What will be the big story of 2016?
From new flu strains to refugees to Obama�s final moments as US president, FP�s Voices predict a year of big change and challenges
The world is melting
My guess is that global warming will become the top story of 2016. This will happen because we will face a series of anomalous and odd weather events big storms in unusual places, storm surges in cities that historically have not been flooded, shifts in ocean currents, and such. One effect of this will be to sweep away the lingering skepticism about global warming. Another short-term bottom line: I wouldnt invest in Florida banks or real estate anytime soon.
A year of borrowed time
Trying to predict the big story of 2016 is a mugs game, because surprises are inevitable and vivid events like a terrorist attack receive too much attention, while subtler but more important developments are often neglected.
In short, the global agenda a year from now will look a lot like the one we see today.
But one event looms large: The worlds most powerful nation will elect a new president. U.S. President Barack Obamas foreign-policy record is far from perfect, but everything we know about the people vying to replace him suggests they are likely to be far worse. My advice for the New Year: Enjoy it while you can.
America, a country divided
The biggest news story of 2016 will be the deep partisan divide in the American publics perception of the U.S. role in the world and the way this affects the tenor of debate in the U.S. presidential election campaign.
Nearly a third 29 percent of Americans cite terrorism, national security, or the Islamic State as the most important problem facing the country today, according to the most recent Pew Research Center survey. One year ago, just 4 percent of the public, when asked the same question, cited any of these international affairs-related issues. And there are wide partisan differences
Over such challenges:
83 percent of the Republicans are very concerned about the rise of Islamic extremism around the world, but only 53 percent of Democrats agree.
83 percent of the Republicans are very concerned about the rise of Islamic extremism around the world, but only 53 percent of Democrats agree.
Such differing perceptions shape public views on what the next president should do. Two-thirds of Republicans (66 percent) favor sending U.S. ground troops to Iraq and Syria. But 64 percent of Democrats oppose such an effort.
Whoever is the next president, he or she may face seemingly unbridgeable divides in public opinion over how Washington deals with global challenges. And these partisan differences may well do more to influence the next administrations posture in the world than any discrete event.
Obamas push for North Korean diplomacy
There is no point in predicting the big story for the coming year unless you are willing to be fantastically wrong. After all, no one will remember this blurb unless I predict something very unlikely (in which case, Ill be able to dine out on these 200 words for years). I am tempted to predict that 2016 will finally be the year when we screw up and drop the Big One, but thats too dark for the holiday season. So, with some leftover Christmas spirit, let me predict a surprise diplomatic engagement with North Korea.
Things are probably going to take a turn for the worse in the spring, but that only means they will have nowhere to go but up. And every two-term president gets a little greedy once the toadies and boot-lickers start mapping out exhibits for the presidential library. Bill Clinton, in 2000, had simultaneous peace deals in the works in North Korea, Northern Ireland, and Israel/Palestine. (Clinton was, of course, a man of enormous appetites.) Barack Obama, too, will be tempted in his more modest way to launch a surprise, but ultimately unsuccessful, late-term push to eliminate North Koreas nuclear weapons.
The year of strange flu
Ocean. Will El Nio serve as a tipping point that destabilizes already fragile areas?
The demise of Western values
When Hungarys prime minster, Viktor Orban, declared in a 2014 speech that illiberal democracy was the wave of the future, he was dismissed as a right-wing crank. Now it seems he may be right. With Europe and the United States reeling before the linked phenomena of Islamic terrorism and massive refugee flight, 2016 could be the year when the West loses its grip on its own core values.
Right now, a few countries Germany, Sweden, Canada embody the belief that the West is a community of values, including the obligation to accept refugees embedded in such core Western documents as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Hungary, Poland, and others that have closed their borders to the refugees seem to regard the West, like East Asia or Latin America, as a common culture: white, Christian, and democratic (but not necessarily liberal, especially toward the non-white and non-Christian).
Which side will win this immense, if evanescent, battle? Elections in Poland, France, Austria, and elsewhere show that right-wing nativist parties have more adherents than mainstream parties of the left or right. The nationalist Sweden Democrats is now the most popular party in Europes most liberal nation. In the United States, Republican candidates for president vie to show who will most ardently defend the homeland against terrorists and Syrian widows and orphans. More terrorist attacks like the one in France could decisively tip the scales toward anti-liberalism.
