Donald Trump’s departure will alter the face of geopolitics. The climate
crisis and Covid response will affect all nations – while others face very
particular challenges.
Observer
correspondents examine the 12 months ahead
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From top left, Bobi Wine supporters in Uganda; Israeli forces
disperse Palestinians in Gaza with teargas; Jill Biden with
president elect Joe; a fire blazes near Canberra, Australia.
Photograph: AP and Getty Images
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A
potent mix of hope and fear accompanies the start of 2021 in most of the
world. Scientists have created several vaccines for a disease that didn’t even
have a name this time last year. But many countries, including the UK and the
US, are still stumbling through the deadliest period of the pandemic.
The shadow of Covid will not begin to lift, even in richer countries, for
months. Britain was the first to approve a vaccine and has secured extensive
supplies, yet Boris Johnson’s suggestion that life might be returning to normal
by Easter is widely seen as optimistic.
Other countries,
particularly in the south, face a long wait to get vaccines, and help paying for
them. The rebuilding of economies shattered by Covid everywhere will be slow;
even countries that managed to contain it have taken a hit, from Vietnam to New
Zealand.
But when the immediate threat is over, the world will face
other major challenges that in a normal year would have dominated the headlines.
Perhaps most urgent – though not always seen as such by politicians
– is the climate crisis. Wildfires and extreme weather have focused attention on
the costs of a warming world, and the narrowing window to cut emissions and
prevent catastrophic global heating.
In November, world leaders are
due to meet in Glasgow for a key summit. As it was delayed for a year because of
the pandemic, there is mounting pressure for them to agree significant new
steps.
Greener growth is a priority for new US president Joe Biden,
once he has met his first campaign promise to defeat Covid. His ability to
influence this and other issues will be determined in no small part by
special elections
for Georgia’s two Senate seats on 5 January. Control of the Senate hinges on the
results.
Biden must also consider how to rebuild his country’s
reputation abroad, after Donald Trump’s aggressive “America First” project saw
him retreat from international obligations and attack multilateral institutions
such as Nato. Ties with Beijing, which have deteriorated rapidly under Trump,
are also likely to be a particular focus.
After moving quickly to
contain coronavirus,
China
has returned to growth already, and a trade deal with the EU in late December is
a reminder of how attractive its economy remains to global investors.
But there is still resentment in many countries over China’s
handling of the earliest days of the pandemic and an apparent reluctance to
allow an independent international investigation into the origins of
Covid-19.
The country’s communist leadership has also come under
increased scrutiny over human rights abuses, from a sweeping security law used
to
crush Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, to internment camps for Muslim minorities in far western Xinjiang
province.
By the end of his term Trump had upended decades of policy,
taking a hard line against Beijing on trade and diplomatic issues, including
bolstering military and political support for Taiwan. Biden is expected to seek
a less confrontational approach.
With Trump gone, 2021 will also see
tests for other populist strongmen. Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu will face his
fourth general election in two years while corruption cases continue. Brazil’s
Jair Bolsonaro heads into the third of a four-year term, but as pandemic payouts
come to an end, his popularity could take a nosedive.
Below, our
correspondents around the world take a look in more detail at what 2021 may
hold.
Emma Graham-Harrison
United States: a return to reality?
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Joe Biden has made tackling coronavirus his top priority.
Photograph: Mark Makela/Getty Images
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Joe Biden faces the most daunting, overflowing
inbox of any new US president since the second world war when he takes office on
20 January.
The coronavirus pandemic has killed more than 346,000
Americans. The economy is struggling with unemployment at 6.7% and thousands
queueing at food banks. Demands for racial equity and justice are more urgent.
Russia is suspected of the
biggest ever cyber-attack on the US government. America is divided, its fragile democracy in need of repair. And the climate
crisis cries out for leadership.
Biden, at 78 the oldest US president
ever elected, has made it clear that taming Covid-19 is the No 1 priority.
America, reeling from a historic failure of leadership by Donald Trump, has 4%
of the world’s population but 19% of the world’s deaths and more than 100,000
people in hospital. Biden recently warned that the “darkest days” in the battle
against the pandemic “are ahead of us, not behind us”.
