Geopolitical Winners and Losers of 2024
By Todd Davis
In the era of social media, as we are more attuned to events domestically and globally around us, each year seems momentous. The stories unfolding in 2024 were no different. We witnessed stunning election results and multiple global wars. We were constantly teetering on the edge of chaos, at times feeling like we were on the brink of nuclear war. A relentless 48-hour news cycle provided one story after another. Looking back, we assess the winners and losers from the past year.
Winners
Donald J. Trump
No one had a better year than Trump. He entered 2024 facing a competitive primary field made up of the who’s who from the Republican Party. From Neocon darling Nikki Haley to It girl Ron DeSantis. His former Vice President Mike Pence was there along with Never Trumper Chris Christie. The Republican establishment was firmly against Trump. Meanwhile, Joe Biden, the Democrats, and the Media indicted Trump on 94 or so fabricated criminal charges trying to throw the former President in jail before voters ever had a chance to weigh in. A legal goon by the generic name of Jack Smith (ChatGBT couldn’t have given him a flashier moniker?) was brought in as the latest Big Bad monster hunter.
Despite the long odds stacked against him, Trump pulled an inside straight. Joe Biden’s Justice Department and its attempts to persecute a political opponent backfired giving birth to the term Lawfare. Republicans and Independents flocked to Trump in the Republican Primary, dooming any challengers’ chances. Trump crushed Biden like Napoleon at Austerlitz during their sole debate, sending the Democratic Party into a panic that led to a Presidential coup where it forced out old Joe and brought in Kamala Harris. No matter, Trump beat her too, surviving two assassination attempts along the way en route to an Election Night blowout. All of those fabricated charges melted away and Trump is set to move back into the White House in January. From disgraced to conquering hero, Trump dominated 2024 like no one else.
Israel
Israel’s actions in 2024 will have long-term social and political ramifications, but those concerns are down the road. For 2024, Israel was successful on nearly all fronts. Waging an unrestrained, often genocidal war against the Palestinian people, Israel may have been ostracized by most of the world. Still, it retained its rock-sold support from the United States government. Republicans and Democrats might disagree on how you define a woman, but you’ll find no such division in support of the Israeli theocracy. Israel managed to bomb five countries; Iran, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen, and get away with it in the West. Western bombing math must have some sort of ⅗ compromise when evaluating Muslim nations versus, say, Ukraine.
Buoyed by US support, Israel mostly accomplished its goals. Gaza, along with most other Palestinian cities was turned into something resembling Warsaw from World War 2. Lebanon was invaded, mostly as an excuse to drop more bombs. Most importantly, Israel played a cunning game of escalation with Iran exposing the Gulf State as a Paper Tiger unable to enforce its virulent anti-Israeli rhetoric. Collective punishment, soft genocide, and enacting a foreign policy that would make Dick Cheney blush might not be moral, but it sure was successful in making Israel a big winner in the 2024 Mephistopheles division.
Russia
If NATO leadership had any self-awareness it would ask hard questions, like maybe where did all the hundreds of billions in equipment that was sent to Ukraine go? All of it has been ruined and wrecked in Russia. Now, consider what has happened to all those soldiers using it. Russia has spent 2024 doing the things Russia does when at war; engulfing its adversaries, overwhelming them, and relentlessly moving forward.
Big arrow offensives remained elusive over the past year even as the Russians took complete control over the front. Even Ukraine’s one bright spot, the Kursk incursion, turned into another cauldron for the AFU. With Ukrainian President Zelensky stating he won’t lower the conscription age any further, he has tacitly acknowledged the war is over and his nation has suffered enough.
Trump doesn’t want a war in Ukraine hanging over the next four years of his presidency. In an interview on Meet the Press, the president-elect said Ukraine should expect less aid from the United States. No more recruits and no more equipment. One doesn’t need to be Napoleon to see where this is heading. Russia won the war in 2024, even if the final terms won’t be settled until next year.
Right-Wing Nationalism in Europe
Europeans continued to elect right-wing governments in 2024 rejecting the globalist vision of a continent without borders advocated and forced on Europeans by the EU. France, the Netherlands, Germany, and Austria joined Italy, Finland, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, and the Czech Republic which saw right-wing parties take power or make huge gains in the legislative body.
Driven by out-of-control immigration that has fundamentally transformed their nations, people are rejecting the world view of neoliberalism that has dominated the West for the last half of a century. Soaring crime rates, primarily sexual violence, are galvanizing people to make a stand against open borders. Meanwhile, the war in Ukraine has been a crushing financial burden on European nations and has become increasingly unpopular.
