2024: A Year of Global Consequence
Ground wars, anti-terror campaigns, and the up-or-down vote on democracy
2024 is shaping up to be another blood soaked year as the rules-based international order continues to disintegrate before our eyes. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine enters its third calendar year and absent much needed additional U.S. military aide, it’s not likely Ukraine will recover their remaining occupied lands. Israel is still in the midst of rooting out Hamas from Gaza and will have the difficult and dangerous task of nation-building awaiting them on the other side of a military victory.
These two conflicts will undoubtedly dominate what little bandwidth legacy media devotes to international wars in the next dozen months but there are plenty of other five-alarm fires burning as the Gregorian calendar flips over. As I’ve detailed in past newsletters there’s also vicious civil wars raging in Sudan and Myanmar (along with Syria, Yemen, and Somalia). There’s a spreading insurgency in the Sahel as military coups proliferate across the region. The Islamic State and al-Qaeda are ramping up terror operations via their decentralized networks of regional cells. And U.S. forces are currently under fire in the Red Sea as Houthi militants have declared war on global commerce.
And this list doesn’t include the prospective conflicts on the horizon: China is chomping at the bit to annex Taiwan. A specter of war hangs over the south Caucuses as Azerbaijan increasingly looks to create a pan-Turkic land route from Baku to Istanbul. Serbia may attempt to “protect” ethnic Serbs in Kosovo the way Russia is “protecting” ethnic Russians living in Ukraine. We’re living through the most chaotic moment since the end of the Cold War and malevolent forces are gearing up to take advantage of the limited global attention budget for suffering.
Amid the millions of moving pieces in the international arena in 2024, one figure looms larger than any and threatens to act as a malignant domino that could set off a disastrous chain reaction in the free world. Donald Trump is currently sitting on average 50 points ahead of his closest challenger for the Republican presidential nomination according to 538’s poll aggregation. It’s stunning that any reasonably informed citizen could look at Trump’s behavior during his first term, his attempted self-coup, and his admission that he genuinely would like to be a dictator and still cast a ballot for him. But then again Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been getting votes (legitimately and illegitimately) in Turkey for twenty years now.
Trump’s second term (out of how many—who’s to say?) would be filled with catastrophic decisions with global repercussions like withdrawing the United States from NATO. A Trump re-election all but guarantees Vladimir Putin’s success in Ukraine and endangers our (for now) allies in Eastern Europe. His non-committal attitude towards our treaty allies surely would invite China to test their luck across the Taiwan straight and expand their maritime claims in the South China Sea. Domestically a Trump second term means casting aside the rule of law so that a former reality TV star can utilize the power of the state to shield himself from legal liability. And among other things, Trump’s return to power would also give aid and comfort to the metastasizing transnational populist-authoritarian movement.
Democracy may not be on its deathbed but it is certainly fevered and under relentless assault from the authoritarian pull of right-wing nationalism all across the globe. 2024 will be a crucial test of the democratic immune system. The Alternative for Deutschland is ascendant in Germany. Geert Wilders’ PVV is forming a coalition government in the Netherlands after a stunning upset in the November Dutch election. Depending on how the next three years go, Marine Le Pen may well be the next French President. Mexico, Venezuela, Taiwan, and Georgia will also all hold elections of consequence this year. The liberal world stands at a crossroads and 2024 may come to be seen as the year it all really started going south if things break the wrong way.
Burkina Faso
Troubling news out of West Africa where the Burkina Faso armed forces appear to have kidnapped the former foreign minister:
Ablassé Ouédraogo, former Burkina Faso foreign minister and former deputy director-general of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), was kidnapped on Sunday by "individuals" claiming to belong to the "national police", his political party announced on Wednesday, calling for his "immediate release".
The ruling military junta has a disturbing history of disappearing dissident citizens like when they abducted human rights activist and regime critic Daouda Diallo last November. Ibrahim Traoré’s government has now also started detaining foreign civil servants:
Four French IT workers with diplomatic passports and visas have been arrested in Burkina Faso's capital, Ouagadougou, a French diplomatic source said on Wednesday, denying a media report that they were intelligence agents…Speaking on condition of anonymity, the source said the four civil servants came to the West African country to carry out IT maintenance for the French embassy, but were detained on Dec. 1 and transferred to Ouagadougou prison on Dec. 14.
Since the military coups of 2022, Burkina Faso has become increasingly repressive, violent, and hostile to the West. And Russia will soon be adding to the chaos by deploying the re-constituted Wagner Group PMC (now under new management) to the country:
Moscow is now laying the foundations for its deployment in Burkina Faso and negotiating with Niger to become a key military ally. To this end, the Russian government has created a new military structure called Africa Corps, which works under the Defense Ministry. In this way, it intends to replace the Wagner Group and move away from a decentralized private company to one that is more directly controlled by the state. In parallel, at the beginning of December, the U.N. made official its complete withdrawal from Mali after handing over the Mopti base to the Malian authorities.
Another reminder why defeating Russia in Ukraine is so crucial for the future of world stability—Putin will not stop with Kyiv and seeks to plunge Russia’s poisonous tentacles all across the globe.