The former
vice-president has promised to sign an executive order on the day he is sworn in
to require people to wear masks on buses and trains crossing state lines and in
federal government buildings. He also aims to reopen most schools in his first
100 days. And he has set a target of 100 million vaccinations over the same
period.
But among Biden’s challenges is to win over those fearful
that the vaccine is unsafe, as well as conspiracy theorists determined to sow
distrust in it. Indeed, America’s disinformation pandemic may prove even more
contagious and stubborn than the coronavirus if a certain former president
continues to tweet from the sidelines, and if rightwing media outlets continue
to amplify him.
In this scenario, what began as “alternative facts”
at the start of the Trump administration could develop into “alternative
realities” under Biden, fuelling hyperpartisanship in Washington and rendering
the country almost ungovernable.
David Smith
Europe: treading carefully
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Angela Merkel’s departure will dominate German politics this
year.
Photograph: Thomas Imo/Photothek via Getty Images
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With Brexit done and dusted largely to the EU’s satisfaction, Covid vaccination
under way and a more amicable – and predictable – US president in the White
House, 2021 should by rights be an easier year for
Europe.
But its own internal difficulties, along with the continuation of
global geopolitical developments that long predate the crises of 2020, seem
likely to make this year, too, a tricky one for the bloc to negotiate.
The
divide between many western member states and the governments of Poland and
Hungary continues to widen, with 2020’s row over
Brussels’s attempts to tie the EU budget to respect for the rule of law
laying bare deep-seated cultural differences on core European issues such as
immigration and liberal values.
Meanwhile, Germany, along with France
the EU’s economic and political powerhouse, risks being preoccupied for much of
the coming year by the
departure of Angela Merkel
and the choice of her successor as chancellor, with elections due in September
and possibly months of coalition talks thereafter.
The Netherlands,
an increasingly influential EU player particularly following the UK’s departure,
also has parliamentary elections in 2021. In both countries, the Eurosceptic far
right – effectively sidelined by the coronavirus pandemic for much of 2020 –
could play a significant role as economic crisis replaces health crisis.
Neither Germany’s AfD or Geert Wilders’s Party for Freedom look
likely to end up in government – but they could well sway the policies of more
mainstream rivals seeking to capture far-right votes, potentially influencing
future dynamics in Brussels.
Looking abroad, relations with two
increasingly prickly near-neighbours,
Russia
and Turkey, do not look set to get any easier either, with neither Vladimir
Putin nor Recep Tayyip Erdoğan looking to soften their anti-EU stance. And with
a more integrated European foreign policy – despite much talk of “strategic
European autonomy” – still some way off, the geopolitical rivalry between the US
and China will force Europe to tread a delicate path between principle and
self-interest.
Add to that the need – in the aftermath of a pandemic
– to take unpopular steps to tackle the climate crisis; a disputed drive for a
common European defence and security policy; and growing transatlantic tensions
over the EU’s plans to curb the excesses of the US tech giants, and 2021 looks,
for Europe, not much easier than 2020.
Jon Henley
Africa: new voices
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Ugandan presidential challenger Bobi Wine and his daughter Subi
at his home in Kampala.
Photograph: Sumy Sadurni/AFP/Getty Images
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From the very first weeks, 2021 in Africa is going to be a year of intense
politics and noisy protests as new voices of the young and dissatisfied across
the continent fight to be heard, new leaders seek to assert themselves and older
ones try to hang on to power.
There are huge problems – the
devastating impact of Covid on communities and economies, growing insecurity in
many regions, and environmental crises – and big questions are being asked by
hundreds of millions of young people about their futures.
Many
analysts saw 2020 as a year when democracy suffered, with incumbents in
countries from
Tanzania
to Guinea using a mixture of the security services, populist sloganeering and
new laws to muzzle dissent. This year the same tactics may finally fail to
silence vocal opposition groups – or may usher in a new period of repression.
Later
this month, a presidential election in Uganda will pit a 76-year-old veteran
politician against a 38-year-old former reggae singer. Most analysts expect
Yoweri Museveni, who has been in power since 1986, to win against the
charismatic Bobi Wine, but, with
dozens already dead after police shot opposition supporters
and any number of tricks used to give the president a crushing advantage, there
will be profound questions over the legitimacy of any victory.
