2024 was supposed to highlight the global growth of democracy, especially with so many countries going to the polls. But instead, 2025 may now offer real surprises – as well as a few monsters.
“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters.” – Antonio Gramsci
Elections: ‘Throw the bums out’
For many – but obviously not for everyone – 2024 began with real hope and some cautious optimism about the future, especially compared with the harsh vicissitudes of recent years. The new year would surely be better than how we had been treated by the recent past with its pandemics and economic tribulations.
One hopeful sign, however, was that more than 70 nations had elections in 2024, the largest number ever in one year.
Many of the world’s democracies, including India, Indonesia, the US, Mexico, South Africa, Botswana, Ghana, France and the European Parliament, among others (along with other more recent democratic states), became places where voters judged their respective governments’ fitness for purpose.
Crucially, in many elections, the rise of populist tendencies joined together with voters’ anti-incumbent feelings. They blamed leaders for failing to address societal, economic or political challenges, and instead chose leaders promising new beginnings, new brooms sweeping clean, and new dawns.
The traditional American chant of disenchanted voters – “Throw the rascals (or bums) out” – and local equivalents elsewhere became rallying cries around the world. A wave of social media sympathy for the man who is accused of killing the chief executive of a major health insurer (and anger at health insurance companies more generally) points to increasingly violent aspects of such a trend.
For many 2024 elections, feelings of economic malaise, combined with high levels of joblessness and fears of inflation and immigration, were key. Donald Trump was especially effective in marshalling those issues and fears for electoral victory.
In France, although he remains president, Emmanuel Macron is now on his fourth prime minister after parliamentary fights over financial legislation and a tactical alliance between the left and right in the National Assembly made it impossible for his third prime minister, Michel Barnier, to continue in office. The mood of the French public remains one of anger at the president.
In Britain, although a hapless Tory Party was driven from power, the Labour Party had replaced its own leadership before it could oust the Tories with Keir Starmer as its new leader. There is a pervasive sense that the new prime minister will fail to deal with the country’s economic and societal challenges any better than his predecessors had done.
In Germany, Chancellor Olaf Scholz continues to hold on to power, but he faces the real possibility of losing the next general election. In state-level elections, the Alternative for Germany rightists have made successful anti-incumbency showings, arguing that a dominant German Social Democratic Party has no answers for the country’s economic drift – a feeling that will be tested in 2025.
In the EU parliamentary elections, meanwhile, the traditional social democratic parties were humiliated as protest parties gained seats.
Turning to Latin America, in Brazil, right at the end of 2023, an anti-incumbency wave swept left-wing Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva back into power, replacing his rightist predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro. Next door in Argentina, with similar sentiments but in a sharply contrasting choice, voters gave the anarchical libertarian candidate, Javier Milei, the presidency.
Over in East Asia, beyond the South Korean parliament’s current move to oust the country’s president, Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party, in power for virtually the entire past half-century, is now holding on grimly with a minority government.
In India, Narendra Modi was returned to office but with a shrunken parliamentary presence, and in Indonesia, Prabowo Subianto, one-time defence head (and son of late dictator Suharto), made a political comeback, besting other veteran politicians to become the new president – with major support from young voters.
In many African elections, there has also been strong anti-incumbent fever. In Ghana, former president John Mahama promised “a new beginning, a new direction,” soundly defeating incumbent Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia.
And in Botswana, voters turfed out a governing party that had been in power since 1966. The Botswana Democratic Party won just four parliamentary seats as voters embraced Duma Boko’s Umbrella for Democratic Change and unseated Mokgweetsi Masisi as the country’s president.
Meanwhile, in the US, former president Trump won the most recent general election (and a substantial victory in the electoral college), beating incumbent Vice President Kamala Harris. She had been forced to run with President Joe Biden’s policies linked to her, weighing down her chances in an anti-incumbency wave.
Trump’s party now has bare majorities in both houses of Congress as well.
Tables are turned in Syria
In Syria, although it was obviously not an election in the normal sense of the word, the corrupt, murderous family that had ruled Syria for 53 years has just been dispatched from power by the rebel militia of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), led by Abu Mohammad al-Julani.
HTS is an offshoot of the Isis, Daesh and al-Qaeda movements, but has now significantly changed the appeal in its pronouncements since capturing Damascus in a nearly bloodless campaign. HTS’s drive to eliminate the Assad regime is actually the final punctuation mark for protests and revolts whose roots reach the Arab Spring of nearly 15 years ago.
HTS has been positioning itself as an Islamist movement that also advocates more democratic behaviour and will not ride roughshod over the rest of a deeply divided nation. Its leader and the organisation remain on Western terrorist watchlists, and the challenges of unwinding the legacy of Assad’s horrific regime means Syria still has much to endure.
Nevertheless, now that Assad has fled to Russia, some of the Russian military personnel and equipment complicit in maintaining his reign seem to be leaving as well.
A more complete withdrawal of the Russian naval flotilla and its air units will make it much harder for Russia to exercise a significant presence in West Africa and the Sahel in 2025.
HTS’s success also means severing supply lines from Iran to Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon, ushering in serious changes in the geopolitical arrangements in the Middle East. With Hamas and Hezbollah both severely weakened by Israeli military efforts and their chances for being resupplied through Syria diminished, Iran and Russia’s influence on regional developments will similarly be weakened.
Thus Syria’s momentous revolution seems the appropriate segue from a year of elections to the prospects for 2025.
Geopolitical challenges
Most obvious of them are unresolved conflicts that will haunt geopolitics in 2025. The Middle East conflict with Israel as a key protagonist now has a very different shape than just a few months ago.
Hamas and Hezbollah have been severely weakened by unremitting Israeli attacks and their chief backers – Iran and Russia – have been humiliated by the Syrian revolt. And Iran has been shown incapable of protecting its military, nuclear or government sites from Israeli attack.
It is a serious question how these events will create changes in Israeli strategies and tactics towards Iran and the two depleted militias, as well as the societies in which they were embedded.
Moreover, it remains unclear whether those events can help political opponents of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to drive him from office. Or, alternatively, whether judicial proceedings against him over corruption will fatally weaken him, together with his failure to gain the release of the remaining hostages seized by Hamas on 7 October 2023, or the failure to prevent the attack in the first place.
Moreover, it is unclear how the new Syrian regime will position itself towards Israel, let alone how the other key outsiders involved in Syria, such as Turkiye, Iran, Russia and the US, will adapt their strategies to the changed situation in Syria.
In 2025, will regional players – Turkiye, Iran and Saudi Arabia – recalibrate their relations with Israel (and with each other and with groups in Syria such as the Kurds) in the wake of the end of Assad? Further, what will happen to Hamas and Hezbollah themselves with the breakdown of Iranian connections to them?
And will regional anger over the Israeli military’s devastation of Gaza in its pursuit of Hamas start to dissipate if Israel reduces its military efforts and if ceasefire arrangements actually come into effect and hold?
All these questions will converge quickly on the incoming US president with his insistence on seeing a Hamas-Israel ceasefire come into effect, including the release of any remaining hostages, even before he takes office. Under the incoming Trump administration, will the US cling to a policy of backing Israel regardless of any and all circumstances?
Beyond Syria and the Middle East
Will Russian President Vladimir Putin’s embarrassment in backing a fallen despot trigger a rethink about his country’s strategies in the region as it continues to pursue its costly hot war in Ukraine, or will he be more insistent about winning what may become a pyrrhic victory?
Or, will Putin, stung by the loss of a major client state, decide to ratchet up his efforts to subdue Ukraine – given the prospect that Trump will be less vigorous in Ukraine’s defence than his predecessor? Or will he simply declare victory, insisting all major objectives have been achieved?
Alternatively, Putin could accept a “cold peace” – somewhat similar to the situation on the Korean Peninsula – but hoping it slowly saps the will of Ukraine’s government and people.
World’s worst humanitarian crisis
Meanwhile, conflicts such as the horrific violence in Sudan will likely continue unabated, absent outside efforts. Neither side is close to victory, despite tens of thousands of deaths, millions starving and further millions of refugees.
This conflict is the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, says David Milliban, head of the International Rescue Committee.
The devastating conflicts in the Eastern Congo and Yemen will drag on as well.
Myanmar refugees
The unresolved Rohingya refugee crisis and civil conflict in Myanmar between the military and multiple rebellious groups are unlikely to come to an end.
The suffering of women in Iran and Afghanistan will almost certainly stay unresolved in 2025. And climate change action will remain largely unresolved despite the increasing intensity of global warming.
There are also geopolitical challenges in East Asia. What lessons will North Korea’s leader draw from events in Syria? Further, how will China gauge its long game to gain control of Taiwan or the South China Sea’s resources, and how much will those efforts collide with Trump’s goal of punishing China over its exports through dramatically higher tariffs on Chinese goods?
Will the Chinese see 2025 as the year of destiny for settling these territorial questions their way, or will resolving economic tensions with the US be regarded as more important? The Economist predicts, at least for 2025, that the primary seat of the US-China conflict will remain a trade war, once “Trump imposes restrictions and ramps up tariffs – including on America’s allies. As protectionism intensifies, Chinese firms are expanding abroad, both to get around trade barriers and to tap new markets in the Global South.”
Black swans swimming?
Finally, in some serious palmistry, The Economist offers additional thoughts for 2025. First will be the repercussions of the Trump victory, affecting everything from immigration and defence to economics and trade.
Now that the back of global inflation has largely been broken, the new challenge is reducing government deficits by increasing taxes, cutting spending or boosting growth. Many may also have to increase defence budgets. “Painful economic choices loom,” the magazine says.
Then there is the question of gerontocratic government. While America will be led by its oldest president to date and world leaders generally are greying, China is actively searching for economic opportunities in a generally ageing world, especially since Africa and the Middle East are in the midst of youth booms.
Finally, what about real black swans? After assassination attempts, exploding pagers and walkie-talkies, and giant rockets captured by metal chopsticks to land back to Earth, we should be prepared for the unbelievable or the unexpected.
Such wild cards could include a massive solar storm (we are at a peak in the cycle) wreaking havoc on communications and electronics; the historic discovery of lost ancient texts that are read by artificial intelligence and advanced imaging – or even another global pandemic spreading from the viral reserve of Southeastern Asia.
But the one event overturning thinking about humanity’s place in the universe would be incontrovertible proof of extraterrestrial life. With thousands of planets being identified every year, the chances of such a discovery are increasingly possible. DM
J Brooks Spector is an associate editor at Daily Maverick.
This story first appeared in our weekly DM168 newspaper, available countrywide for R35.
