Current trends in international geopolitics suggest armed conflict will fester in 2024.
First, the Israel-Hamas war is expected to rage well into 2024 as the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) warn their Gaza operations will extend ‘for many more months’.
Hamas' remains committed to eradicating Israel and is leveraging hostages to this end, demanding an unrealistic ransom based on the Gilad Shadit precedent. Meanwhile, Israel has vowed to dismantle Hamas and no Israeli political capital remains for reaching a ceasefire with the perpetrators of the largest Jewish massacre since the Holocaust.
Additionally, US President Joe Biden’s public and private lukewarm support for Israel and his ‘non-confrontational’ foreign policy strategy will further destabilize the middle east by emboldening Hamas, Iran, and peripheral groups such as Hezbollah and the Hoothies.
Farther north, Russia’s war of attrition against Ukraine will unlikely end any time soon. Russia’s energy sales, including to European purchasers, and the successful circumvention of Western symbolic sanctions have allowed Putin to ameliorate economic pressure and continue funding the war.
In Asia, China is incrementally intensifying signals towards potential military action in Taiwan. The West’s collapse and the US’s preoccupation with Ukraine, Israel, and now the Red Sea limit deployable resources to a potential fourth front, opening a window for China to exploit Western weakness and fulfill its ‘One China’ policy.
A Latin American theater may also open somewhere along the border of Venezuela and Guayana, with Nicolas Maduro harnessing expanded oil exports to fund a potential invasion of the Essequibo.
Notwithstanding the international chaos 2023 is bequeathing 2024, several developments could deter nefarious state actors from resorting to armed aggression. NATO’s expansion, growing relations between US and states bordering Russia, the AUKUS partnership, and Israel’s commitment to decemating Hamas, all provide opportunities for the West to compel rogue states to comply with an otherwise noticeably vulnerable international rules-based order.
