract the smartest immigrants from all over the world, and spend vast amount of money on 800 military bases in 140 countries to “protect” the dollar. This unfair system is why the rest of the world is now eagerly exploring ways to decouple from the US-led financial system.
Dollar banknotes
© Sputnik / Nina Zotina
While the US has been the epicenter of technological innovations since WW2, Americans have also benefited immensely through stolen IP from other countries – especially from Germany (after WW1 and WW2) and Japan (in the 1980s). Now, the US is doing the same with Taiwan’s TSMC, pilfering the manufacturing know-how for high-end semiconductor chips.
Finally, the US strategy for maintaining global domination involves hobbling other countries and alliances. For example, this means hampering Asia’s growth by turning Japan and India against China; keeping the Middle East down by manipulating Saudi Arabia against Iran; hindering Europe’s progress by fueling conflicts with Russia; and preventing a cohesive Eurasian community.
BRICS – The Way Out of Madness
The good news is that the world has woken up, especially the Global South. (It looks like Europe, Japan and other developed vassal countries are still lobotomized by American narratives). The rapid rise of Asia over the last thirty years have proved what should be obvious: peace, cooperation, manufacturing, trade, economic development, infrastructure, connectivity, technology, education, poverty alleviation etc. are all good for a nation. These are also the foundational principles that underpin China’s Belt and Road Initiative that I wrote about in my previous Sputnik article. All these are diametrically opposite to the values of the American empire.
As an example, consider Russia. When President Putin came to power at the end of 1999, Russia’s GDP was only $200 billion. Over the next thirteen years, he grew the economy to a staggering $2.2 trillion. That’s a 1000% growth. (The corresponding numbers for India and China were 300% and 800%).
One of the key objectives of BRICS is the use of local currencies or a basket of currencies for trade. This will ensure that no one country is above others, and there will be no bullying through a regime of unilateral sanctions.
Screaming dollar
© Photo : taken from social media
The dedollarization effort by the BRICS countries is already in full swing. 95% of the bilateral trade between Russia and China is now in yuan and ruble. Russia and Iran just signed a similar agreement. India and the UAE have also started using local currencies (rupee and dirham). ASEAN countries are encouraging the use of local currencies for trade and tourism; and Africa is exploring ways to use local currencies in intra-African trade. In China, more than half of all cross-border transactions are using yuan – this is huge, considering that China is the world’s largest trading nation. The big question is when Saudi Arabia and OPEC will start selling oil for currencies other than USD. The end of Petrodollar will mark the end of the US tyranny.
More than thirty countries have expressed desire to join BRICS in 2024. While it may take a year or two to fine-tune the financial system, eventually the global demand for dollars will fall due to dedollarization in trade. This will also result in less demand for USD as a global reserve currency.
Then, the repercussion will be felt in three ways:
As the demand for dollar decreases, the US government will find it harder to borrow money from the rest of the world
The yields on US treasuries (bonds) will go up to attract investors. The higher cost of debt will force the government to impose austerity measures, which would also entail shutting down US military bases abroad.
The value of US dollar will fall, resulting in inflation and increased cost of imports from other countries
To summarize, the gravy train that America has enjoyed since WW2 is coming to an end. And 2024 will be the pivotal year for this transformation.
New BRICS members
© Sputnik
Conclusion
Americans are bad in history. They don’t understand that empires rise and fall; and global reserve currencies have typically lasted for only hundred years or less. The unipolar American hegemony cannot last forever. In fact, a multipolar world has been the default state of the world since the beginning of human civilization. The US will be forced to relearn concepts such as diplomacy, free trade, and sovereignty. Eventually, Americans will also be forced to go back to a real economy that’s based on production and saving, instead of debt and financial speculation. Whether this awakening starts in 2024 is yet to be seen, but sooner the better for the US and the world. Finally, Americans must stop projecting their own psychology onto China, which cannot be and does not want to be like the US empire.
Dedollarization and decolonization in emerging markets will accelerate in 2024. Absent a WW3 scenario induced by the US in the Middle East, the Global South will be the heart of the world’s economy in terms of people-centric development, GDP growth, technology, investment and innovation.
Going back to Tolstoy, he wrote, “One must believe in happiness to be happy.” This nugget of wisdom is also applicable in geopolitics. We must believe in a peaceful and prosperous world in order to manifest it. Happy New Year!
22 December 2023, 17:22
