The World in 2024: 12-minute summary

Significance of elections in more than half the democratic world

Mahbubani: The US will face the greatest uncertainty

• The biggest irony of the 2024 US Presidential election is that the standard bearer of democracy, the US, will this year face the greatest uncertainty. The likelihood of Donald Trump refusing to accept the results is very high. That’s an ironic reversal of how the world used to be in the past.

Waslekar: Democracies will again bring nationalist forces to power like it did a 100 years ago

• South Asian election results are predictable. In Bangladesh and in India, the current government will return; in Pakistan people will vote for the military dispensation.
• The election season began worldwide in Serbia and New Zealand just at the end of last year. Even in New Zealand, the government of Christopher Luxon who is a nationalist leader, was elected after a long of centrist and left-of-centre parties being in power. He announced he wants to join the AUKUS and put curbs on the minorities, the Maories.
• The elections, especially for the European Parliament, will see the rise of the forces that believe in nation-first, and try to assuage the threat from minorities and external forces.
• The decade of the 20s will resemble the decade of the 1920s — when Mussolini and Hitler became popular. So, democracies will again bring nationalist forces to power like it did 100 years ago,

Huang: I worry about a potential win by Trump or a Republican candidate from a geopolitical point of view

• I worry about the US elections the most. I don’t worry about the loss of Donald Trump or any other Republican candidate. He will contest election outcomes but the American system is strong enough to deal with that challenge and this time he doesn't have the benefit of being inside the White House to deny the election results. Fundamentally, if he loses and he contests it, it won’t matter.
• I worry about a potential win by Trump or a Republican candidate from a geopolitical point of view. The Sino-US relations are finally settling down—the two sides have figured out each other. If there's a new administration we will start the whole thing again. The Republican party as an institution is extremely hawkish on China.
• The Democratic Party is forced to acknowledge they have to work with China on health, climate change and a whole host of areas. The Republican Party doesn't even acknowledge climate science. A Republican administration will unilaterally acknowledge the independence of Taiwan — that’s a huge risk.
• The Taiwanese election elected a leader that China finds problematic, and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) received a cautionary note from the Biden administration to be careful about the rhetoric. The combination of the hawkishness of a Republican administration and the pro-independence sentiment of the DPP is a huge risk factor.

Jaishankar: A Trump win could bring a 180 turnaround in policy

• A number of steps taken by the Biden administration and baked into the US legislation will have a long-lasting effect — CHIPS and Science Act, Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) etc — which essentially contributed to US industrial policy.
• The macro indicators are positive, but they haven't translated to public sentiment and there has been a steady decline in Biden’s numbers.
• A Trump win could bring a 180 turnaround in policy on climate change, immigration and multilateralism, especially relations with US allies.

Other elections worth keeping an eye on:

• Indonesia