Wine
draws his support from the young and the urban – two of the fasting growing
constituencies everywhere in Africa – and represents a new generation of leaders
calling for an end to endless elections won by ruling parties or leaders,
corruption and patronage politics.
Later in the year, Ethiopia is
likely to go to the polls to elect a new parliament. Here, in the continent’s
second-most populous state, there is a different dynamic. Prime minister Abiy
Ahmed represents that new generation of forward-looking leaders.
The
44-year-old Nobel prize winner spearheaded the push to sideline the ageing
rulers who had been in charge for 30 years and forced through reforms. But in
November Abiy launched a
bloody military campaign
against the hardline remainder who resisted his efforts to remake the nation.
Will the postponed parliamentary elections reinforce his reforming
zeal? Or reinforce what critics say are his authoritarian tendencies? The coming
year will tell us.
Jason Burke
China: back in the game
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People wearing face masks at a Beijing ceremony to mark the 71st
anniversary of the founding of People’s Republic of China in
October.
Photograph: Carlos García Rawlins/Reuters
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China starts the year on a social and
economic rebound from the virus outbreak, but with drastically poorer
international relationships, and a global community that is far less reluctant
to act against it.
Last year began badly, with Beijing’s attempts to
cover up the coronavirus outbreak causing reputational damage which wasn’t fixed
by later attempts to rebuild bridges with masks, PPE, and
vaccines.
The World Health Organization is preparing to send an
investigative team to Wuhan early in 2021, urged by countries like Australia
to be “robust” in its inquiries.
Mounting evidence suggests the government will continue with its
authoritarian moves on ethnic minorities in Xinjiang and Tibet, and its
expansionist activities in border areas.
Huge numbers of people are
expected to leave Hong Kong
for resettlement or asylum in the UK, Europe, Australia, and nearby Taiwan,
where many have already fled. A dozen who were caught attempting to flee went on
trial last month.
Regional neighbours will watch the continuing
military buildup and
threats to disputed islands
in the South China Sea and to Taiwan. Further afield, there has been no
resolution of diplomatic and trade disputes with
Australia, the UK, Canada, and the US.
Biden promises to remain tough on
China, albeit without the unpredictable and publicly hostile diplomacy of Trump,
but there is no sense of China backing down, even in the face of
sanctions
and international opprobrium.
Domestically, China has ambitious
emissions goals to work on, and will set its agenda with the adoption of its
14th five-year plan in the spring. Culture-shaping cases will roll on, including
a reckoning with
China’s #MeToo movement, and the
reining in of Alibaba’s Jack Ma, who dared to become powerful outside the party system.
Helen Davidson
Israel: Bibi to the rescue?
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A Palestinian demonstrator hurls stones at Israeli troops during
a protest against Jewish settlements.
Photograph: Mohamad Torokman/Reuters
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Israel is
set to hold its fourth general election
in the space of two years as a protracted political crisis barrels into 2021.
Despite
repeated attempts, parliamentarians have been unable to form stable governments,
in large part due to the loathing, distrust, but also glorification of one man:
Benjamin Netanyahu.
The 71-year-old prime minister, who has dominated
Israeli politics since the mid-1990s, has managed to repeatedly block rivals
from taking his seat.
Now, with Israel’s traditional opposition
having
largely been obliterated, Netanyahu faces what could be an even more perilous threat from a group of
former allies who broadly share his nationalist, rightwing ideology.
Naftali Bennett, a far-right former leader in the Israeli settler movement who has worked in
Netanyahu-led governments, heads the Yamina party and seeks to become the next
prime minister. Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s former protege, Gideon Saar, broke ranks
last month to create the New Hope party.
Avigdor Lieberman, once a
lieutenant of Netanyahu and infamous for
his anti-Arab views, is also seeking to dethrone the Israeli leader, known locally as “King
Bibi”.
What seems increasingly certain is that whoever leads Israel’s
next government will continue to take a hard line on the continuing occupation.
While a new US administration offers the prospect of renewed negotiations, few
predict a significant change in the status quo.
