The last year of the First Quarter of Century 21 will start and end with new and old developments that will shape and reshape Planet Earth at all levels everywhere, in ways both better and worse. Destinies will differ while similarities thread into new and old initiatives.
This century’s 24th year is ending with Ukraine losing its war with Russia and Israel continuing to bomb Gaza into nothingness, while European nations suffering serious blowbacks at home from continuing to support a losing war.
The next US President closes the year threatening to ‘take back’ a Panama Canal that America never owned, while also eyeing Greenland – and not-necessarily-joking about Canada becoming ‘America’s 51st State’.
The incoming President has made it clear his real problem with the Panama Canal is the official involvement of one of China’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) projects, seen by Washington as encroachment in ‘America’s Backyard’ (as historically defined by the Monroe Doctrine two centuries ago).
Incoming President Trump is ending 2024 keeping the world guessing, confused and uncertain as to how and when he would deliver on his promises to end wars while advocating naked expansionism to spread America’s world footprint and ‘Make America Great Again’.
The next US President will naturally use his new global and home-front leverage with more experience than his first outing at the White House when he takes the chair in the G-7 in 2025 and demands NATO member-states increase their financial contributions from 2% to 5% of GDP.
Traditional alliances will continue to break in Europe as leaders continue fox-trotting with devils-turned-darlings to shore-up dwindling popularity and Governance will continue driving people’s responses to governments everywhere.
Electorates will continue talking their truths to power at ballot boxes, while power-brokers take fullest advantage of worsening conditions in many nations to milk more profits.
Developing nations and Small Island Developing States (SIDS) will make more strident demands for Climate Justice, while fortifying foundations for taking their rightful places at the global tables planning Humanity’s future.
While the traditional world powers will continue ensnaring themselves with contradictory plans and actions defying global norms and postponing universal good, China and the developing world will gather in and around the BRICS alliance and show the world the Global South is not only aware of, but also using its collective size and might to marshal its resources for better for most.
China will continue to quietly but purposefully proceed with its global agendas for peace and development in its quest to encourage other nations to embrace its philosophy of seeing and treating Planet Earth as belonging to a Shared Humanity, instead of one where some nations see themselves as exceptionally special and with more rights than all others.
The North-South divide will both contract and widen, but new Soviet-era-type (East-West) ideological tensions will widen as nations face the world’s first distinct possibilities of use of nuclear arms.
World leaders will have to choose between ending the Ukraine War or starting World War III involving a divided NATO and a fully capable Russia under the leadership of Europe’s longest-serving Head of State and Government.
2024 is closing with all the hallmarks of a Bethlehem without Christmas for yet another year and Europeans, like Ukrainians, being allowed to freeze in winter’s dark while Kyiv’s backers face the grim reality of having to tell President Zelensky he can no longer have things always go his way.
But with Zelensky having spent his democratic capital and likely to be asked to account for billions in US-EU-NATO financial and military aid and Netanyahu also facing a corruption trial with possible jail terms – and both likely to be forced to seek to renew their expired mandates – the next year will start with more suicidal or kamikaze tactics like increased attacks inside Russia and military occupation of the West Bank and parts of Syria.
The possibilities are endless, but, in alphabetical order, here are some of the many elements of new geo-political possibilities on the global horizon for the 12 months that will make 2025:
Internationally
• China: Beijing will continue climbing the global trade and development ladder, with the Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) opening New Silk Roads, highways, railways and bridges on all continents, while the world examines the prospects of President Xi Jinping’s Global Cooperation Initiative (GCI), vis-a-vis traditional Western plans to preserve the declining imperial order
• Germany: A new German Chancellor will face the same old challenges that hounded Helmut Scholz out of office, including Berlin’s Ukraine policy adjustment backlashes and the crises of growing anti-immigrant sentiments being taken political advantage of by the increasingly influential right-wing opposition
• France: Paris will start to feel the inestimable losses of its expulsion from the Sahel region and other former French-African colonies, while President Emmanuel Macron will continue trying to navigate himself out of the political paralysis he’s faced since the last European and parliamentary elections
• Israel: An emboldened PM Benjamin Netanyahu will continue the Israeli Holocaust Against Palestinians, while targeting Yemen and Iran, with continuing US assistance against a battered and bruised ‘Axis of Resistance’ — and Washington will insist on ensuring a greater role for the US military-industrial complex in strengthening Israel’s penetrable ‘Iron Dome’
• Iran: Tehran will be the next target on Israel’s direct attack schedule, but Russia’s strengthening of the impregnability of Tehran’s nuclear facilities, plus its own outstanding arsenal, will allow Iran to keep its antagonists at bay while maintaining support for regional allies
• Palestine: After 15 months of Israeli Genocide that took over 50,000 Palestinian lives in Gaza and almost 1,000 in the occupied West Bank and leaving over 100,000 wounded, victims mainly women and children, seeds of resistance will grow and strengthen support for Hamas in Gaza, while annexes the West Bank and Syria’s Golan Heights
• Russia: Winning its war in Ukraine, Moscow will continue building new sources of economic certainty with China, India and other fellow BRICS member-states, while going extra lengths to protect Russians from Western-supplied long-range missiles, including destroying Ukrainian arsenals and 98% of its electricity grid
