If Americans can find some peace this Christmas they should savor it.
Next year will bring cacophony and chaos that will, because of America's power, in some way impinge on the lives of every overseas reader of this newsletter.
Presidential election years are always times of tumult, anger and division. But 2024 threatens to be the most tumultuous in modern history. Donald Trump, who never really went away after leaving Washington in disgrace three years ago, is the short-odds favorite in the Republican nominating race that begins next month in Iowa. His growing authoritarianism is being underscored by his Nazi-style rhetoric and vows to use the presidency — if he becomes only the second defeated incumbent to win a non-consecutive second term — as an engine of revenge.
If Trump wins the GOP nomination, the only person standing in the way could be President Joe Biden, whose deep unpopularity means that a successful campaign for a second term would represent his own impressive comeback. The president's biggest potential liability appears to be his age — he's already 81 and has visibly slowed since taking office, triggering fears by a majority of voters that he's not up to the demand of serving a full second Oval Office term.
Trump, however, faces 91 criminal charges, the possibility of four trials and could be a convicted felon by Election Day, which is raising doubts about his appeal among critical swing-state moderate voters. It would take a major upset for Trump to be beaten in the Republican primary race, despite a late surge from Nikki Haley, the former US ambassador to the United Nations.
The only thing we can say for sure about a potential Trump vs. Biden race is that most Americans, according to opinion polls, would love a different choice.
This election will be the third in a row that is shaped by the revolution that Trump has wrought in the Republican Party. And even out of office, Trump wields huge influence.
His antipathy toward Ukraine, for example, is clearly driving the refusal of many Republicans to back the latest tranche of US aid for President Volodymyr Zelensky's government. This is occurring as cooling support for arming and financing Ukraine in Europe, where a populist right-wing tide is also resurgent, raises the real question that a sovereign democracy could be abandoned in the face of President Vladimir Putin's brutal invasion. This would be a blow to the credibility and the reputation of the West. That question, along with a proposed aid package to Israel, will come to head in a massive showdown between Biden and a Republican House majority dominated by right-wing extremists in January.
2023 will be remembered as the year when a loose affiliation between American adversaries posed the most grave challenge to US geopolitical dominance since the end of the Cold War. Russia, North Korea, Iran and China have all worked informally to weaken American power, and in some cases, the latter trio worked to sustain Russia's war in Ukraine that Putin views as a fight against the West.
China, of course, poses the gravest long-term challenge to American power, and rising tensions between the rivals' naval forces in the South China Sea raise concerns that a growing Cold War could turn hot in 2024.
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