“Man steps on an ant when he can’t catch the fly.”
Many of the conflicts identified in the previous years have remained concerns for the approaching decade. However, climate change, terrorism and a possible armed confrontation between the United States and Iran along with North Korea remain the points of the most concern.
Western Hemisphere:
Organized crime–related violence in Mexico.
In 2018, the number of drug-related homicides in Mexico rose to 33,341, a 15 percent increase from the previous year—and a record high. Moreover, Mexican cartels killed at least 130 candidates and politicians in the lead-up to Mexico’s 2018 presidential elections.
After the Sinaloa Cartel’s Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman was arrested in 2014, re-arrested in 2016, and finally extradited to the United States in 2017, a power vacuum was created within the Sinaloa Cartel, resulting in an accompanying increase in violence between rival factions seeking new territory and influence. By 2016, drug-related homicides had increased by 22 percent, with more than twenty thousand killed, and in 2017 a mass grave containing the remains of more than 250 victims of crime-related violence was uncovered in Veracruz State. Criminal and drug trafficking organizations threaten to undermine the strength and legitimacy of the Mexican government, an important U.S. regional partner, as well as harm civilian populations in both countries.
Mass migration from the Northern Triangle (El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras)
Certain actions by the Donald J. Trump administration in recent months, including separating migrant families and deploying the military to the border, have stirred significant controversy. Trump has slashed hundreds of millions of dollars in Northern Triangle aid, and is holding back future funding until the region “take[s] concrete actions” to address migration. Migrants, including a growing number of women and children, are fleeing the troubled region in record numbers. On average, about 265,000 people have left annually in recent years, and this number is on track to more than double in 2019.
Some migrants seek asylum in other parts of Latin America or in Europe. However, most endure a treacherous journey north through Mexico to the United States.
El Salvador and Honduras have Latin America’s highest rates of femicide, or murders of women and girls, according to recent UN data.
Economic crisis and political instability in Venezuela.
Venezuela is in the midst of a humanitarian crisis. Thousands of people flee the country every day, mostly on foot. In April 2019, after years of denying the existence of a humanitarian crisis and refusing to allow foreign aid to enter the country—calling aid shipments a political ploy by the United States—Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro allowed the entry of a shipment of emergency supplies from the Red Cross. Venezuela’s infrastructure has been poorly maintained, recently leading to a series of country-wide blackouts in March 2019 that left millions without power.
The curious Trade War of the United States and the 2020 presidential elections
The world is looking ahead at the 2020 elections. The next president will face serious foreign policy challenges. Trade has taken the centre stage. Donald J. Trump, who has set out to renegotiate long-standing deals and challenge a system that he says has been unfair to American workers. U.S. policymakers have struggled with how to confront an increasingly assertive China, which they say is relying on unfair trade practices that include export subsidies and intellectual property theft. Trump launched a full blown trade war with China, imposing tariffs on U.S. allies, signaled a more fundamental disruption of the global trading system in addition to threatening to withdraw from the WTO. (The Trump administration also withdrew from the UNESCO).
The 2020 United States presidential election is scheduled for November, 2020. Trump has launched a reelection campaign for the Republican primaries.
On October 31, 2019, the House of Representatives voted procedures governing public hearings regarding a possible impeachment of President Trump. These hearings began in mid-November 2019.The House then voted to impeach the president on December 18.
It is expected that more than 30 percent of eligible American voters will be nonwhite. African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and other ethnic minorities, as well as “whites with a college degree”, are expected to all increase their percentage of national eligible voters by 2020, while “whites without a college degree” will decrease. This shift is potentially an advantage for the Democratic nominees like Tulsi Gabbard, Deval Patrick and Andrew Yang.
South East Asia
The Korean crisis
A severe crisis in the Korean Peninsula has emerged following the collapse of the denuclearization negotiations and renewed long-range missile testing by North Korea. Kim recently declared at the Fifth Plenum of the Korean Worker’s Party’s Central Committee that North Korea no longer feels beholden to its self-imposed moratorium on nuclear and intercontinental and intermediate range ballistic missile tests.
The United States has nearly 29,000 troops deployed in the Korean peninsula for that purpose. In addition to U.S. troops, many of South Korea’s 630,000 troops and North Korea’s 1.2 million troops are stationed near the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), making it one of the most heavily armed borders in the world.
Kim Jong-un’s willingness to provoke the West with aggressive behavior has exacerbated the threat from North Korea’s weapons proliferation. These incitements have included firing missiles over northern Japanese islands, firing rockets across the South Korean border in August 2015, and a cyber attack on U.S.-based Sony Pictures in December 2014. Kim has also undertaken efforts to consolidate his power by purging high ranking officials, including his own family members. In February 2017, Kim’s half-brother was killed using a banned nerve agent in an airport in Malaysia. North Korea denies responsibility for the attack. There are reportedly between 80,000 and 120,000 political prisoners detained in North Korea.
