January 3: The year in preview (and review)
In which, I review the momentous year of 2024 and peer around the corner at 2025.
I’m rolling my annual year review/preview into this week’s regular newsletter, 1) because I and my family have been sick, and 2) many of the stories that would’ve ended up in the regular newsletter make good jumping off points for discussing the year that was and the year that now is. Onwards!
2024 was crazy, but went pretty much as expected.
The table below is drawn from my December 29, 2023 newsletter that made my annual “predictions” of what to anticipate in 2024 with their associated probabilities and how they played out.
Any 2024 surprises?
For me, not really. Easily the biggest black swan event of the year was the fall of the Assad regime in Syria (see my most recent podcast to explore that topic).
For many people I talked to, though, the election outcome was a big surprise. However, I think one could only be surprised by that outcome if they 1) only read mainstream and progressive news outlets and/or 2) just generally didn’t follow the election drama and its parallel trend lines in the economy and political culture.
Even the assassination attempts on Trump, dramatic and shocking though they were, were not entirely surprising to me given the trend in left wing violence and dehumanizing rhetoric towards the right I had been following through the last couple of years.
So, what comes in 2025?
As with previous years, I’ll break this down into high, medium, and low probability categories.
High probability
Unstable Russian periphery. The war in Ukraine has become a quagmire for Russia where gains are best interpreted as tradeoffs with losses of influence and capability in Russia’s traditional sphere of influence; Eastern Europe and Central Asia specifically as the upheaval in Georgia aptly illustrates. While I don’t anticipate any major revolutions, there’s a general sense of instability in these regions, and with elections coming up in 2025 for Belarus, Tajikistan, Romania, Albania, Kosovo, Moldova, Czech Republic, and others, that political instability can grow.
Further civil conflict in Africa. Multiple countries that have either had recent civil wars and/or have religious and ethnic cleavages have elections this year: Cameroon, Central African Republic, Egypt, Gabon among others.
China flexes its influence muscles in the Pacific. Multiple island nations have elections this year, providing China with the opportunity to expand its influence without unduly angering the Trump administration. This could create some pretty tense election scenarios in those island countries, though.
Justin Trudeau will be losing his premiership in Canada. The Canadian Prime Minister is facing calls from within his own party to stand down as he lurches from bad decision to bad decision. The House of Commons election is scheduled this year, but early elections can be called, but if Trudeau remains at the head of his party, I think it’s a safe bet that there’ll be a leadership change in Canada.
Trump will (appear to) fail to deliver in 2025. President-elect Trump has clearly learned some things from his first term in office and his time leading the opposition to Biden, and is positioning himself for a very aggressive reform agenda in the first year of his government. Reform is often painful, though, with gains not immediately apparent. So, Trump allies eager for the return of the Trump economy and tough cop approach to immigration are likely to be disappointed in the early going, especially as early cracks emerge in the expanded MAGA coalition. Year one of Trump 2.0 will be more about growing pains than immediate gains.
Democratic opposition to Trump appointments will be very stiff in Senate confirmation hearings. Anticipate a couple of candidates withdrawing. Main target is Pete Hegseth since even Senate Democrats are unlikely to turn on Marco Rubio in his confirmation as Secretary of State
Medium probability
Abraham Accords expand. President-elect Trump has a pretty explosive situation in the Middle East waiting for him when he comes into office, but he’s also got a framework for peace to work with in the Abraham Accords, and as my friend Joseph Epstein points out, there are some great candidate countries to expand those accords into.
Ceasefire in Ukraine. Trump will call it peace, but it’ll merely be a strategic pause if, and when, it occurs. Both sides are pretty exhausted and need to recalibrate.
Syria’s new government removes the moderate facemask. So far, the Islamist groups now in charge in Syria have said all the right things about respecting the rights of religious minorities, but we’ve seen this game before from Islamist parties newly empowered: Say what you need to say to get Western recognition and sanction relief, then turn the screws when attention goes elsewhere. I really hope I’m wrong about this one, but the global persecution of Christians, especially in Islamic countries is clearly trending up, and I don’t see how Syria avoids that with its weak institutions and multiple armed militias.
More assassination attempts on Trump and his cabinet, and general post-election left wing violence. I hate to say this, but I don’t think these are going anywhere.
Low probability
War in South America.I’m keeping the Guyana contingency on the table this year, because both Guyana and Venezuela have parliamentary elections this year, and the Venezuelan referendums from 2023 establishing claims on Guyanese territory make national appeals in an election year particularly fraught for these two countries. Maybe not war, but the potential for a crisis is certainly here.
Recession. OK, OK, I’ll take the bait. The American economy’s mixed signals continue into 2025, and Democrats will be all too ready to make President-elect Trump’s economic program as difficult as possible to implement. So, there may not be a bad recession in 2025, but I could see it being more generally a sluggish economy.
Return to normalcy in Haiti. Elections for a new national government are supposed to happen this year in Haiti, but I doubt it’ll do much to end the gang violence or alleviate the suffering in that country.
As always, steady eyes and level heads, friends.
2025 could be every bit as wild as 2024, but it could also appear a lot calmer as regional hotspots cool and competing powers adjust to the return of President Trump and a very hawkish GOP foreign policy team. 2024 was going to be a wild year from the get go, and it delivered. 2025 is something of a wild card to me, a 50-50 on being better or worse than 2024.
So, as I’ve said in previous “Year in Preview” posts: Steady eyes and level heads.
There will be much to alarm us and much to encourage this year, and we know new headlines will often focus on the “alarm us” part, so it will be necessary to be frequently taking personal stock of the good that is occurring around us and that we can be contributing to, even as we navigate the ups and downs of the year.