Comments by "Kevin Street" (@Kevin_Street) on "Flashpoints and Forecasts: A 2023 Global Review and What We Expect in 2024" video.

  1. Wow, thank you for this video! It's such an amazing and comprehensive roundup of stability issues in the world today. I'm so glad your channel exists. In the spirit of your video, based on nothing and in a comment no one will see, here are some of my geopolitical predictions for 2024. Or at least the near future, maybe not just next year. 1. Ukraine. I think Ukraine will ultimately "win" the war, in the strict sense that it will grind away at the Russian war machine to the point where Russia can no longer hold their captured territories. But it will be a hard won victory. Unfortunately there's a lot of fighting still ahead and a great many people now alive will be dead before the war is over. At the moment it looks like the most likely course of events is Ukraine expanding their beachhead on the left bank of the Dnipro into a full invasion of the remainder of Kherson oblast, and then a drive into Crimea. After that it's a matter of wearing down the Russians in the east, and the winner will be the side that can hold themselves together the longest. The loser will collapse first. 2. The biggest geopolitical story right now is the decline of Russia as both a military and an economic power. I think there's a countdown timer on Putin. He's going to be forced out of power at some point in the near future, it's just a question of when and how it happens. The war in Ukraine is going to drag him down, because the price Russia will pay for continued aggression is just going to grow and grow until the people won't pay it any more. And Putin can't survive without a victory in Ukraine . Russia seems to have a massive ability to endure suffering, but the other side of that is the sudden and overwhelming rage when they finally reach their limit and revolt. I think something will happen in Russia fairly soon, but it's impossible to say what form that rage will take. It might be an "orderly" coup as someone else takes over from Putin, or it might be a horrible collapse that involves different groups fighting for control. Either way the stability of Russia and what happens to its weapons of mass destruction is the biggest potential security threat the world faces in the next 5-10 years. 3. The Unites States and the West. The flip side of Russia's decline is the relative rise of influence of the West, and the United States in particular. This is partially because NATO and the US have made good decisions when it comes to Ukraine, and the US has been making similar strategic decisions in the Pacific, but it's also partially accidental and comes from the rise in one's own fortunes when a rival makes a terminal mistake. The United States in particular has been going through an era of political turmoil thanks to internal divisions, and I think at least some of the decision makers there didn't expect their country to be in such a dominant position at this point. The narrative was supposed to be an America in sad decline after twenty years of failed nation making crusades in Iraq and Afghanistan, a country with a falling standard of living that's no longer respected abroad. An America that could return to glory if it just shrugged off its malfunctioning democratic system and united behind a strong leader. But that didn't happen! Instead the people (or at least some 60% of them) have held onto their ideals, and the democratic system is very vigorously trying to fix itself. In anyone reads this post I'll probably get the most pushback on this point, but I think what's happening in the US is a fundamentally optimistic realignment towards an era of greater democracy and rule of law. What we're seeing is the last stand of an elite that's in terminal decline. And yes, the situation mirrors what happening in Russia with Putin, but this only the collapse of one group within a nation, not the nation itself. The end result of this will be a United States that's stronger and more internationally dominant than before, even if certain interested parties will continue to sell what happening as terminal decline. It may take a while for other nations to realize that America can still be relied upon, but they'll come around. However, this doesn't mean that America will continue to ensure global stability as before. It depends upon what happens in Russia. If that country remains stable after Putin's fall, the US may try to begin an era where it exercises more soft power and encourages other nations to defend themselves. But they've had that ambition for decades and never seem to get there. We'll see. 4. China. The decline of Russia is bad for China in some ways, but it's not a disaster. It shows that China is not as free to pursue military ambitions as it would like to be, but on the other hand Russia has become a much more valuable trade partner after they lost their ability to sell oil to the West. Many people like to hype up the idea that China is due to collapse, but that's not the case. China faces very serious demographic and economic problems, and has probably reached the apex of its geopolitical and military power, but it faces no threats to the nation itself. The Belt And Road initiative hasn't been as successful as China might like, but it's an ongoing project. If the government can successfully understand its mistakes, and successfully communicate those lessons to the leadership (not a guaranteed process in an authoritarian society), then China can continue to chart a fairly successful course through the next few years. It won't grow as much as before, but it won't decline either. But the key here is the need for leadership that correctly understands what's happening and how to move forward. Does that describe Xi Jinping? I have no idea. I hope he fully understands that China benefits from the current state of affairs far more than it would if things changed. In particular China benefits the most from threatening other nations like Taiwan and the Philippines, but never actually taking action against them. Hopefully he maintains status quo on the military front and continues to refine China's soft power instead. And that's it. Of course there are massive holes in my predictions, entire nations like India and most importantly Iran, that I can't even guess about. The next 5 or six years will unfortunately be full of war and crisis, but I think there is greater stability on the other side, so long as something unexpected doesn't come out of nowhere. We'll see.
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