Russia’s battle for dominance.
Putin says he wants a weaker presidency, a stronger parliament that will be responsible for picking the prime minister, and a beefed-up State Council—to be chaired, presumably, by him. The pace of change, it seems, will be quick: Putin named a new prime minister the same day he announced his proposals and called for an early popular vote to endorse them. These sudden moves underscore the president’s full control over the Russian political system. Russia has been doing its part to confront the United States, being it by developing next generation hyper-sonic missiles and fighter aircraft or providing support to countries sanctioned by USA like Venezuela and Iran. Russia is widely regarded as one of the major revisionist powers in the world, determined to upend the global liberal order. To be a global power, Russia must become a maritime power as well. Thus, it seeks to gain control in Eurasia and the region between the Black Sea and the Baltic region however the presence of the NATO has done its part in successfully putting a stop to its expansionism.
China’s battle with Coronavirus, Hong Kong and the sad state of the Uighur Muslims
Hundreds of thousands of people in Hong Kong have been demonstrating against a proposed law that would allow extraditions to mainland China, despite the local government’s announcement a day earlier that it was indefinitely suspending the bill.The mass protests have been among the largest in Hong Kong’s history and another sign of rising fear and anger over the erosion of the civil liberties that have long set the semi-autonomous territory apart from the Chinese mainland.
Meanwhile, a deadly reminder of the SARS epidemic has emerged, threatening the very fabric of society in China – a mysterious virus with no cure. And its spreading to other countries as well. The World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed this week that a traveler from Wuhan was identified with the coronavirus in Thailand, and suspected cases have been reported in Hong Kong, South Korea and Australia. Several countries have issued travel advisories and some like India have undertaken measures like installing thermal scanners in all its airports to screen travelers from China. The new virus belongs to the same family as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), which afflicted China and thirty-six other countries in 2002–03, killing more than 770 people worldwide.
China is also sending shock waves across the globe with its treatment of Uighur Muslims. China’s Communist Party is waging a hardline campaign against the Uighur ethnic minority, which has seen more than 1 million people detained in prison camps.
Muslim women whose husbands have been detained in Chinese internment camps are reportedly being forced to share beds with male government officials assigned to monitor them in their homes.
The government depicts its wider crackdown on Xinjiang’s Muslims as a “war on terror” launched following a series of alleged extremist attacks in 2014. After initially denying the existence of internment camps, the government later began referring to them as voluntary “vocational training centres”.But former detainees have alleged that inmates are subjected to torture, medical experiments and gang rape.
The long standing proxy war between India and Pakistan
The Citizenship (Amendment) Act was passed by the Parliament of India on 11 December 2019. It provides a path to Indian citizenship for members of Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi, and Christian religious minorities, who had fled persecutionfrom Pakistan,
Bangladesh and Afghanistan before December 2014.
The passage of the legislation caused large-scale protests in India. Some states have announced they will not implement the Act. The Union Home Ministry has said that states lack the legal power to stop the implementation of the CAA. Student groups such as those from the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad – a student wing of the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, held rallies in support of the amended Citizenship Act. Hindu refugee families in Assam, living since the 1960s in a refugee camp and who had been denied Indian citizenship so far, said that the Amendment had “kindled hope” at first. They added that the recent protests against the Act and demands for its cancellation have made them fearful of the future.
Protests against the bill were held in several metropolitan cities across India, including Kolkata, Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Jaipur. Smaller rallies were also held in the southern states of Kerala and Karnataka.
On 5 August 2019, the Government of India revoked the special status, or limited autonomy, granted under Article 370 of the Indian Constitution to Jammu and Kashmir—a region administered by India as a state, and a part of the larger region of Kashmir, which has been the subject of dispute among India, Pakistan, and China since 1947. The Home Minister introduced a Reorganization bill in the Indian Parliament, seeking to divide the state into two union territories to be governed by a lieutenant governor and a unicameral legislature
The revocation of Article 370 was passed by an “overwhelming majority” of support in the Indian parliament. It has attracted not only the support of the Hindu nationalist parties such as the BJP, but many other Indian political parties that typically oppose the BJP.
There was opposition too. Hundreds of people protested in New Delhi to protest against the Indian government decision and called it a “death of Indian democracy”. The protestors asked Indian government to reconsider its decision. The General Secretary of the Communist Party of India, called the Indian government move “an assault on Indian constitution”.
