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What an insane year it has been! Throughout the madness we have been here for those who care about the world and can’t afford The Economist (or, more felicitously, can afford to ensure the survival of independent journalism and commentary). The holidays are a great time to take a stand for the liberal humanism we champion and share in a rational, considerate conversation.
Why has the outgoing year been fascinating? How is the incoming one potentially historic? Let’s take a look.
The twice-impeached, serially-convicted and microphone-molesting Donald Trump has been returned to the White House for whole bunch of reasons (not all of them ridiculous) which we examined in a more honest way than the timorous mainstream media can do. One data point: The vast majority of minority voters in the US do not think men can give birth, shattering the US Democrats’ supposed “natural majority”; as a result, we’re saddled with a president who doesn’t know domestic consumers pay for his tariffs. Meanwhile, voters who said inflation was their main issue backed a candidate whose promises are guaranteed to fuel inflation. We’ll examine how that attaches to the viability of democracy. Sneak peak: Plato, we have a problem.
Meanwhile, other extraordinary things happened in recent weeks (and yes, I am using Medium to urge a subscription to a Substack publication!).
We examined the unexpected collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime following a rebel offensive — the result of historically unintended (and underreported) consequences — stating what others (from the Associated Press to Die Welt to the New York Times) danced around: The world is not exactly celebrating the fall of a diabolical butcher because his successors may be jihadists. From the US hostage crisis in Iran to the Taliban banning girls from schools to ISIS chopping off the heads of journalists and enslaving Yazidi women, much of the world has concluded Islamists are vile. Would you choose Assad instead?
We were also the only ones to point out a singularity in Romania’s reaction to Russia’s plot to tilt its election in favor of a Putin puppet by means of TikTok skullduggery: By deciding to cancel the resulting election, it became the first to tell Putin “no mas”. It’s odd and problematic, but it’s something. It is a contrast to the US and UK meekness in dealing with the same outrage.
We were also among the first to notice that most countries may refuse to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu. He’s a Putin-wannabe who should have long ago retired, but the International Criminal Court vastly overreached in its indictment and the chances he is arrested are vastly less than the chances that this is the final nail in the coffin of a court that is not recognized by the United States and in two decades has done little. The gamble exposed the fact that via Article 98 of the Rome Statute, which makes compliance voluntary, the Hague has no power (and little brains, considering its inability to figure out whether the Taliban should be prosecuted).
And, of course, the journalism industry has in recent weeks continued its tailspin. Last month brought the news that the Associated Press, once the world’s largest news organization, is offering buyouts while downsizing 8%. Since AP is a licensing operation, its fortunes reflect those of the industry. The bottom may soon fall out — yet reporting and analysis are essential in a world where the dots are not always visible, and rarely easy to connect.
One answer to this conundrum is the emergence of independent publications like Ask Questions Later on platforms like Substack — which just announced it hosts 4 million subscribers who are paying for content. This is the future.
This year has seen a great expansion of the content on AQL, and the addition of new bylines like veteran war correspondent and international law expert Chris Steven, longtime foreign correspondent, license plate collector and rare diseases expert Larry Luxner, geopolitics eminence Robert Hamilton, and Mihai Razvan Ungureanu, a former Romanian prime minister.
We hope you will help enable further expansion by signing up for a paid subscription at a 25% holiday discount or — in the spirit of the season — gifting a subscription to a friend or loved one. It’s more useful than a box of chocolates, and might be — for better or for worse — better remembered and more likely reciprocated! The recipient will have full access to paid content, access to archived content (which is everything over two weeks old) and participation rights in the dynamic discussion we foster. Below are the links, and what follows is a review of the best recent coverage.
No news may be good news for some — but is can also cause one to wander in the dark. Here’s what we tried to shed some light on in 2024.
