What tomorrow will bring…

On the main trends in the international arena in 2024

According to the Chinese calendar, the coming year 2024 is the year of the Green Wood Dragon. The mythical beast is a symbol of unification and success. Those who strive for peace and create new opportunities will benefit. But in anger, the dragon is terrible and can destroy what he himself has created... Let’s try to trace the most striking trends in the international arena.

Time to choose

The coming year will be a record in recent history for the number of electoral events. Countries with a combined population of almost four billion people will determine their future. Our country is no exception.
The 2024 election campaign will be the largest in the history of independent Belarus. On a single voting day — February 25th — deputies of the House of Representatives and local Councils of Deputies will be elected. On April 4th, the composition of the Council of the Republic will be determined. And before April 18th, the results of the elections of delegates to the Belarusian People’s Congress will be announced.
Currently, the country continues to nominate candidates for deputies. On December 25th, registration of initiative groups to collect voter signatures was completed. In total, according to the Central Election Commission of Belarus, as of December 27th, 2023, 164 groups were registered in support of the nomination of candidates for deputies of the House of Representatives and 11,221 for deputies of local councils. The election commissions have already received documents on the nomination of 366 candidates for deputies of local councils. The process of accreditation of national observers at territorial and district election commissions is actively underway. More than 3.3 thousand are accredited.
The focus will be on the presidential elections in Russia, which will take place from March 15th to 17th, and in the United States, scheduled for November 5th. As for the forecasts regarding the start of the electoral race of our closest ally, its result is unlikely to come as a surprise: the current head of state, Vladimir Putin, has every chance of being re-elected for a new term. According to a December poll by VTsIOM, 79.3 percent of Russians trust him.
But overseas the intrigue remains, and this time the struggle between Democrats and Republicans promises to be much hotter and dirtier than in 2020. The political landscape of the United States has remained virtually unchanged during this time, but tectonic shifts have occurred in the rest of the world that directly affect the state of affairs before the upcoming elections.

REUTERS

The past year has been a time of uncertainty for both donkeys and elephants. Trump began 2023 under the threat of criminal prosecution, and then it seemed that American justice was about to grab him with its tenacious claws. However, the ex-President managed not only to avoid going to jail, but also to use trials to increase his own rating. An attempt to challenge him within the party by Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley was unsuccessful: Trump’s lead by the end of the year became so impressive that it can be said that he will most likely represent the Republicans in the 2024 elections. And he has a chance to take revenge for his loss. In national polls measuring the popularity of a particular candidate, Trump overtook Biden for the first time at the end of December, which indicates a loss of authority by the current occupant of the White House amid an unsuccessful foreign policy and endless legal battles surrounding his son Hunter.
No one can predict how the situation will turn out this time. High election ratings in the United States mean little against the backdrop of a fierce battle between parties, during which the parties use the entire arsenal of legal and illegal ways to annoy their opponents.  
The January 13th elections in Taiwan could potentially usher in a period of instability on the island and throughout the region that could escalate into a crisis with unpredictable consequences, including Beijing’s intervention to protect the common people.
Also in 2024, there will be elections to the European Parliament, national elections in India, as well as general elections in South Africa, Indonesia, Pakistan and Bangladesh. All campaigns are of interest, since the future path of development will be determined in large, dynamically developing countries with rapidly growing economies.

The main front of the anti-colonial struggle

The third year of the Special Military Operation promises to be even more intense than the previous two. Kiev’s failure in the summer-autumn offensive led to a significant depletion of human and material resources of the Zelensky regime. 
The failure is aggravated by the West’s fatigue from protracted hostilities, which is expressed in a significant weakening of aid flows to Ukraine and the exaggeration of the topic of peace negotiations at different levels.
Meanwhile, there is no prospect of peace or at least a truce in the near future. The Ukrainian Armed Forces, despite serious losses, did not suffer a strategic defeat, and the successes of the Russian army near Bakhmut, Marinka, Avdeevka and in the Zaporozhye direction are of a tactical nature.
By diluting with reinforcements the front-line units that were thoroughly thinned out during the ‘counter-offensive’ and planting this hodgepodge in prepared fortifications, the Ukrainian Armed Forces can create certain problems for the advance of Russian troops deeper into the country.
The red thread in the plans of the Kiev regime for the next year is the use of F-16 fighters. On the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Russian President Vladimir Putin said, “If they [F-16 aircraft] are stationed at air bases outside Ukraine and used in combat, we will have to look at how we can hit and where we can hit those weapons which are used against us.” The latest Russian fifth-generation fighters, the Su-57, as reported by the Russian Ministry of Defence and the Rostec State Corporation, are already entering service with the troops.


Another trend of the coming year in the context of the Special Military Operation will be the intensification of Western attempts to attract third countries to supply weapons to Ukraine. NATO’s military-industrial complex did not show significant growth in 2023. Washington and Brussels are not yet ready to completely refuse assistance to Kiev, so countries such as Japan, South Korea and Pakistan will try to drag them into the adventure.

There is a high probability of activation of frozen conflicts, as happened in 2023 in the Gaza Strip, with the help of which the West will try to keep the neocolonial system from collapse. However, positive forecasts, in particular regarding the strengthening of the role of BRICS and the SCO, strengthening ties with the countries of the African continent, as well as accelerating the processes of de-dollarisation of the world economy, still prevail. The final collapse of the Western-centric system is still far away, but all the signs of a systemic crisis and the irreversibility of deconstruction are visible to the naked eye.

By Anton Popov