These decisions by the Indian administration did not go well with its neighbour Pakistan leading to ever more escalations between the two nuclear armed neighbours.
The heightened tensions stemmed from a suicide car bombing carried out on 14 February 2019 in which 40 Indian security personnel were killed. A Pakistan-based militant group, Jaish-e-Mohammad, claimed responsibility for the attack.India blamed Pakistan for the bombing and promised a robust response.
Some twelve days later, India and Pakistan conducted airstrikes against targets in each other’s territory.
On 7 August, a meeting of the National Security Committee decided to downgrade Pakistan’s diplomatic relations with India. Pakistan’s ambassador from India was recalled and the Indian ambassador to Pakistan was expelled.
On 9 August 2019, Pakistan formally suspended its trade relations with India and banned all exports and import to/from India.
On 20 August 2019, Pakistan announced that it will take the dispute to the International Court of Justice, adding that its case would centre on alleged human rights violations by India.
The two countries have been exchanging regular artillery gunfire ever since.
The everlasting conflict in Middle East and Africa
The dangerous Iran crisis
The U.S. government withdrew in May 2018 from the nuclear agreement with Iran and re-imposed sanctions on Tehran in November of the same year.
In June 2019, two explosions paralyzed two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman, a vital passage for a third of the world’s oil, according to media reports at the time.
The images of a ship on fire, with more than half of the structure destroyed, gave Secretary of State Mike Pompeo grounds to accuse Tehran of the attack.
Further investigations determined that the matter had more to do with the interests of an Iraqi sheikh and the economic lobbying of some in the region to overthrow Iran’s government.
During the last weeks of 2019, a U.S. civilian died after Iran attacked an Iraqi base with missiles, leaving multiple members of the U.S. military service dead.
Likewise, President Donald Trump’s abandonment of Syria’s northern border left the door open for the massacre of thousands of Kurdish militants, strongly supported by the Tehran government.
The consequence was the escalation of tensions during the last months that now seems to have reached a point of no return with the assassination of the most important Iranian intelligence commander in the country’s power scale, Major General Qassem Suleimani, who was killed in a drone attack authorized by Trump on 3rd January 2020.
Suleimani was the highest-ranking military officer in Iran and was considered an extremely important diplomatic figure, especially for his leadership in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. His assassination, along with several officers from Iranian-backed Iraqi militias, took place when a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone fired missiles at a convoy leaving the airport.
For its part, Tehran leadership, led by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a statement calling for three days of public mourning and a subsequent retaliation.
“His departure to God does not end his path or his mission,” the statement said, “but forceful revenge awaits the criminals who have his blood and the blood of the other martyrs last night on their hands.”
The situation turned far worse when Iran mistakenly shot down a commercial Ukrainian airliner plane resulting in the death of all 176 people on board. The aircraft was downed when Iran’s air defences had been on high alert hours after its armed forces fired more than 20 ballistic missiles at US targets in Iraq.
The USA has since imposed punishing sanctions on Iran resulting in a crippled economy and widespread anti American anger.
The tense situation in Israel
After Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, Israel declared the Gaza Strip under Hamas a hostile entity and approved a series of sanctions that included power cuts, heavily restricted imports, and border closures. Hamas attacks on Israel continued, as did Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip. After months of negotiations, in June 2008 Israel and Hamas agreed to implement a truce scheduled to last six months; however, the truce was threatened shortly thereafter as each accused the other of violations, which escalated in the last months of the agreement. On December 19 the truce officially expired amid accusations of violations on both sides. Broader hostilities erupted shortly thereafter as Israel, responding to sustained rocket fire, mounted a series of air strikes across the region—among the strongest in years—meant to target Hamas. After a week of air strikes, Israeli forces initiated a ground campaign into the Gaza Strip amid calls from the international community for a cease-fire. Following more than three weeks of hostilities—in which perhaps more than 1,000 were killed and tens of thousands were left homeless—Israel and Hamas each declared a unilateral cease-fire.
A series of border protests in Gaza in 2018, in which demonstrators attempted to cross the border into Israel and sent incendiary kites and balloons into Israel, was met with a violent response by Israel. The situation reached a peak on May 14, when about 40,000 people participated in the protests. Many of the protesters attempted to cross the border at once, and Israeli soldiers opened fire, killing about 60 people and wounding some 2,700 others. The violence continued to escalate, leading to Israeli air strikes and Hamas rocket fire into Israel and lasting several months.
The Sudan Crisis
Sudan has been in the midst of a political crisis since long-serving ruler Omar al-Bashir was overthrown in April. The military and pro-democracy movement have been locked in a tussle for power that has led to mass protests and killings.