Polls show
Netanyahu’s Likud party could still emerge as the largest faction in parliament,
and with the country of 9 million speeding ahead with mass vaccinations, the
prime minister hopes by the time of the election in March he will be seen as the
nation’s saviour.
However, his reputation could take a further dent
in February, when witnesses are due to give testimony in his corruption trial.
While Netanyahu denies the charges, he
faces three separate cases, which include accusations of bribery and fraud.
Oliver HolmesLatin America: pivotal moments
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Jair Bolsonaro has so far avoided domestic criticism of his
handling of the Covid crisis.
Photograph: Evaristo Sa/AFP/Getty Images
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Latin America’s most polarising ruler, the Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro,
faces a crunch year in 2021 – the third of his four-year term – and will do so
without the support of his most important foreign ally, Donald Trump.
The
far-right renegade has so far managed to dodge responsibility for
Brazil’s dire response to the Covid-19 epidemic, which has killed more than 195,000 Brazilians, while also shaking off a
succession of scandals involving his family.
Polls show Bolsonaro
still enjoys the approval of about 37% of the electorate – widely attributed to
emergency coronavirus payments to tens of millions of citizens. But those
payments cease in January, with many observers convinced that severe economic,
political and social turbulence lies ahead, as public anger swells.
“The
pandemic is genuinely coming to an end,” Bolsonaro claimed before Christmas, as
the number of coronavirus infections and hospital admissions again soared. The
president’s problems may only be beginning.
Venezuela’s
humanitarian and economic crisis
will also enter a new chapter in 2021, as Joe Biden enters the White House and
turns away from Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign. Venezuela’s authoritarian
leader, Nicolás Maduro, has resisted that two-year crusade and Biden is certain
to seek new, less confrontational solutions for what advisers reportedly
consider his main diplomatic challenge in the western hemisphere.
Quite
what those solutions might be remains unclear – although negotiating with Hugo
Chávez’s successor to secure free and fair elections appears to be the plan.
In
the short term, the historic exodus of impoverished Venezuelan citizens – which
has already robbed the South American country of more than 5 million people –
will continue, as the coronavirus crisis pushes
Venezuela
deeper into hunger and deprivation.
For now, Maduro seems firmly in
control, his leadership apparently strengthened by the botched effort to unseat
him. But in a country as fractured and volatile as
Venezuela, perhaps not even he would want to predict where his year might end.
Tom Phillips
India: Modi marches on
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Women, including widows and relatives of farmers believed to have
killed themselves over debt, protest against farm bills passed by
India’s parliament, at Tikri border near Delhi. Photograph: Anushree Fadnavis/Reuters
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Indian prime minister Narendra Modi is going into 2021 without resolving what
many are describing as his biggest political challenge yet: the farmers’
protests, in which thousands have spent weeks camping on roads around Delhi, demanding
that new agricultural laws be repealed.
Discussions between farmers
and Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) are in deadlock at present, but
they are nonetheless the first time that a civilian backlash has brought the
government to the negotiating table.
Yet even with agricultural
turmoil, Modi’s popularity rating remains untouchably high, consistently staying
above 70%, paving the way for his government to continue the implementation of
its Hindu nationalist agenda with increasing fervour in 2021, and to begin the
campaign for a 2024 election victory.
Violence against Muslims,
carried out by local hardline Hindu nationalist groups, continues to rise; just
a few days before the new year, a mosque in the state of Madhya Pradesh was
vandalised by a rightwing mob.
With India’s main opposition party,
Indian National Congress, perceived as weak, rudderless, and divided by
infighting, there remains little to get in the way of Modi’s Hindu nationalist
agenda permanently reshaping
India.
The pandemic allowed Modi’s government to tighten its
authoritarian grip, in particular through the arrests and harassment of
government critics and activists, and this crackdown on civil society is
expected to continue, if not escalate, going into 2021.
Of the 154
journalists in India who were arrested, detained or interrogated in the past
decade, 40% of these instances happened in 2020. Many of the hundreds of
activists and journalists arrested in 2020 under the guise of draconian
anti-terror laws are still languishing behind bars, denied bail.