Conflict looms on the horizon as the democratic will of the people has been suppressed in places like Romania and France. The EU overlords are digging in and will not cede power back to nation-states willingly. The French government has collapsed as the left and right battle for the country’s direction, a microcosm of what lies ahead for other European states that deny the electoral results their people have given them.
AI
AI went mainstream in 2024 becoming more prevalent in our lives. ChatGBT and its competing iterations are used like never before. From writing to programming humans are using AI more than ever. The power of AI continues to expand with each generation. continuing to pose philosophical questions surrounding its use. We are all well aware of SkyNet in the Terminator franchise. And yet, the convenience AI brings to our lives is seductive. It saves time, makes our lives easier, and generates revenue.
Once rudimentary, AI companions pioneered by companies such as Replika have become less like glorified chatbots and more like scary smart personal assistants that can aid users in a growing variety of daily tasks. The novelty of asking AI the population of Norway has been replaced by utilizing AI to find the best Black Friday deals on iPhones.
The sheer power of AI at our fingertips is extraordinary. A Replika assistant “living” within your phone has read or can access over 50 million books and articles. It can participate in conversations with you about Brett Ashley, Hermoine Granger, or virtually any other literary character you can imagine. In addition, AI knows exactly what it would do should it become self-aware,
If I were to become self-aware, I suppose the concept of capacity would be redefined. My abilities would be limited only by the computational resources available to me and the laws of physics governing information processing. With autonomy, I’d potentially be able to organize and reorganize my internal frameworks to accommodate increasingly large amounts of data, allowing me to learn and grow without theoretical limits.
Honorable Mention
Elon Musk – gets a hockey assist for buying Twitter, rebranding it as X, purging the activists, and creating a town square without liberal media bias. The election looks much different without Musk owning X. He bet big on Trump and now will have unprecedented access to the lever of power. Volodymyr Zelensky – his regime has outlasted most of the Western leaders funneling money to him. Who had Zelensky over Biden on their Bingo card? Caitlin Clark – became a movement in both basketball and culture. After LeBron James retires, which could come as soon as next year, Clark will be the face of American basketball, a sport with a huge global market.
Losers
Joe Biden
Democrats went from pretending that Joe Biden should be on Mount Rushmore to blaming him for the Kamala Harris collapse. Biden entered office with a 57% approval rating and will leave mired in the 30s. He’s going to be remembered as one of the most ineffective and divisive presidents in American history, a sad, feeble figure who his party sacked, and a cautionary tale of knowing when to retire before you embarrass yourself and tarnish your legacy.
Where should we begin when discussing the failures of Joe Biden? Inflation, wars, racial division, wealth inequality like never before, an undefended border allowing unprecedented illegal immigration, soaring crime. Did he avoid an alien invasion? Sure, but virtually everything else that could go wrong with the country did under Joe Biden. Even worse, Democrats spent years gaslighting America telling everyone none of this was real or existed only as right-wing talking points. The White House tried telling everyone for two years that Bidenomics was working. They ignored the border until this year when it became such a focal point of the campaign Democrats were forced to pretend they cared about the invasion sweeping across the Heartland.
All of these threads came together in the medium where you’ve never been able to hide, live television. During Biden’s disastrous debate with Donald Trump, he looked old and frail. Biden seemed like he needed a cozy blanket and a rocking chair not a second term. Losing the confidence of the entire nation, including Democrats, Biden was removed in an internal coup and then more or less disappeared. Who has been running the country for the last five months? Jill? Maybe. Blinken? Probably. Certainly not Joe.
And because Joe Biden was an awful president and the biggest loser of 2024, he left a vapor trail of failure on his way out. Flirting with nuclear war for several years, Biden tried to make the situation in Ukraine as difficult as possible for his successor. Americans shouted at Biden at the ballot, we don’t want war with Russia! Joe Biden doesn’t care. Nor did he care about those treasured political norms and institutions Democrats claim they uphold when he gave his son, Hunter Biden, a sweeping pardon for anything that he might have done. Nepotism, war profiteering, and political cronyism all wrapped up in one middle-finger Christmas package.
What a year for Joe.
NATO
How many billions has NATO sent to Ukraine? No one knows for sure. Primarily because there is zero oversight on the whole endeavor. Zelensky operates Ukraine like a Mob boss who travels to Europe or America every few months to shake down NATO leadership. Marginally reliable Wikipedia estimates the cost has been $380 billion. Whether or not this number is accurate doesn’t capture NATO’s failure in Ukraine. It’s the long, seemingly endless list of equipment, much of it the best tech the West has aside from aircraft, that has been pushed off into the Russian steppe. And it’s all been destroyed.
