Few Global Bright Spots in a Year to Forget

By Henry Srebrnik, [Saint John, NB] Telegraph-Journal

The year of the pandemic has been the year from hell. In 2020, we faced a global medical disaster not seen in more than a century.

COVID-19 has overshadowed every other story, and its consequences will be felt next year and for many years to come. Lockdowns, social restrictions, fatalities, and a global economic downturn resulted. It’s by far the biggest event of 2020.

What else will the year be remembered for? Most notably, the continued rise of China as a world power; the defeat of Donald Trump in the November presidential election in the United States; and the prospects for peace between Israel and many of the Arab countries in the Middle East.

We all know the grim statistics around the coronavirus. More than 1.7 million deaths worldwide, including at least 320,000 in the United States and more than 14,000 in Canada. When the various vaccines will finally wind it down, the celebrations will equal those like the V-E and V-J days that ended the Second World War.

While the European Union has faced unprecedented fractures due to the pandemic, with Hungary and Poland, in particular, showing increasing irritation with the bureaucrats in Brussels, China has gone from strength to strength. It has already outlasted Donald Trump’s attempt to slow its path to becoming the hegemonic power in East Asia – and perhaps farther afield.

The coronavirus early in the year posed a domestic crisis for President Xi Jinping, the country’s most powerful leader in decades, as well as a setback to his ambitions to project China’s power on the global stage. But Xi has managed to overcome this setback and place his country in a strong position heading into 2021.

China’s success in containing COVID has allowed Beijing to focus on longer term economic and development goals, as outlined in the 14th Five Year Plan. Since 1953, these have been the guiding documents signaling the policy direction for the country’s future economic and social development.

While observers will have to wait until March for the release of the full plan, the Communist Party leadership has indicated that it aims for China becoming a “moderately developed” economy by 2035 with a per capita GDP of about US$30,000, nearly three times the 2020 level.

China will continue the transition from producing cheap low-tech goods to be the high-end and specialized producer of goods and it will encourage the transition to “tech self-sufficiency.”

In foreign policy, Beijing will continue to aggressively build its air, land and naval forces, and project power in the East and South China Seas, testing American, Japanese, Taiwanese and South Korean reactions. It has become more strident in its insistence that Taiwan is an indissoluble part of the Chinese nation and must return to the motherland.

Great power rivalry is at the core of China’s relationship with Washington. Divergences between their political structures are bringing irreconcilable differences to the fore. The rivalry has become a clash of values.

The United States sees China as a repressive regime that will use its economic clout to punish its foes and limit criticism from overseas, while China sees the United States as a hegemony that wants to stunt the growth of, and sow division within, its rival. This is a narrative that Xi has used to enhance the Communist Party’s legitimacy and his own consolidation of power.

China has also recently clashed with India along their contested Himalayan border, the latest skirmish in a conflict that has simmered since May. Tensions have continued to rise, with both sides reinforcing their troops in the area.

China is increasingly willing to leverage its growing economic and military power to advance its national interests in Asia, especially over disputed territory. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi feels growing pressure from populists to push back, despite the potential short-term economic consequences.

In the U.S., we near the end of the Donald Trump saga, with the outgoing president metaphorically being dragged out of the White House kicking and screaming that the election was “stolen” by the Democrats. This type of behaviour is a sign of the deep polarization that has become endemic in the United States.

Along with the nationwide protests led by Black Lives Matter that followed the death of George Floyd last May, the pandemic destroyed Donald Trump’s presidency. But he was already under constant and fierce attack.

But this was nothing new, really. The last four presidents have, for one reason or another, been considered illegitimate by wide sectors of the country.

George W. Bush was handed victory over Al Gore by the Supreme Court in 2000, and it’s possible that the latter might have otherwise prevailed. Barack Obama faced the “birther” claims that he was ineligible to assume the office because he had been born outside the country. Donald Trump was faced from Day One by a “Resistance” that insisted he was placed in office by Vladimir Putin (who, by the way, remains firmly in control of Russia).

And now, large numbers of Republican legislators and voters are convinced the Democrats engaged in fraud through the use of mail-in ballots to overcome what were substantial leads by Trump on election night in a number of states that he narrowly lost. Absolutely nothing will convince them otherwise. So it’s now Joe Biden’s turn to face this challenge. Is the United States becoming virtually ungovernable?

Meanwhile, is peace – or at least normalization – breaking out in the Middle East? The new ties between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco have marked the beginning of a new regional order. Oman may be next.

While cooperation on security and economic matters between Israel and many Arab states had been growing for years, this year saw economic, security, and pragmatism trump ideological considerations. They will now maneuver more openly and effectively in response to perceived shared regional threats from Iran and Turkey.

Joe Biden’s promise to take a harder stance on Saudi Arabia on its human rights record and its war in Yemen may move Riyadh, which fears Iran above all else, closer to Israel as well.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who dreams of the past glories of the Ottoman Empire, has of late issued numerous threats against not just Israel, but also Greece and the Greek-run part of Cyprus, and Ankara is now militarily involved in the anarchy that has enveloped Libya.

Iran remains the wild card in the region. In 2020 it continued to send weapons to Hezbollah in Syria and Lebanon, Shiite militias in Iraq, and Houthis in Yemen. Barack Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal, cancelled by Trump in 2018, did nothing but embolden Tehran.

With Trump gone, will the Tehran regime expect to see the Biden administration return to diplomacy in order to thwart its regional ambitions and desire to wipe Israel off the map?

Latin America has been hard hit by the pandemic, with staggering death tolls in Brazil and Mexico. But Brazil’s populist president Jair Bolsonaro seems to have weathered the storm. As for the two Marxist regimes in Cuba and Venezuela, both are in a bad state.

Over the past three years post-Castro Cuba has been hit hard by the U.S. embargo of Venezuela, which undercuts Caracas’ ability to provide external support. As for Venezuela itself, political discontent under President Nicolas Maduro, in power since 2013, has been fuelled by hyperinflation, power cuts, and shortages of food and medicine. More than five million Venezuelans have left the country in recent years.

Venezuela held parliamentary elections on Dec. 6, but they were boycotted as fraudulent and illegal by the opposition led by Juan Guaido, the speaker of the outgoing National Assembly. Things will only get worse in 2021.