The security forces have used brute force to strengthen the position of the generals. In the worst such case, dozens of people were killed – and some had their bodies thrown into the River Nile – in a crackdown on protesters in the capital, Khartoum on 3 June.
But tens of thousands of protesters returned to the streets a few weeks later to stage the biggest demonstration since Mr Bashir’s overthrow. This forced the junta to resume talks on a power-sharing government and an agreement has now been reached.
The possible re-emergence of ISIS
Now, as tensions escalate between the United States and Iran in the wake of the U.S. killing of Iranian military commander Qassem Suleimani this month, it is worth remembering that the Islamic State is regrouping in Iraq. Indeed, the militant group’s 14,000-18,000 fighters are returning to their guerrilla roots, assassinating tribal elders, taxing local populations, kidnapping soldiers, burning crops, laying roadside ambushes, and engaging in night-time hit-and-runs. Training and support from U.S. forces in Iraq is essential to preventing its full-blown revival, but the standoff with Iran may yield the opposite result: removing the U.S. presence from Iraq altogether.
Climate Change – An approaching catastrophe.
Men argue. Nature acts.
Withstanding all the above issues, one cannot but ignore the greatest threat to the future of humanity- Climate Change.
We are facing an existential threat and rapid prioritization of attention and action is necessary. If we continue along our current path, scientists say that the consequences will be devastating, having implications on where we live, how we grow food and other services vital to our well-being. A 2°C increase could mean more heat waves, a ten-fold increase in Arctic ice-free summers and a complete wipe-out of the world’s coral reefs, home to millions of species.
In 2013 the IPCC provided more clarity about the role of human activities in climate change when it released its Fifth Assessment Report. It is categorical in its conclusion: climate change is real and human activities are the main cause.
Fifth Assessment Report
The report provides a comprehensive assessment of sea level rise, and its causes, over the past few decades. It also estimates cumulative CO2 emissions since pre-industrial times and provides a CO2 budget for future emissions to limit warming to less than 2°C. About half of this maximum amount was already emitted by 2011. The report found that:
• From 1880 to 2012, the average global temperature increased by 0.85°C.
• Oceans have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished and the sea level has risen. From 1901 to 2010, the global average sea level rose by 19 cm as oceans expanded due to warming and ice melted. The sea ice extent in the Arctic has shrunk in every successive decade since 1979, with 1.07 × 106 km² of ice loss per decade.
• Given current concentrations and ongoing emissions of greenhouse gases, it is likely that by the end of this century global mean temperature will continue to rise above the pre-industrial level. The world’s oceans will warm and ice melt will continue. Average sea level rise is predicted to be 24–30 cm by 2065 and 40–63 cm by 2100 relative to the reference period of 1986–2005. Most aspects of climate change will persist for many centuries, even if emissions are stopped.
There is alarming evidence that important tipping points, leading to irreversible changes in major ecosystems and the planetary climate system, may already have been reached or passed. Ecosystems as diverse as the Amazon rainforest and the Arctic tundra, may be approaching thresholds of dramatic change through warming and drying. Mountain glaciers are in alarming retreat and the downstream effects of reduced water supply in the driest months will have repercussions that transcend generations.
2019 Amazon rainforest wildfires and the 2019–20 Australian bushfires
Dark clouds of smoke smothered cities in Brazil as parts of the Amazon burned at a rate not seen in years, and the world responded with outrage.
For a few weeks in August, the world’s eyes were fixed on Brazil and its government’s response. When the burning of the Amazon was at its peak in August, there were thousands of individual fires, almost three times as many that month – 30,901 – compared with the same period last year.
At the other side of the world, Record-breaking temperatures and months of severe drought have fuelled a series of massive bushfires across Australia. Some 30 people have so far been killed – including four firefighters – and more than 10 million hectares (100,000 sq km or 24.7 million acres) of bush, forest and parks across Australia has burned in addition to the death of half a billion animals.
An estimated 25,000 koalas were killed when flames devastated Kangaroo Island in the state of South Australia on 9 January.
The total area of land affected by fires across Australia – more than 10 million hectares – is now comparable to England’s land area of 13 million hectares.
Because, underneath all of this is the real truth we have been avoiding: climate change isn’t an “issue” to add to the list of things to worry about, next to health care and taxes. It is a civilizational wake-up call. A powerful message—spoken in the language of fires, floods, droughts, and extinctions—telling us that we need an entirely new economic model and a new way of sharing this planet. Telling us that we need to evolve. The world has had a long and bloody history of conflict. Humans have been at loggerheads against each other since the dawn of history. It is high time we look at ourselves as one species , one people and put in all our resources to tackle the dangerous flames of climate change and global warming, before they decide to devour us off the face of this world.
The Rising Days 