• Syria: All signals point to Syria becoming another Libya, where the cost of seeing Assad’s back will be high, including Turkey pursuing its national interest in the new regional scenario and Israel riding high on new stolen grounds, while armed factions battle over spoils of war
• Ukraine: Continuing to claim victory from the jaws of defeat, an increasingly inflexible President Volodymyr Zelensky, with an expired mandate, will continue to widen division in the EU and NATO over the unaffordable costs of continually supporting an unwinnable war
• UK: Sir Keith Starmer’s Labour Administration will face stiffer challenges from traditionally supportive trade unions and a population still heavily besieged by his government’s declining ability to provide urgent social and human services during winter, thanks to the financing of Ukraine’s war with Russia
• USA: As of January 20, President Donald Trump will enact his new visions for a further expansionist American foreign policy and implementation of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, while millions of non-Americans in US states will face the biggest-ever military hunt-down and round-up of ‘illegal aliens’ in a land built by immigrants
Latin America
• Argentina: President Milei’s right-wing economic stability measures will continue to increase unemployment and worsen conditions for the increasing number of poorest citizens (now at 50% below the poverty line), leading to re-invigoration of the struggles by parties, trade unions and social entities or more popular approaches to the nation’s economic problems
• Bolivia: The worsening relations between present and former presidents from the same ruling party will come to a head earlier than later and open the way for US-backed political elements in the national opposition and the army to exploit the differences that also divide the Indigenous rural majorities
• Brazil: President ‘Lula’ de Silva’s worsening health problems will likely force him into early decision-making as to his future in office which, if not carefully handled, can result in the pro-Bolsonaro opposition regaining ground as the ageing leader continues dancing with Washington over Venezuela
• Chile: The Boric administration will face additional challenges to find early ways and means to deliver on its election promises in the face of increasing right-wing influence nationally that continues to lower his declining popularity
• Honduras: The Xiamora Castro administration in Tegucigalpa will continue facing direct challenges by Washington and its allies against its indelible support for Venezuela and other nations in the region whose national sovereignty is threatened by external forces not aligned with regional and continental interests
• Mexico: President Claudia Sheinbaum will move to prove herself a most-worthy successor of ex-president ‘AMLO’ Obrador by continuing his policies and strengthening them with hers in new areas, including national security and protection against economic strangulation by northern neighbours
• Nicaragua: The Sandinista administration will continue resisting external efforts to influence internal change and President Trump’s efforts to regain direct US control of the Panama Canal will increase Managua’s urgency to construct its own canal with Chinese and US support
• Panama: The government and people will be forced to rally around the Panama Canal’s sovereignty and their nation’s independence as President Trump seeks to shake down Panama City over engaging Chinese companies to help keep canal traffic flowing freely between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans
• Peru: The new Chinese-built mega-port will accelerate Lima’s role in increasing the pace and volume of Latin American trade with China and its growing ties with Caribbean neighbours will enhance the country’s attractiveness as a smart trans-shipment port between Asia and Latin America
• Venezuela: Barring unforeseen circumstances associated with promises by overseas-based opposition elements to prevent President Maduro from taking office on January 10, Caracas and Washington will likely find common ground in 2025 regarding immigration; and ties with neighbouring Guyana will face more testing times
The Caribbean
• Cuba: The first quarter of 2025 will prove important for Cuba’s ability to rise from the accumulated effects of tightened US sanctions, hurricanes accelerated by climate change, collapse of outdated power plants, effects on tourism and other aspects of national and economic development
• Dominica: The Skerrit administration will continue grappling with a cash-strapped economy while hearing loud pre-election noises from a badly-wounded opposition, as it continues building a new international airport and bringing more relief to Dominicans from returns on its Citizenship by Investment Program (CIP)
• Guyana: Guyana will go the polls with the ruling PPP/Civic likely returning with an even bigger majority, while consolidating its role as the world’s fastest-growing new oil economy and strengthening its defence alliances through more bilateral agreements with India and other friendly nations
• Haiti: The continuing failure of the US-backed plan to maintain the decrepit status quo in Port au Prince will see increasing efforts by Washington to officially outsource its occupation plans to UN Peacekeeping Forces (PKFs), but those in charge will eventually have to talk to the armed groups that occupy and control the capital
• Saint Lucia: The government will start completing major outstanding national projects (Hewanorra International Airport (HIA), St. Jude Hospital, Halls of Justice, OKEU Hospital, etc.) while expanding social services, providing economic assistance to the most needy and caring more for pensioners, youth and single-parent mothers
• St. Vincent & The Grenadines: Approaching another crucial round of national general elections, the island will see increasing partisan debate in the New year, while the ruling ULP Administration will again go all-out to convince voters their future is better-buttered with CARICOM’s elder statesman, veteran re-elected Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves
• Surinam: The Paramaribo administration will sign agreements with selected new oil majors for drilling after dancing with the energy drivers on both sides of the Atlantic; and after vexing the Americans in the process, will also have to decide on whether its relationship with neighbouring Guyana will be cooperative, or competitive
• Trinidad & Tobago: Like in Guyana and Surinam, Race, Religion and Culture will take centre-stage here too, as general elections approach in the twin-island republic that maintains principled positions on energy ties with neighbouring Venezuela