* Americans Are Too Pessimistic
* A ‘New Suez Crisis’ Percolates
* The State of the Chinese Economy
*Putin’s Ukraine War
By Shashi P.B.B. Malla
The State of the American Nation
One of America’s most prolific and astute political commentators, the Indian-American Fareed Zakaria lately pointed out in his regular Washington Post column, that heading into 2024, Americans are deeply pessimistic about the direction of their country. One recent poll showed three quarters seeing the United States heading in the wrong direction.
Zakaria argues that their attitude is misplaced. Touching on themes from his recent longer Foreign Affairs essay on America as “The Self-Doubting Superpower”, he writes: “It is hard to find another country where so many measures are pointing in the right direction.”
Inflation has fallen, real wages are finally growing again, and Financial Times analysis found the US economy has been besting the U.K.’s and the Eurozone for 20 years.
Despite this, Zakaria notes, former President Donald Trump campaigns on nostalgia: the promise to make America as great as it once was.
Zakaria looks back at the supposedly golden age of 50 years ago (the ‘Seventies’ of the last century), pointing out things weren’t so great: The US had just lost a war in Vietnam, the USSR looked fearsome and threatening, Israel was barely recovering from the Yom Kippur War, and the Arab oil embargo roughly tripled the price of crude oil.
“The truth is, the United States has the power and capacity to tackle today’s crises – perhaps even more so than it had in the past,” Zakaria writes. “But it needs to regain a sense of perspective and, above all, regain confidence in its own enormous strengths.”
2024: An Election Year Unlike Any Other
On the domestic front, the Editorial Board of The New York Times has sounded a grave warning (Jan. 9).
It has called upon fellow Americans to consider carefully what a second Trump term would mean for the country and the world.
The NYT categorically states that Trump has demonstrated “a character and temperament that render him utterly unfit for high office.”
His four years in the White House did lasting damage to the presidency and the nation.
And his forays into foreign affairs remain dangerously misguided and incoherent.
Thus, re-electing Trump would present serious dangers to the US and to the world.
The Danger of a Widening Middle East War
After Hamas’s virulent attack on southern Israel on October 7 last year, political pundits have been fearing that the war in Gaza is spilling across the Middle East.
The signs are troubling.
The extremist Sunni Islamic State has claimed responsibility for a bombing in Sh’ia Iran.
Israel has assassinated Saleh Al-Arouri, a deputy Hamas leader in Beirut, Lebanon. Late last month, it killed a senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards member in Syria.
The U.S. last week struck in Baghdad at Iran-backed Iraqi militias, apparently to send a message to Iran about proxy attacks on US forces/bases in the region.
Questions linger as to whether the Iran-backed terrorist group and dominant Lebanese political party Hezbollah will involve itself in Israel’s war on Hamas.
Debatably, the most concerning developments have happened in the Bab el-Mandab Strait guarding the entrance to the Red Sea, where Iran-backed Sh’ia Houthi militants – engaged in a long and violent civil war for control of Yemen – have begun attacking international cargo ships, saying they will target all international ships heading for Israeli ports if Gaza does not receive needed shipments of food and medicine.
The US – along with allies Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany , Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Republic of Korea, Singapore, and the United Kingdom – has warned the Houthis of “consequences.”
The Economist calls this a “a new Suez crisis”, harkening back to the 1956 British/French-Egyptian standoff over the Suez Canal/Sinai Peninsula.
Noting major significance to global trade, the magazine writes: “Bas al-Mandab is a narrow strait between Africa and the Arabian peninsula through which an estimated 12 % percent of global trade by volume normally flows, and perhaps 30 % percent of global container traffic. It has become a no-go zone as the Houthis, based in Yemen, attack shipping, ostensibly in support of the Palestinians in Gaza.”
At The World Politics Review, Alexander Clarkson marvels at what’s happening: “That the Houthi movement would eventually acquire the military power to paralyze a sea route crucial to the globalized economy would have seemed improbable when it was founded in 1992…Outside observers were caught off-guard by the speed with which the movement opted for confrontation with global powers in response to events in Gaza…With every major shipping firm diverting its vessels away from the Red Sea and insurance rates skyrocketing for the few commercial vessels still willing to dock at (the Yemini port of) Hodeidah, the specter of confrontation with the U.S., Europeans and perhaps even India has led to further deterioration of conditions for those living under Houthi rule.”
A Big Question for 2024: China’s Economy & External Affairs
Despite hopes for a post-Covid-lockdown boom, China’s economy disappointed in 2023. What will it do in 2024?
The answer will have ramifications for the rest of the world, given China’s massive economic heft.
