May you live in interesting times, the Chinese say. If only we didn't. Last year was another in a series where we started out with hope for improvement only to find matters have gotten worse by the end. Political instability, conflicts and wars, economic disparity, and the threat of climate catastrophe dominated the picture in 2018. Will next year be any different? Several major anniversaries were commemorated in 2018. The most important was the ending 100 years ago of World War I. The guns fell silent 11 November 1918, and the war between Germany and Turkey, on the one side, and the Western Allies, on the other, ended. The scale of death and destruction in that war was epic and dwarfed the losses incurred in any previous conflict. 2018 was also the centenary of the outbreak of the so-called Spanish Flu, a pandemic that infected 500 million people worldwide and killed at least 50 million. In the same year, women over 30 were granted the vote in Great Britain and Ireland for the first time, a right that is still not universally applied. The turmoil of the past has not abated. This year has had its fair share of threatened and actual battles, in society, politics, economics and on the field. The currents discernible in most of these areas are poised to worsen in the coming year, but the devastating war in Yemen, which has raged since 2015, may turn out to be an exception. A UN-brokered meeting in Sweden on 13 December between the Yemeni government and the Houthis has now agreed a ceasefire in Hodeida, Yemen's largest port of entry for 80 per cent of its food and fuel supplies. If this is maintained and extended to other regions, next year may well see the end of a war that has killed over 10,000 people and left 22 million, most of Yemen's population, in need of international aid. A US Senate vote on 13 December to end American support for the war will help in that direction. On a more negative note, President Trump's unerring instinct for stirring up trouble posed a considerable challenge to world peace and stability in 2018. In May, he pulled the US out of the hard-won multilateral Iran nuclear treaty that had started to reduce tension in a volatile region, and followed up with belligerent threats to Iran's president. Trump has blown hot and cold with another unstable region. In 2017, he threatened to destroy North Korea, only to heap praise on its leader this June, and plans to set up a second meeting with him, declaring, “there is nothing like good dialogue from two people that like each other!” But his demand for North Korea's total nuclear disarmament has been met with only token acquiescence, and there is nothing to say the rapprochement will not break down at any moment. Meanwhile, aggressive US naval manoeuvres in the South China Sea in close proximity to Chinese military vessels are a potential source of serious escalation, although Trump's preferred method of dealing with China has been through a trade war. On top of tariffs already imposed on $50 billion's worth of Chinese imports, Trump has said he intends to increase that figure to $200 billion, and possibly $267 billion. Likewise, in May he imposed 25 per cent steel and 10 per cent aluminium trade tariffs on Canada, the European Union and Mexico. But most serious of all has been the deteriorating relationship with Russia. In October, the US withdrew from the 1987 Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, alleging Russia had broken its provisions first, and setting the stage for a new and more vicious nuclear arms race. The US had already spent billions on nuclear weapons upgrades and placed anti-missile defence systems in Poland and Romania, provocatively on Russia's doorstep. In this atmosphere the potential for nuclear conflict is a dangerous development, and likely to persist into the future. Tempted as many people have been to ridicule Trump, his rise to power is no joke. On the contrary, he exemplifies a phenomenon that has become increasingly familiar elsewhere: a right-wing populism that is authoritarian and also isolationist. Populist leaders like him have appeared in Europe, Latin America and the Arab world, and some have been on the left of politics. Such leaders purport to represent “the will of the people” against the “corrupt elite”, which include international institutions like the UN and the International Criminal Court. They distrust democratic norms, prefer majoritarian rule and derive their support from directing people's hostility towards unpopular minorities like Muslims and migrants. Populist parties in Europe have gained a considerable foothold over the last few years, and it looked at one time as if their power would continue to grow. But their recent electoral defeats in France, Holland, Germany and Austria have halted this trend, if only temporarily. Italy now has a populist government, and Poland and Hungary have elected right-wing leaders, intolerant of migrants and many liberal freedoms. This trend is unlikely to disappear while its basic causes remain. Populism thrives in an environment of poverty and income inequality, aggravated by globalisation. According to the 2018 Wealth Inequality Report, since 1980 income inequality has risen in all regions of the world. The top one per cent earn twice as much as the poorest 50 per cent and own the largest share of capital. Wealth inequality has become extreme in Russia and the US, largely driven by privatisation. Unless these factors are addressed, and the neoliberal economic model from which they arise revised, inequality will increase with all its attendant problems. 2018 was also a year of increased global migration. The International Organisation for Migration estimates there are 40 million internally displaced people worldwide, with 22 million in other than their native countries. The migrant crisis in the Mediterranean led to the death of over 2,000 people trying to cross to Europe in 2018, but a total of 102,882 still made it, mainly to Spain, Italy and Greece. Of these the majority have come from Syria after 2012. At the end of last year, the UN High Commission for Refugees estimated a figure of one million asylum applications to the EU from Syrians. Europe has seen a rise of anti-immigrant sentiment and Islamophobia as a consequence, and has instituted measures meant to repel more migrant flows into the EU. However, the long-term prospect for migration from poor or war-torn countries to the developed world is a massive increase in numbers, as the impact of climate change takes hold. This truly is the elephant in the room, superseding all other global concerns. Scientists have warned for years that the planet is on course for higher temperatures with potentially catastrophic results. Since the Kyoto conference on climate change in 1997, there have been a dozen more such conferences. The 2015 landmark Paris climate agreement laid a legally binding framework for countries to keep the world temperature rise below 1.5 degrees Celsius. Nevertheless, temperatures continue to rise and the climate conference in Poland this month was meant to address this. But the whole effort has been stymied by a failure to commit to what needs to be done on the part of rich countries. The US has said it intends to withdraw from the Paris agreement and, in company with Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Russia, is hardly cooperating with the current conference. Yet the dangerous pattern of increased rainfall, desert-like droughts, permafrost degradation, a thawing Arctic, uncontrollable wildfires in Canada, the US, Greece, Sweden and Australia is not in doubt. Only a state of mass denial keeps it so. Of all the world trends cited above whose future can only be conjectural, the march of climate change towards catastrophe is one that can safely be predicted to continue after 2018 and well beyond. 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The writer is research fellow at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter, UK.
