Ten Most Significant World Events in 2024

You are not alone if 2024 has left you exhausted. It has been a trying year on the world stage, as the forces of disarray grew stronger. Geopolitical competition increased, while ongoing wars ground on. The one brief respite from a year with more steps backward than forward came with the 2024 Summer Olympics and Paralympics in Paris, the world’s most beautiful city. The French showed that they take a backseat to no one when it comes to spectacle and pageantry, and the athletes showed what dedication and sportsmanship at their very best can accomplish. May they be an inspiration for everyone in 2025. But before we jump to the new year, here are my top ten world events in 2024. You may want to read what follows closely. Many of these stories will continue into 2025 and beyond. 

10. The Space Race Is Alive and Well. If you want to see the human potential for creation, as well as for destruction, look to the heavens. Some of the highlights in space exploration in 2024 included: Japan landed a SLIM (Smart Lander for Investigating the Moon) on a lunar crater in January and transmitted data back to earth for three months; China sent a mission that brought back soil samples from the far side of the moon; NASA’s Perseverance rover found possible evidence of microbial life on Mars; a joint EU-Japan mission photographed the south pole of Mercury; and SpaceX demonstrated a new technology for capturing returning booster rockets with “chopstick arms.” To be sure, not everything went well. Boeing’s Starliner project delivered two astronauts to the International Space Station in June for what was supposed to be a two-month stay. Technical problems, however, will prevent them from returning until next spring. Unfortunately, space is not just home to commercial and scientific competition. It is also home to renewed geopolitical competition. U.S. officials accused Russia in May of placing a nuclear space-based anti-satellite weapon in space. China, meanwhile, greatly expanded the number of military satellites it has in space. The few international agreements governing space operations do little to constrain the militarization of space. The United States continues to urge countries to sign onto the Artemis Accords, which seek to prevent the militarization of space exploration. Fifty-two countries are now signatories. Notably, that list does not include China or Russia.  

9. The World Braces for China Shock 2.0. China rose from economic backwater to global powerhouse in the early 2000s on the back of exports. But that success came at a cost to others, particularly the United States. Americans got cheaper consumer goods but lost a million manufacturing jobs as domestic producers either shuttered their doors or moved abroad in search of lower-cost labor. Economists called it the China shock and believed it was a one-off event. China’s currency appreciated, its labor costs rose, and domestic Chinese consumer demand grew, all of which narrowed its export advantage. However, China’s economy began sputtering when COVID hit. Rather than making necessary but painful changes to the economy, Chinese President Xi Jinping went back to the strategy that fueled China’s rise—exports. Beijing ramped up subsidies to domestic manufacturers. They are now producing more than China’s domestic market can absorb. The surplus is going overseas. That glut of goods has some virtues—low-cost Chinese solar panels and electric vehicles would speed up the world’s transition to a greener economy. But importing countries are more worried that a second China shock will destroy their domestic industry. So they are scrambling to respond. The European Union (EU) took several steps to stop or slow the influx of Chinese imports. Brazil and India are among the countries that joined the United States in imposing new tariffs. Washington will almost certainly increase its tariffs even further in 2025. That could fuel greater trade tensions or set the stage for a negotiated solution. 

8. The Sudanese Civil War Rages on. The civil war that began in Sudan in April 2023 continued unabated in 2024. The fighting pits the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), led by Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, against the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia, led by Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo. The two men jointly seized power in a coup in October 2021, but eventually had a falling out. The RSF, which grew out of the infamous Janjaweed that were responsible for the Darfur genocide two decades ago, seized control of Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, as well as much of Darfur. In late September, the SAF launched a major offensive to retake Khartoum. They retook parts of the city but failed to dislodge RSF forces entirely. As the fighting has ground on, the Sudanese people suffered. The exact death toll is unknown. Some estimates put the number at 20,000 killed, with the number rising to more than 60,000 or even higher when war-related disease and starvation are included. War crimes are appallingly common, and a famine has been declared in Darfur. Not surprisingly, the Sudanese who can move have done just that. The conflict has displaced some eleven million people out of a total population of nearly fifty million. Mediation efforts like last week’s UN Security Council meeting on Sudan have produced fine speeches but little on action. Not only do the SAF and RSF each believe they will prevail, they also both have powerful external backers enabling them to keep fighting.  

7. Developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI) Continue to Astound—and Concern. The AI revolution is turning science fiction into science fact. The list of recent AI advances is impressive, as are their practical applications. AI is being used to analyze genetic conditions, improve healthcare, create manufacturing efficiencies, and more. The Nobel Prize Committee recognized AI’s importance when it awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics to John Hopfield and Geofrey Hinton "for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks" and half of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Demis Hassabis and John Jumper for developing an “AI model to solve a 50-year-old problem: predicting proteins’ complex structures.” As with all revolutionary technologies, experts debate which country is ahead. Most measures suggest that the United States “leads by a wide margin.” China, however, is the global leader in the raw number of AI research publications. One limitation every aspiring AI power faces is the availability of skilled workers. Another constraint is the availability of electricity and water. AI models require vast amounts of power, which generates heat that needs to be cooled. The high costs of entry into the AI space is one reason for concern that the AI revolution will widen the gap between rich and poor countries. Discussion is growing on whether and how to regulate AI. Agreement on that score remains elusive. Too much is changing too fast. To borrow the title of a science fiction classic, we are entering a brave new world.  

6. Russia Takes the Offensive in Ukraine. The momentum shifted to Russia in the third year of its war on Ukraine. Since July, Russian forces have pushed Ukrainian troops back along the front in eastern Ukraine. The territory Russia has gained with its meat-grinder strategy has come at a high price. Russian casualties likely exceed 115,000 killed and 500,000 wounded. Ukraine, with a population roughly a quarter of Russia’s, has seen 43,000 troops killed and 370,000 wounded. Kyiv attacked across its northern border in August to seize territory in Russia’s Kursk region. The move sought to force Moscow to redeploy troops away from embattled Ukrainian forces in eastern Ukraine. Russia did not bite, however. It instead secured some 10,000 North Korean troops to fight in Kursk. In early December, Ukrainian intelligence assassinated a senior Russian general with a bomb planted outside his apartment building in Moscow at the risk of provoking Russian escalation. Ukrainians continued to lament that the West was slow in providing them with advanced weapons. Washington did reverse long-standing policy in November by authorizing Kyiv to use U.S.-made long-range missiles against Russia. As 2025 starts, the question is whether Russia and Ukraine can continue their grueling war of attrition. Russia has a decided advantage in men and materiel; however, its economy is faltering. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian military has been pushed to the brink and Western support may waver. Calls for a negotiated ceasefire have grown. However, Vladimir Putin’s terms for any agreement seem to be Ukraine’s capitulation.  

5. Incumbent Political Parties Take It on the Chin. Incumbents facing the voters in 2025 must be uneasy. Two thousand twenty-four began as the mother of all election years. Some eighty countries representing four billion people held either national, state, or local elections. Two thousand twenty-four ended as the year of the challenger. Voters around the globe punished politicians in power. Long dominant parties in India, Japan, South Africa, and elsewhere went into their elections hoping to strengthen their hold on power; they instead lost seats and found themselves in coalition governments. In the United Kingdom and the United States, voters sent the incumbent parties packing. French President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to call snap parliamentary elections after rightist parties did well in the European parliamentary elections backfired and could cost him his presidency. Germany’s ruling coalition crumbled after its constituent parties fared poorly in state elections in September. What accounted for the global anti-incumbency mood? Unhappiness with the state of the economy looks to be a common thread. The Pew Research Center found in its polling of thirty-four countries that roughly two out of three voters were unhappy about the state of their country’s economy. Incumbents presumably were not fixing things, so it was time to give someone else a chance. But polls also show a broader disenchantment with democratic politics and a desire for strong leaders who will take on political elites. The question is, how will democracy fare if the problem is not its leaders but the intractability of the problems they face? 

4. The Climate Continues to Heat Up. Humanity cannot say it did not know. Scientists have been warning for decades that our addiction to fossil fuels will change the climate, potentially permanently. The facts back them up. The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continue to grow, and 2024 will go down as the hottest year on record. For the first time, the average global temperature was 1.5° C hotter than during pre-industrial times, a dangerous sign given that the 2015 Paris Agreement seeks to keep the world from breaching that level permanently. Some of the consequences of a changing climate are easy to see. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that the first ten months of 2024 produced twenty-four weather-related natural disasters in the United States that inflicted at least $1 billion in damage. Record drought has wracked northern South America, causing parts of the Amazon, the world’s largest river system, to dry up. But many of the consequences of climate change are hard to see because they involve incremental changes, like the intrusion of ocean water into freshwater drinking sources, that will become obvious only time. COP 29, the annual international conference on climate, made modest progress on helping developing countries to finance emissions reductions and climate adaptation, but not much else. Scientists made headway on a range of technologies designed to mitigate the effects of climate change and hasten the transition to a green economy. However, their successes may be a case of too little, too late.  