Islamic State
An ISIS affiliate in Uganda murdered three people the day after Christmas while attacking a village in the East African country in an especially heinous act of terror:
The assailants from the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) attacked the village in Kamwenge district late on Monday, killing a 75-year-old woman and her two grandchildren before burning the bodies, Felix Kulayigye, the military spokesman said in an audio statement sent to journalists.
The U.S. State Department considers Uganda relatively effective at counter terrorism operations but I would expect to see an uptick in attacks in 2024 as calls for global jihad multiply in the aftermath of the October 7 al-Aqsa flood terror attack. 3,700 miles north of Kampala, German prosecutors just charged four German nationals with raising almost $300,000 to support ISIS via the international messaging app Telegram:
Prosecutors brought the three women and two men before the Dusseldorf Higher Regional Court on charges of supporting a foreign terrorist organization and violating the Foreign Trade and Payments Act. All but one of the suspects are German nationals…The Office of the Federal Prosecutor in Karlsruhe, the country's highest prosecution authority, on Thursday accused the suspects of collecting money on behalf of two Islamic State members living in Syria from 2020 to 2022. The funds were transferred through intermediaries.
Meanwhile in the Levant, Syrian Kurds have eliminated an “ISIS senior official” in an anti-terror operation in SDF-controlled northern Syria:
Kurdish-led forces, aided by members of an international anti-jihadist coalition, "conducted a joint security operation in al-Hol Camp, targeting an ISIS senior official" who was killed, the Syrian Democratic Forces said in a statement.
The SDF described the operative as "an Iraqi national who was responsible for planning terrorist activities in the al-Hol camp".
Kurdistan
Speaking of Kurdistan, Turkey has been raining down airstrikes on Kurds in Syria and Iraq after the PKK allegedly killed a dozen Turkish soldiers in the snowy mountains of northern Iraq:
Tension between Turkey and Israel is ratcheting up with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accusing Turkish President Erdoğan of carrying out a genocide against the Kurds after being compared to Hitler by the Turkish autocrat. It is telling that there hasn’t been a worldwide outcry for the Kurdish civilians being obliterated by Turkish ordinance on a pretty regular basis:
The Kurdish Red Crescent in a report said that the airstrikes on Monday “continued until late at night. At least 8 people died in the attacks and 15 were injured. The main targets were civilian infrastructure.”
“In Kobane an outpatient clinic specialized in diabetes and supported through a German association was hit and destroyed. Fortunately, the clinic was closed due to the Christmas holidays and no casualties were reported.”
“Turkey seeks to drive people away from the region to change the demography in northeastern Syria, similar to its efforts in other Kurdish regions like Afrin since its occupation in February 2018,” the Kurdish Red Crescent said.
It’s awful quiet from the #ceasefirenow crowd while the Turks, Syrians, and Russians are indiscriminately massacring Muslim civilians in the Middle East.
Venezuela/Guyana
The United Kingdom has sent one of His Majesty’s (few remaining) Ships to Guyana for joint naval exercises in the wake of Venezuela’s recent move to claim the Essequibo region. Nicolás Maduro responded by ordering Venezuelan military exercises near the border last week and took to the airwaves to play Victim-in-Chief:
In a television address on Thursday, President Nicolás Maduro said the exercises were being launched "in response to the provocation and threat of the United Kingdom against peace and the sovereignty of our country".
He added that the move was "practically a military threat from London" and broke the "spirit" of a recent agreement reached between Venezuela and Guyana not to use force to settle their dispute.
It’s heartening to see countries like the U.K. and U.S. sending military advisors and conducting joint training operations with Guyana in the face of Venezuela’s recent aggression. Here’s to hoping Maduro doesn’t add to the ever growing list of active conflicts this year.
Iraq
I’m going to close Running Threads this week with the most alarming update. Iranian militants launched a drone attack on Christmas Day in Iraq targeting a U.S. air base in the country. This attack injured three service members, leaving one in critical condition after being airlifted to a hospital in Germany.
This is an outrage and we can’t allow Iran to get away with waging asymmetric war against us. The Ayatollah’s revolutionary state is not interested in being a “partner for peace” and Democrats need to abandon any thoughts of rapprochement or further nuclear deals.
Perhaps the most concerning news however is the Iraqi Prime Minister’s recent announcement they will be kicking out the international anti-terror coalition from the country imminently. The Institute for the the Study of War issued a grave assessment on December 28:
Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al Sudani announced that his administration will begin procedures to remove International Coalition forces from Iraq during a press conference on December 28, likely due to pressure from Iranian-backed Iraqi militias. An Iraqi decision to expel US forces will very likely create space for ISIS to rapidly resurge in Syria within 12 to 24 months and then threaten Iraq.
The world is not prepared for the disaster a free-for-all Iraq will be on top of the ongoing security nightmare in Afghanistan. Hopefully al Sudani reverses course.
Son of a Diplomat will be covering the running threads of global conflict and how they intersect all throughout 2024. If you want to help out, you can like this post (it helps with visibility on Substack’s internal social network, Notes) or share it on your social media or directly with someone who might enjoy following along with us: