2021: A Year in Review
It was a year to forget. Covid-19, in all its variants, rolled across the world like a malignant fog. The pandemic sickened millions, causing deaths among the elderly and vulnerable and throwing entire sets of spanners into the wheel of economic recovery. It was as if it wanted to prove that while science may often find the answers, Nature, entirely disinterested in human progress, constantly changes the question.
Not that humanity didn’t do its best to make things worse. As winter took hold in the northern hemisphere and the world inched, fitfully, towards yet another blighted Christmas, huge, man-made crises hove into view.
In later 2021 in Russia, Vladimir Putin, an actuary to Stalin’s reckless gambler, ordered a massive military build-up on the borders of Ukraine. At the same time, in China, President Xi – commanding an arsenal of weapons only exceeded by those of the US – warned that he was ready to “take action” against rebel Taiwan. The West’s response to this jumelage of threat? You’ve guessed it. Sanctions. Better than a leaflet campaign and a UN Resolution (vetoed by Moscow and Beijing), but surely “baked in,” as Boris Johnson would say, by those with their fingers on the trigger.
Meanwhile, in “little” Israel, plans have been drawn up and approved to bomb Iran’s uranium enrichment plants in a bid to prevent the regime in Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Suddenly, conflict – and slaughter – on a scale not seen since the end of the Second World War, is not beyond the bounds of possibility.
Across the world there were wildfires, floods and tornadoes, reminding us that COP26, in Glasgow, was never more than a footnote in the fight against climate change. The world is reaching boiling point, and as the populations of the developing nations, already ravaged by war, continue to surge, flocks of economic migrants are risking everything to get to what they regard as the safe havens of America and Europe.
In Britain, Battling (or Bottling) Boris finally “got Brexit done,” only to discover that it was not an event, but an ongoing process and that when it comes to Ireland, Gladstone had it easy. As his government drowned in a swamp of incompetence and sleaze, he hung on, desperately, yielding yet another child as a votive offering to the gods of mischief. Will he somehow hold on to the keys of Downing Street beyond the summer of 2022? Can he miraculously unpick the NI Protocol, avoid further Covid lockdowns and, with a wave of his mighty hand, close off the English Channel to unwanted migrants? Most of all, can he hope to stem the slow but steady advance of Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer? We may know soon enough. Both men could have been written by Dickens, one preposterous, the other comically dependable.
Europe, in the sense of the European Union, had a mixed year, much affected by Covid. Every day, every week, every month, the statistics for new cases, hospitalisations and deaths were updated, tracking a slow, but measurable improvement in the EU-wide response to the virus that by year’s end saw it move slightly ahead of the UK, previously – and noisily – the front-runner.
The most obvious tectonic shift took place in Germany, where Angela Merkel – “Mutti” – retired with grace, amid applause from all sides, in Germany anyway, after sixteen years as Chancellor. She was replaced by Olof Scholz, leader of the newly resuscitated Social Democrats and the Keir Starmer of Germany, though, it should be said, far better versed in practical politics.
On the other side of the Rhine, France’s luckless President, Emmanuel Macron, who once took it for granted that he would inherit Merkel’s role as Europe’s most powerful leader, finally realised in 2021 what everyone else already knew, that Jupiter had long-since moved into retrograde motion and that the clock was ticking on his presidency. The elections due this Spring could just see him replaced in the Élysée by either Valérie Pécresse – by some accounts a gallic Merkel in the making – or even, in the nightmare scenario, by the Far-Right’s Éric Zemmour, a politician with more than a whiff of the 1930s about him.
At least in Italy, things look to be picking up under the patrician leadership of Mario Draghi, the first politician of genuine stature and gravitas to take charge in Italy for as long as anyone can remember. If only Draghi, a spritely 74, was in control in Budapest and Warsaw, instead of Viktor Orban and Mateusz Morawiecki, Europe’s most cakeist leaders, old-style sovereigntists who never fail to bite the hand that feeds them. So is the European Union in deep trouble? Are its internal contradictions squeezing the life out of Ever Closer Union? Probably. But, like the single currency, it will survive, buoyed up by blind faith masquerading as an iron will that the British never remotely shared or understood.
The biggest geopolitical change in 2021 was supposed to have been the one staged on the steps of the Capitol Building in Washington on 20 January, when Joe Biden, aged a less than spritely 78, was inaugurated as President of the United States in place of the mercurially egregious Donald Trump. In fact, it was what took place on those same steps two weeks earlier, on 6 January, that nearly did for American democracy. A horde of pro-Trump protesters, united in the belief that the election had been stolen from their hero by the Democrats, stormed the Capitol, invaded the Senate and threatened to hang Vice President Pence for failing to declare the election invalid.
The events of 6 January ought to have been a turning point for America. The country could reasonably have been expected to rally to the new administration in the face of an attempted coup. Instead, despite mounting evidence that senior Republicans, up to and including Trump, were complicit in the disorder, the divide in America between liberals and right-wing fundamentalists only became more marked, with almost the entire Republican Party and its supporters doubling down on their insistence that Trump won and that Biden was not just hopelessly weak, but illegitimate.
Concerns among liberals and progressives that Biden and the Dems were not up to the task of good government were only confirmed when their signature Bills, aimed at rebuilding the nation’s rotting infrastructure and providing extra help to the poor and minorities, were effectively blocked by the Senate. The Democrats – already operating as a majority only with the vote of Vice President Kamala Harris – found themselves abandoned by the Big Coal, Big Oil, Reaganite senator from West Virginia, Joe Manchin, a Democrat in name only.