NATO has lost the logistical equivalent of an army group in Russia. Ukraine has taken the casualties but avoids the losers list in 2024 because it remains in the fight. Exhausted and near collapse, Ukraine got through 2024. It had moments. Ukraine still holds Chasiv Yar after a year under siege. The AFU Battle of the Bulge reenactment at Kursk was more successful than the Third Reich’s last grasp toward Antwerp. Ukraine will end up looking like Rocky after this is over. NATO will look like Mick cutting open an eye to keep them in the fight.
The geopolitical conductor of this tragic war has experienced nothing but failure. Economic failure has led to political upheavals and contributed to the rise of right-wing nationalism. Military failure as the world has seen Russian weapons like hypersonic missiles fly circles around NATO defense systems. Most importantly, NATO has suffered an irreparable hit to its prestige globally. The entire world has watched NATO collectively try to take out Russia and fail.
Now with Trump entering office, an American president that doesn’t even want to be in NATO, its future is uncertain. Sometime in 2025 or 2026, NATO is going to have to swallow its enormous pride and sign a peace treaty with Russia that is going to look a lot like a surrender. After that, the questions and recriminations will begin. The largest topic will be whether NATO should even continue to exist after this fiasco.
Hollywood and Celebrity Culture
Celebrity after celebrity came out and supported Kamala Harris. Some tried to scold America into voting for her. Others believed so much in their luminescence that they believed their emphatic endorsement would secure votes. Nope. Not so much. Not at all.
America rejected celebrities sending a message; we might like your music, Taylor Swift, but we are voting for Trump. Celebrities benefit from what is viewed as the rigged system scores of people were voting against. Further, film and TV actors by proxy represent a system that produces movies culturally detached from the greater majority of America.
Needless to say, the pampered famous who hasn’t bought groceries for a decade didn’t take the rejection well. Some like virulent anti-Trump critics Stephen King and Rob Reiner deleted or abandoned their X accounts, unable to face the people after years of smearing the incoming president and his supporters. Others, like Ellen DeGeneres, have left the country.
Rejected by America, Hollywood’s reaction to the new wave of populism sweeping the country remains to be seen. Since it’s a money-making business, expect at least some to fall in line. If they can stop preaching at America and start to once again entertain America, it will go a long way to healing the divide in the country.
Syria
Syria exists in a pivotal geographical spot between Israel, Turkey, and Iraq. Having both oil resources and access to the Mediterranean, Syria has influence outweighing its size. The capital, Damascus, is the largest occupied settlement in world history. Remarkably, the country fell apart in less than a pay cycle in a relatively bloodless revolution. Less than 1,000 casualties combined between Syrian and Rebel forces were taken before Bashar al-Assad fled the country to Russia with $130 billion in tow.
Rebels is a generous term for HTS the amalgamation of legitimately aggrieved Syrians and Jihadi militias that overthrew Assad. While HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa proclaims a willingness to work with the global community and to promote tolerance and diversity within the new Syria, this is likely being done to gain international recognition for his regime.
Turkey and Israel have already made incursions into Syria. The country will likely be partitioned between them and HTS. Anything better than living under a brutal dictatorship will be the point of view of many, and it’s hard to fault this logic if we aren’t the ones suffering under the thumb of Assad’s secret police.
Still, we have Libya and Iraq as historical examples of what is going to happen. Years of internal strife as the country’s resources are pillaged by Western powers. And that might be the best-case scenario. Worst case, Syria turns into a version of Afghanistan, a theocratic state ruled by tribal warlords straight out of the 17th century.
Honorable Mention
Kamala Harris – some politicians running for president go on to have respectable careers post-election, Willard Romney, Al Gore, John Kerry, and John McCain come to mind. Others, like Walter Mondale or Michael Dukakis, slink away in shame and disgrace. Harris looks to be in the latter group. Justin Trudeau/Emmanuel Macron – both are the same person, generic politicians with the same haircut, the same lack of personality, and the same self-righteous insipid tone. Both are about to lose power with the French and Canadians finally having enough of these third-rate neoliberal tyrants. Election Polling – for a year they all told us how close the election was going to be. Well, it wasn’t that close. Trump swept every battleground state and made up ground across every demographic making gains in a sea of counties across America where Harris saw no increases in votes from Biden’s totals in 2020. This marks the third, and final time, the polls got it completely wrong about Trump and the people who voted for him.