Is this our common future? If so, the Islamic State will have gained a victory of incalculable proportions.
A trend in terror
In 2016 theres only one story that will sit at the nexus of U.S. foreign policy as well as domestic and election politics, and thats jihadi terror.
In the latter part of 2015 it was terrorism and Donald Trump that dominated the conversation. In 2016 its likely to be terrorand Im not entirely sure about the Trump part. No other issue carries the power, resonance, media interest, or the capacity to destroy a presidency or buoy or sink the hopes of presidential aspirants. It will be the dominant story of 2016, in large part because of the strong possibility, perhaps even probability, of another Islamic State inspired or even directed attack. Indeed, the recent success of Iraqi and American forces in Ramadi may actually increase the odds of IS terror as the jihadis seek to strike out.
It matters not a wit that as of Dec. 2, during 209 of the 336 days that had passed so far this year, there was at least one shooting per day that, as the New York Times reported, left four or more people injured or dead. Nor does it resonate much that ordinary gun violence claims many more lives a year than jihadi terror. September 11th and the rise of jihadi groups created a new prism through which Americans view violence related to jihadi terror as far more frightening and consequential than gun violence which is actually far more deadly.
The tragic story of 2016 could play out in one of three ways: 1) a series of San Bernardino-type attacks carried out by some network of American born jihadis; 2) an IS-directed or IS-orchestrated attack that attempts to mimic or rival Paris in its coordination and precision; or 3) the downing of a U.S. commercial airliner by IS or an al-Qaeda affiliate. For all our sake, Im desperately hoping my predictions here prove unfounded.
The year the world forgets refugees, again
On Dec. 18, the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) predicted that the number of people forcibly displaced in the world in 2015 is going to smash all previous records, with more than 60 million people forced to flee their homes. As UNHCR put it, thats one in every 122 people on Earth. (That doesnt even include many cases of protracted displacement, says the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center in Geneva.)
Intensive pushback in the EU and the United States is only part of the story 40 million of these people are displaced within their own countries, with about 8 million of those inside Syria alone as of July. And despite what U.S. politicians have been saying about single male Syrian refugees being potentially dangerous, more than half of those displaced are women and a third are under age 17.
With neither the Syrian war nor the stream of people leaving other countries in conflict (Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq) showing any indication of slowing, I predict that 2016 will become the year the world allows yet again millions of families and people in need to continue to suffer through no fault of their own. With a lack of funds allocated to properly feed, house, and school those fleeing war, in my opinion, the global refugee crisis will yet again be the story we cant ignore, but somehow do.
The long reach of limiting civil rights in Europe
Mounting security threats will always outweigh declining liberties in the headlines and the public imagination. But as hundreds of Europes citizens are being arrested without warrants in extrajudicial raids that officials often say are linked to the Paris attacks and newsrooms with finite resources let the official versions pass unchallenged or lightly questioned, the continents sizable, already aggrieved Muslim population which is being disproportionately affected by the measures will increasingly feel like second-class citizens. This will not help the long-term security of a continent on the front lines of the international fight against radicalization.
The fall of the House of Europe
The three obvious big stories of 2016 are going to be: 1) the fight against the Islamic State; 2) deepening tension in the South and East China Seas; and 3) Russian obstructionism in Ukraine and beyond. But big doors swing on seemingly small hinges, and the story for which 2016 may well be remembered will be a bureaucratic unwinding: the beginning of the end of the European project. The highly touted six-decade idea of a unified Europe that is safe, democratic, borderless, and an active global partner for the United States is under significant challenge. While Europe enjoys many advantages wealth, values, culture, and education it is increasingly prey to significant challenges that make it unlikely the grand vision will be achieved, despite the courage and brilliance of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
For the United States, the long-term implications of this are significant and unfortunate. Europe, despite all our frustrations with the continent at times, represents the best global pool of partners we can find. The debate will crystalize over the year ahead, with two German chancellors on either side of the argument.
More than a century ago, Otto von Bismarck said scornfully, Whoever speaks of Europe is wrong: It is only a geographical expression. More recently Merkel said, Europe only succeeds if we work together. Chancellor Merkel is, as usual, correct, but the challenges are enormous. FP