Laura He at CNN Business suggests China will uddle through: “Despite its many problems – a property crisis, weak spending and high youth unemployment – most economists think the world’s second largest economy will hit its official growth target of around 5 % percent (for 2023). But that is still below the 6 % percent plus annual growth averaged in the decade before the Covid pandemic, and 2024 is increasingly looking ominous, they said. The country may be staring at decades of stagnation
‘The 2024 challenge for the Chinese economy will not be GDP growth – that will likely be above 4.5 % percent,” said Derek Scissors, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a centre-right US think tank. ‘The challenge will be that the only direction from there is down.’ “
At The Guardian, George Magnus also offers a bleak assessment: “The reality, though, is that systemic problems have over the years become features in China’s US $ Dollar 19 trillion economy. The real estate market has tipped over after an almost unbroken 20-year boom…At about a quarter of GDP, housing now faces years of shrinkage as it adjusts to chronic oversupply and lower household formation. Property developers, local governments and state enterprises have high levels of debt and many face debt service difficulties. The virtual absence of inflation reflects inadequate aggregate demand. Stalled productivity growth, the politicization of regulation and the business environment, rapid aging, high youth unemployment and inequality also figure prominently.”
China’s External Relations
According to The Economist, China will pursue two contradictory goals at once in 2024.
Xi Jinping and other Communist Party bosses will seek to rally and lead a bloc of countries that are skeptical of an American-led world order.
But even as China’s rulers prepare for an age of division and great-power competition, they will present their country as a defender of global unity.
To advance their first goal of disrupting US world leadership, Chinese leaders will accuse America and its allies of stoking a New Cold War.
They – as well as, Russia, North Korea and Iran – sense an opportunity to dislodge the West from the centre of world affairs.
Their criticisms will also have an economic component.
With global growth slowing, including inside China. Leaders in Beijing will charge America and other rich Western countries with erecting protectionist barriers to free trade and imperiling the future of globalization.
To promote their second goal, Chinese rulers will call their
By this, they imply that China is a defender of the “basic principles” of the existing world order, as enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations.
At times, these twin messages will blur and overlap, and it
In 2024, it will be made still more challenging by two crucial happenings: the war in Ukraine and a presidential election in America.
For China, the war offers risk and opportunity. In 2024, Chinese officials will tell leaders from Africa, South America and South Asia that high food and energy prices are caused by Western sanctions, and accuse American arms and energy firms of profiteering at Europeans’ expense.
China will claim neutrality in the Ukraine conflict – as it does in the Middle East. It will then deepen ties to Putin’s Russia, a troublesome but vital partner.
China gains from an isolated Russia forced to turn away from lucrative markets in Europe and face eastwards.
Shared resentment of the West is the force that binds China to its closest partners, an otherwise motley bunch. Since Xi-era statecraft is not known for its subtlety, 2024 poses an exquisite test (The Economist/David Rennie, Nov. 13).
Ukraine: When a Stalemate Isn’t a Stalemate
Putin’s war in Ukraine is effectively stalemated, the top Ukrainian military commander Gen. Valery Zaluzhny told The Economist in an interview published on November 1.
But the full story isn’t so simple, some military observers have pointed out. The front lines may be static, but it’s not as if Ukrainian and Russian soldiers have stopped fighting.
Noted Ukraine-war analyst Jack Watling of the UK defence think tank RUSI argues in a new Foreign Affairs essay that “ this perception of stalemate is deeply flawed. Both Moscow and Kyiv are in a race to rebuild offensive combat power. In a conflict of this scale, that process will take time. While the first half of 2024 may bring few changes in control of Ukrainian territory, the materiel, personnel training, and casualties that each side accrues in the next few months will determine the long-term trajectory of the conflict. The West in fact faces a crucial choice right now: support Ukraine so that its leaders can defend their territory and prepare for a 2025 offensive or cede an irrecoverable advantage to Russia.”
As speculation about a negotiated settlement seems to be percolating, Le Monde’s Sylvie Kauffman writes that talking to Moscow – and more specifically, relying on it as an honest broker – is unrealistic. It is in Putin’s interest to prolong the war, as long as it doesn’t cause political blowback at home, Kauffman notes.
“And therein lies the trap, which the advocates of negotiation do not want to see. In his almost quarter-century in power, Putin has shown a remarkable talent for opening negotiations that never amount to anything. This was the case after the invasion of Georgia in 2008 . . . . it was especially the case with the so-called ‘Normandy format’ process, launched in 2014 by then (German) Chancellor Angela Merkel and (French) President Francois Hollande to try to settle the conflict in the Donbas (south-eastern Ukraine). During all these years of fruitless diplomatic talks, neither France or Germany provided any military aid to Ukraine, since they were party to the negotiations: this was time gained for the Kremlin, which continued its military activity in Ukraine and preparations for a (still) large-scale invasion.”
Mykola Bielieskov, a fellow with Ukraine’s National Institute for Strategic Studies, notes that the first two years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of his country have shown how the defence holds a massive advantage “in what is increasingly a war of attrition.”
In 2024, he proposes Ukraine adopt an “active defence” rather than attempting another large-scale offensive. This approach, Mykola writes, would include continued operations to hammer Russian military targets in Crimea, while denying Vladimir Putin signature wins and setting the stage for going on offensive in 2025 (Atlantic Council, Jan. 6).
The writer can be reached at: shashipbmalla@hotmail.com
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect People’s Review’s editorial stance.
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