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail
Yeah, it’s safe to say many of our readers are not happy about the return of Donald Trump, whose grotesquery of a campaign, featuring at one point simulated sex acts with a microphone, was a vulgarian’s delight. In the poll accompanying our election primer most went for Kamala Harris. But there were reasons for the Democrats’ Nov. 5 wipeout: They made every mistake in the book; RFK Jr. (see our discussion with him here) was a complicating factor; they allowed Biden to hang on well past his sell-by date and then crowned a candidate with little personality and no mandate. We argued against the coronation, and preferred Michigan Gov. Whitmer. The party thought otherwise, and consequently managed to lose not just the Electoral College (whose outrages we examined here) but the popular vote (aka, “the vote”) for the first time since 2004. The country is desperately divided, but it’s also evident that in some collective holistic fashion, the electorate — as in much of the world — is united in a foul mood.
A New Pax Americana in the Middle East?
Imagine two diplomats in smoke-filled rooms in wartime London and Paris, poring over maps of the Ottoman Empire. Mark Sykes, representing Britain, and François Georges-Picot, were not renowned cartographers nor great experts on the Middle East. But the clandestine map they signed in 1916, together with some agreements in the years that followed, created the map of the Middle East today. And boy, is it a mess. Our analysis of the wars in Gaza and Lebanon has consistently been ahead and original, and in a series of essays we argued that Trump actually has a chance to fix a few things, if he is willing to break heads. He’d have to get serious not just about ending the nonstop outrages from Iran (which is even threatening Jordan), but also dealing with his good friend, the infinitely-scheming Netanyahu (who is contributing, we wrote in the year’s best-seller, to Israel’s astounding potential self-destruction). As for Lebanon, it will have to be persuaded to either control its own territory or ask for outside help, which should be granted because Hezbollah is the whole world’s problem (as are Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis, who have messed badly with global maritime trade). Trump is authoritarian, impatient and uncomplicated — which is horrible for most purposes but might come in handy here. It would be an irony, because the MAGA movement’s instincts are isolationist, and Trump represents a clean break from the bipartisan post-World War II consensus that America has some sort of duty to promote democracy and stability in the world.
Will Trump Abandon Ukraine?
Meanwhile, the Ukraine war just entered its 1000th day. It’s looking very much like Biden engineered just the kind of “forever war” that Trump detests — arming Ukraine just enough to prevent Russia from winning (which is a lot), but denying it that extra something that might enable it to win. With Trump appearing to be major fan of the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin (well, of most dictators), we examined the possibility that things will turn grim for Volodymyr Zelensky. Earlier, we had also outlined possible exit strategies, including how to structure a deal to not be a capitulation to a butcher. Bottom line: The internal borders of the Soviet Union, which define sovereign Ukraine, were messy and far from sacrosanct, even though appeasing Putin would be bad, — so Ukraine should receive a fast track to the European Union.
Bangers and Cash
Luckily we have Britain for a version of comic relief. Sir Keir Starmer is the most unpopular British prime minister after 100 days in power since records began (but only because the even absurder Liz Truss did not make it past her 47th, failing to outlast a head of lettuce on a tabloid’s webcam). Reasons include a scandal involving lavish gifts from a shady Lord, his finance minister juicing her CV, his foreign minister calling Trump a “woman-hating, neo-Nazi-sympathizing sociopath” (not inconceivable, but the top diplomat was not so diplomatic) and (in a bizarre twist) confusing the hostages held by Hamas with “sausages.” We also examined how Starmer’s Labour returned to power after 14 years by ditching its far-left leadership (while being cowardly about Brexit) and were ahead in realizing that actually the victory derived from a split on the right (in this post-mortem of the France and UK elections).
There’s More to Life than Politics
Sure, we interviewed the son of the Shah of Iran, concluded that no one is indigenous, and offered edgy coverage of the International Criminal Court (stories on the perhaps-abortive plan to arrest Israel’s leaders, the new move to chase business leaders and scandals swirling around its prosecutor). But we also examined the madness of sports fanhood, the curious case of fake diversity in modern culture, the tyranny of the early riser, the concept of atonement, the shadowy global fraternity of license plate collectors, and the perilous state of literature, humor and (as noted above) journalism. In our series on AI, a technology that could boost humanity to the stratosphere but also create societal chaos, we explored its impact on journalism and music (interviewing the former head of research at Spotify). as well as the case for taxing it. A smorgasbord for the mind!