3. Upheaval in the Middle East. The events unleashed by Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel reverberated across the Middle East in 2024. Israel continued its war in Gaza. The death toll now exceeds 45,000, and northern Gaza is on the verge of famine. Israel notched numerous tactical victories, including the killing of Hamas leader and October 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar. But its strategic objective—defeating Hamas—remained elusive. In April, Israel bombed what Iran said was its consulate in Damascus, which led to an unprecedented Iranian missile-and-drone attack on Israel. Israel defeated the attack with U.S. and Western help. Israel responded with limited air strikes on Iran’s air defenses. In July, Israel assassinated a senior Hamas leader while he was in Tehran attending the inauguration of a new Iranian president. Two months later, Iran retaliated with another missile attack on Israel. It, too, was largely defeated. Israel’s retaliatory airstrikes in late October crippled Iran’s missile production and decimated its air defenses. In mid-September, Israel punished Hezbollah for its missile and rocket attacks against northern Israel with a clandestine operation that used exploding pagers to kill dozens of Hezbollah operatives. Two weeks later, an Israeli airstrike killed longtime Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Israeli ground forces then invaded southern Lebanon, pushing back Hezbollah forces. The weakening of Hamas and Hezbollah created an opening for Turkish-backed forces in Syria to topple the government of Bashar al-Assad in December, which further isolated Iran in the region. The question now is whether these events have laid the groundwork for a future peace or sowed the seeds for even more disorder.  

2. The Rise of the Axis of Autocracies. The return of geopolitical competition is evident in the growing cooperation between China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Their collaboration has been called the axis of autocracies, the axis of upheaval, and the quartet of chaos, among other names. The alignment falls far short of an alliance, and it is debatable whether “axis” is the best description. Nonetheless, ties among the four are deepening. Iran has sold Russia thousands of drones, North Korea has provided Russia with millions of artillery shells, and China has helped rebuild Russia’s defense industrial base. This summer Putin visited Pyongyang—his first visit in twenty-four years—to sign a comprehensive strategic partnership treaty. North Korea is now sending troops to fight against Ukraine. China and Russia have increased their joint military exercises, which included flying bombers into Alaska’s Air Defense Identification Zone this summer. Russia has in turn been providing highly sensitive military, space, and surveillance technology to all three countries. The question is whether these developments reflect a temporary marriage of convenience or the beginning of a more durable geopolitical bloc. The four countries have conflicting interests and no shared vision of the world they hope to create. But they do agree on one thing: they want to diminish U.S. power in world affairs. The challenge for the United States and its allies is how to respond. A hardline approach could produce a self-fulfilling prophecy, while downplaying the threat could enable it to grow. 

1. Donald Trump Wins the U.S. Presidential Election. Trump’s defeat of Democrat Kamala Harris in 2024 will go down as the greatest political comeback in U.S. history. In the wake of the January 6 Capitol Hill riot that even senior members of the Republican Party said he was “morally responsible for,” Trump’s political obituary seemed written. His comeback owed to his unique appeal to Republican base voters, public dissatisfaction with the economy and illegal immigration, and Joe Biden’s low public approval ratings. The re-run of the 2020 election that seemed likely in spring 2024 never materialized. Biden dropped out of the race in July after a disastrous debate that confirmed the doubts many had that he was fit for another four years in office. Democrats rallied around Harris as their presidential candidate, and she was widely regarded as having beaten Trump in their one presidential debate. However, that did not translate into victory on Election Day. Instead, Trump won and claimed an “unprecedented and powerful mandate.” His victory was anything but. Republicans won control of Congress, but their margin of control in the House is the smallest in U.S. history. Trump discovered in a battle over government spending last week that House Republicans will not always follow his lead. Trump’s return to White House will prove the maxim that while foreign policy seldom matters for U.S. presidential elections, U.S. presidential elections matter a lot for U.S. foreign policy. The question now is how much and how fast Trump will change things.  

Oscar Berry assisted in the preparation of this post. 

Other posts in this series: 

Ten Most Significant World Events in 2023 

Ten Most Significant World Events in 2022  

Ten Most Significant World Events in 2021 

Ten Most Significant World Events in 2020 

Ten Most Significant World Events in 2019 

Ten Most Significant World Events in 2018 

Ten Most Significant World Events in 2017 

Ten Most Significant World Events in 2016 

Ten Most Significant World Events in 2015 

Ten Most Significant World Events in 2014