A letter from Oxford Analytica’s Editor in Chief, Dr Nick Redman.
2023 ended with a war in one part of the Middle East, and a UN climate conference in another. The year was notable for several coups and a major civil war in Africa, a Ukrainian counteroffensive against Russian invaders that struggled to make progress, and advances in generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) that left Western policymakers struggling to muster a response—in contrast to their surer-footed Chinese counterparts. Central banks raised interest rates to get inflation under control and ended the year with expectations that they were largely done. Rate cuts would help global growth in 2024, which is forecast to be slightly lower than in 2023.
2024 is a year of consequential elections, beginning with Taiwan in January and extending to the United States at the end of the year. US allies in Europe and East Asia will be watching polls in the seven toss-up states that will determine the presidential contest with increasing attention and anxiety as the year unfolds, out of concern for what a second Donald Trump presidency might mean for the regional security architectures that have underwritten their peace and prosperity for decades.
As always, the challenge for governments will be to manage acute crises without losing their bearings in the face of the generational challenges: rising global temperatures and all that attends them; ageing populations and slowing global growth; the splintering of supply chains and politicisation of commerce; the inexorable shift away from the ‘unipolar moment’ of the 1990s when one power and its allies sat atop the global system, unchallenged; and fast-developing technologies that, unchecked, promise benefit and harm at the level of the individual, the community, the nation and the world.
We look forward to helping you navigate through 2024, with coverage that understands and anticipates the interplay of domestic and international factors, short-term and long-term pressures, political dynamics and economic phenomena, and technological possibilities and human aspirations.
I’d like to invite you to share your opinions via this form on what events we should hold in 2024.
Thank you for your continued support for our work. We wouldn’t be here without you and I hope to see more of you at Oxford Analytica-organised conferences and roundtables in 2024.
Yours sincerely,
Dr Nick Redman,
Editor in Chief and Director of Analysis, Oxford Analytica
