The world is at a tipping point

Elections will be held next year in countries with a combined population of around two and a half billion. Together, they account for two-thirds of global economic output. Some fateful decisions are pending.

2024 will be about challenges that could hardly be greater. The cohesion of the West (or its disintegration), the stabilization of democracy (or its disintegration), the continuation of globalization (or the relapse into self-sufficiency), intensified decarbonization (or accelerated climate change).

We are used to elections changing little. For decades, it was mostly about comparatively marginal things, a few social programs more or less, slight tax cuts or increases, things like that. We saved a little, complained a lot, paid more, and complained louder, but nothing really changed. The rich got richer and the middle class got poorer, the poor stayed poor but that’s over. It’s no longer about political trifles, but about epochal decisions. There are so many important elections ahead of us that 2024 could one day be remembered as a historic turning point.

In countries with a combined population of more than two and a half billion, citizens vote on the future political path. Imagine that, almost a third of humanity, which generates two-thirds of global economic output. Progress or regression, solution or conflict, reality or fiction –in many places, only a few percentage points will decide which way the pendulum swings.

Pacific Challenges

It starts with Taiwan. On January 13, the citizens of the independent island in the South China Sea will go to the polls to elect the president and parliament. The ruling Progressive Party (DPP), which clearly focuses on distancing itself from China and military strength, is ahead in the polls. However, it is unclear whether the DPP will be able to muster a parliamentary majority. Other promising parties are less confrontational with Beijing.

Will China’s strongman Xi Jinping, who wants to incorporate Taiwan into his People’s Republic, be impressed by his strength or be softened by his willingness to talk? The more stable and independent Taiwan is, the more difficult it will be for the island to be incorporated into the Red People’s Empire. The prospect of partisan warfare and economic crisis may be enough to deter Beijing’s strategists from taking the island.

In any case, Taiwan’s future will be decided not only locally, but also in Beijing and Washington. As things stand, an attack would force the United States to intervene. The result would most likely be a large-scale conflict that could engulf half of the Pacific. In any case, US President Joe Biden has backed Taiwan more clearly than his predecessors.

Trump and the World Order

There will also be elections in the United States in 2024. It’s no secret that Trump needs the presidency to pardon himself and his friends because the chances that he might be spending time in prison for one of his 92 indictments are very real. Trump as high up in age as the current President Joe Biden, and also mentally and physically not as fit as he wants us to believe he is, is running a desperate race against justice and for the White House and President Joe Biden may lose in the November vote. His opponent Donald Trump may now talk like a neo-Nazi who promises to grind down democracy and its institutions, but that doesn’t discourage his supporters. Most seem to like it, violence seems to suit them just fine. In terms of foreign policy, Trump is rather isolated. America’s alliances around the globe, which formed the basic structures of the previous world order, are considered unnecessary and expensive to him. It is possible that the US will stay out of a conflict over Taiwan just as much as it would scale back its involvement in Ukraine.

Under Trump, who has outrun the competition in the Republican field, the United States would say goodbye to the world stage as a power of order with worldwide access, possibly forever. America had taken on this role after the Second World War, at first reluctantly, then filled it with energy and occasionally with momentous miscalculations (Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan).

A withdrawal would have hardly foreseeable consequences. Rulers from Xi to Vladimir Putin (who will be re-elected in Russia in March to maintain the semblance of democratic legitimacy), as well as all sorts of would-be potentates, terrorists, and other villains around the world, are likely to feel spurred on to further expansionism. The U.S. would also say goodbye to the global climate protection agreements once again, as it did during Trump’s first term in office.

The consequences of the next U.S. presidential election can hardly be overestimated, because America could now also use its enormous military power in its own short-term interests. In his first term in office, Trump already had a look at Greenland for its natural resources. At that time, he offered to buy it –which Denmark, to whose territory the Atlantic island belongs, indignantly refused. In the future, an aircraft carrier could simply be sent there to capture the island. Who could stop a rogue U.S. president from doing so?

Brakeman, citizen, blocker?

If the U.S. election is the most important election of the new year, then the EU election at the beginning of June is the second most important. At first glance, this is not so noticeable. After all, on this side of the Atlantic, no president is directly elected who could then mobilize a large unified military, as is the case in the United States. Elections in 2024 will also be held in individual member states, including Portugal, Belgium, Romania, and Lithuania, as well as in Georgia, which is torn between enthusiasm for the EU and Moscow’s claims to power.