However,
the greatest immediate looming disaster for India this year is likely to be an
economic one. India was the Asian economy worst affected by Covid-19, pushing
the country into its first recession.
Almost 50% of the country
reported a drop in income and it is estimated that up to 400 million people
could be pushed back into poverty.
Hannah Ellis-Petersen
Russia: freezing out opposition
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Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny must choose between exile
and jail if he returns to the country.
Photograph: Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP
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This year will bring a standoff between Vladimir Putin and the opposition leader
Alexei Navalny, as the government seeks to keep Navalny out of the country
by threatening him with years in prison
should he return.
Navalny has been in Europe since August
recuperating from being poisoned by Russia’s FSB security service. Putin is
likely to be keen to punish Navalny for embarrassing revelations about the FSB
hit squad, including a taped confirmation from one of the agents obtained by
Navalny himself.
In the final days of 2020, Russia’s investigative
committee accused the opposition politician of fraud, effectively giving him the
choice of remaining in exile or returning to a prison sentence.
Online
investigations have been one of the few cracks in Putin’s control over internal
politics in Russia. Investigative reports from Proekt, a new online outlet,
suggested that Putin had a secret child with a lover and had been secretly
working from Sochi in a room built to resemble his Moscow office.
Another outlet, iStories, claimed Putin’s former son-in-law had
bought shares worth $380m
for just $100 shortly after he married Putin’s daughter.
Now the
government is targeting those kinds of reports and the journalists behind them.
In late December, the Duma quickly passed new laws that would let
regulators block YouTube and other foreign social media and punish media who
made “slanderous” comments, including accusations of major crimes like
embezzlement.
The effects of global climate change wreaked havoc on
Russia’s Siberian and Arctic regions last year, as rising temperatures sparked
forest fires, caused crop failures, and even played a role in the
largest diesel spill in Arctic history.
Temperatures are rising more quickly in these regions than
elsewhere on Earth and the potential for tragedy is clear. In June, the remote
town of
Verkhoyansk
recorded temperatures of 38C, the highest ever recorded within the Arctic
Circle.
Sea ice failed to re-form until late in the year in the
Laptev Sea, where scientists believe that frozen methane deposits are being
released that could speed further warming. In the same year, shipping through
Russia’s Northern Sea Route, which knocks weeks off travel from northern Europe
to Asia, hit record levels because of the lack of ice.
The impact of
climate change on this delicate region is no longer remote: it has become an
urgent problem for Moscow and millions of Russians.
Andrew RothAustralia: feeling the heat
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Firefighters try to contain a blaze in New South Wales last
February. Photograph: Sean Davey/EPA
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Australia has a split personality, selling itself as a land of beaches, coral
reefs and quirky marsupials while driving its major export industries of coal,
liquid natural gas and iron ore. But that cognitive dissonance is starting to
show. In 2021, Australia will have China and the climate crisis on its mind.
The
country will have to
reassess diplomatic relations
with its biggest trading partner, Beijing, which has banned or laid tariffs on
exports including coal, barley, wine, timber, beef and seafood. About 40% of
Australia’s foreign trade is with China.
Tensions have become ever
tighter as Australia blocked several Chinese business dealings and angered
Beijing with a new defence pact with Japan. PM Scott Morrison’s call for an
investigation into the origins of the coronavirus, whether reasonable or not,
further soured relations.
But what to do about coal? Australia sold
A$13.7bn (£7.7bn) of the stuff to China in 2019, but now Beijing is saying no.
Global investors are also saying no to the climate-warming fossil fuel.
Communities
and
wildlife are still recovering
from the wildfires of late 2019 and early 2020 that roared after the country’s
hottest and driest year on record.
Australia will come under further
pressure domestically and internationally to bring in effective climate
policies, especially a mid-century net-zero emissions target which the
Conservative-Liberal coalition government has so far resisted.
Without
clear signs of ambition, Australia risks carrying a reputation as a fossil-fuel
exporter and international climate change pariah to the Glasgow climate
talks.
Meanwhile the effects of climate heating continue to threaten
the country. Will the Great Barrier Reef escape coral bleaching? Will Australia
be burning again – literally or figuratively – as its diplomats head to
Glasgow?
Graham Readfearn
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