But while the shenanigans in Congress were a running sore, the deepest wound to the Biden Presidency came in August when the President, without warning, ordered all US forces out of Afghanistan, leading within ten days to the return of the Taliban. The withdrawal, with its echo of the retreat from Saigon, was chaotic and brutal. America hadn’t bothered to inform the Afghan military that they were leaving. Nor was any advance notice given to America’s allies, including the UK, which had to get out as best they could as the Taliban advanced.
The problem was not that the US had decided to end its 20-year occupation of Afghanistan. Biden had already indicated that he was against the forever war. Rather, it was the lack of planning, the indecent haste and the shameless betrayal of the existing civilian government and the Afghan people. In Moscow and Beijing, as well as in Tehran, the message was clear: the Leader of the Free World had turned tail and America could no longer be relied on as the world’s policeman.
In Africa, the story was distinctly mixed. Though a number of the Continent’s economies showed encouraging growth, the same old pattern of corruption and the violent overthrow of elected leaders continued to unfold. There were coups in Mali, Guinea and Sudan. Islamist marauders continued their assaults in Nigeria and the Sahel. South Africa, hard-hit by Covid, managed, just about, to maintain its status as the only truly advanced economy south of the Mediterranean and the only African nation to be a member of the G20.
The Middle East moved scarcely at all in 2021. The Gulf States continued their dual strategy of drilling for every last gallon of oil while establishing themselves as pioneers of New Energy (a strategy also pursued by Norway). Saudi Arabia carried on as an absolutist state, owing only lip service to reform while ruthlessly pursuing its role in the Yemen civil war in support of the Sunni government against the mainly Shia Houthi.
Israel enjoyed a relatively peaceful and productive year. With Lebanon in tatters following the calamitous bomb blast in 2020 that destroyed much of Beirut, and with Syria rebuilding in the wake of its disastrous civil war, the Jewish state was able to concentrate on domestic politics for a change. It finally ditched Benjamin Netanyahu in favour of the equally stern-faced Naftali Bennett and turned its attention to high-tech startups, for which it has earned an enviable reputation, and the perennial question of what to do about Iran.
China is China. You only have to look at the map to see that joining the G20 wasn’t likely to be the summit of its ambitions. But while it further cemented its place as the world’s number provider of manufactured goods, there were signs its economic growth was slowing.
Politically, the story is very different. Xi and the besuited yes-men who make up his autocrat-filled politburo seem to be Hell-bent on restoring the Forbidden Kingdom to its place as the world’s number one superpower. In Mao’s time, this was a hopeless dream. It was only with the ruthless exploitation of manpower that the Great Leader achieved anything. Fifty years on, having shrugged off the charge that it was responsible for Covid and with Chinese science and technology moving into the ascendancy, the only issue is when and how Xi will try to engineer the takeover. What seems certain is that the country’s increasingly formidable armed forces are awaiting their orders to lock and load.
No wonder Japan is once more building up its defences.
Across the Himalayas, prime minister Narendra Modi had a tough old year. India’s farmers were in revolt over land reform and falling prices. A ceasefire was only put in place in the last few days. There are also are deep concerns that the country will have to abandon coal over the next twenty years, obliging it to build up an alternative source of energy almost from scratch. Corruption and anti-Muslim sentiment are rampant, and in a country most of whose 800 million rural citizens lack access to running water, there is widespread resentment over the concentration of wealth in the hands of mega-rich tycoons, many of whom invest their fortunes overseas. The economy, however, continued to grow across all fronts, allowing India to overtake France as the world’s fifth-biggest economy.
Where does that leave Australia and New Zealand? At the end of the world, as usual. Australia suffered from a serious and enduring Covid crisis made worse by its limited use of vaccines, while New Zealand woke up late in the year to the fact that distance does not in itself confer immunity to the virus. Scott Morrisson, the Australian prime minister, hogged the limelight in August when, in connivance with Britain and America, he cancelled a $50bn order to build French diesel-electric submarines in favour of US/UK nuclear boats and joined a new defence pact known rather awkwardly as AUKUS without inviting the French to join.
Latin America saw little in 2021 to cheer up its 660 million people. Brazil’s Trumpian President Bolsonaro did little to endear himself to voters. Covid in Brazil took a heavy toll. It could be that the skids are under him. The fall, if it comes, could be precipitated. In Peru, however, they are off to a new start, with a radical new President, Pedro Castillo, installed after a bitterly fought campaign against the hard-right and with a national assembly in which his followers have a majority.
As I say, the world in 2021 continued to rotate on its axis, but problems built up that promise to make 2022 a particularly vexing year. Climate change finally came off the back burner and began to bubble over into real life, forcing not just governments, but corporations and individuals to mend their ways and to look after the planet as what it is – the only home we’ve got.
The good news? The James Webb space telescope, costing $10 billion, was set to lift off on Christmas Day on its way to a position one million miles from Earth. There, in temperatures colder than Fort William on Hogmanay, it will scan the universe for signs of life and the possibility, however distant, that one day we may be able to move house after all.
Throughout all this, the Queen, whom God preserve, continued to reign over the United Kingdom and its various possessions (less Barbados, which opted to become a Republic) at the age of 95. Her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh died on 10 June, just short of his hundredth birthday, resulting in the poignant image of Her Majesty following strict Covid guidelines and mourning alone at his funeral in St George’s Chapel, Windsor. Was Boris Johnson impressed by such devotion to duty and the leadership it provided at a time of deep personal loss? We can only guess.
One last thing. In Australia, the England test side was hoping that, after two drubbings in a row against the Old Enemy, they could somehow come back and win the Ashes. Well, we can all dream.