The elections to the European Parliament, however, will be by far the most significant. The majorities there will decide on the political priorities of the next Commission, possibly also on who will lead the Brussels authority (unless, like after the last election, the heads of state and government again work out the personnel in the back room). The outcome of the June vote will determine whether Europe will be able to take matters into its own hands –to form a powerful defense community; to support Ukraine militarily and financially so effectively that it can hold its own against Russian aggression, even in the event that the US fails to provide assistance at all, and to finally complete the core areas of the internal market, the Schengen area and monetary union.

Against the backdrop of the fateful US election and the already prevailing deadlock in the Washington House of Representatives, where new aid for Ukraine has not yet found a majority, the Europeans would have to step into the breach much more decisively than before. After all, this conflict is taking place right on their doorstep.

But the EU hesitates and hesitates. This is not only because, as usual, Western Europe is intensively preoccupied with itself but also because Putin’s right-wing friends are on the rise in the EU. Hungarian Viktor Orbán’s veto has prevented urgently needed financial support for Kyiv, not to mention the concerted expansion of the arms industry.

Of real and imagined problems

One does not have to look to Hungary, Slovakia, or France to observe the rise of the New Nationalists in all its tragic absurdity. In former eastern Germany, the AfD (Alternative for Germany a right-wing populist political party in Germany) is likely to win again in the state elections in Saxony, Thuringia, and  Brandenburg in September. The polls show that in some places it will not be so easy to get a governing majority against them. Paradoxically, the identitarian right is particularly strong in regions that have a distinct regional identity and a low proportion of foreigners.

In Germany, too, perceived problems are taken more seriously than real ones. Only nine percent of Germans indeed have a personal problem with immigration. But 44 percent consider the inflow from abroad to be one of the country’s biggest problems, according to the Eurobarometer survey published just before Christmas.

On the other hand, statutory pension insurance is a real problem. Subsidies for old-age pensions are taking up ever larger parts of the federal budget, leaving hardly any funds left for other government tasks, including defense. Under these conditions, it is unlikely that the pension level for future retirement cohorts will be sustainable. However, only five percent of Germans believe that pensions are a significant national problem.

Those who do not take note of reality can also vote for parties that do not offer solutions to real problems.

Indian Identities

The British, in any case, regret their rendezvous with irrationalism. Driven by national-populist Tories, Brexit has become highly unpopular. A majority consider the EU exit to be a mistake. Technocrats are back in power. The time of Boris Johnson, that unscrupulous political clown in the office of Brexit Prime Minister, has come to an end. The old queen is dead, and a new but very old king has taken over the throne. The royals became overnight unpopular. The general election, which is expected to take place in 2024 –but no later than January 2025– will pit two technocrats against each other. Tory Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Labour leader Keir Starmer. The winner will presumably be Labour, now led by a mainstream social democratic politician, a bit boring perhaps, but sufficiently endowed with seriousness and expertise.

The world’s largest democracy (India) will also go to the polls in 2024, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to win again. The country is currently the most dynamic major economy in the world. Living standards are rising, and modernization is progressing. At the same time, however, Modi’s Hindu nationalists are trying to give the country an identity it never had –a religiously influenced dominant culture that stands in contrast to the highly heterogeneous mega-society with a bewildering number of faiths, ethnic groups, languages, and castes. Modi has managed to combine the two major political trends of the present in his person: technocratic reason and nationalist feelings. In a world of political paradoxes, this seems almost normal.

It seems a lot of people are willing to gamble a bit. Tired of the same old politics they seem to think “Let’s see what will happen,” and part of me can’t blame them. I feel the same way.

Sadly, the gamble could take decades to fix. A quick look at Great Britain shows it clearly. Are mistakes like Brexit even fixable?

What if the United States of America becomes a dictatorship like China or Russia but with strong religious influencers and believers who will dictate the rest of us on how we will have to live?

I hope for the best, prepare for the worst, and continue to believe that common sense will find its way back.

Perhaps that’s why I have been holding on to 2023, because truthfully, 2024 scares me senseless.

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