Before Colorado’s political eyes turn inward for the 2024 legislative session and coming election insanity, it has become something of a tradition of mine to use this last column of the year to summarize the world scene heading into the new year.

It’s a bit grim, to say the least. This past year has crystallized a growing global divide, a “clash of civilizations” to borrow Samuel Huntington’s term, between the civilized, post-World War II world order and an emerging authoritarian, anti-western confederacy – an updated “Axis of Evil”, if you will – constituted by Russia, the People’s Republic of China and Iran, with a few countries like North Korea, Venezuela and Cuba playing supporting roles. This is not necessarily manifesting itself in a cohesive, official alliance; the closest thing to that is the slowly expanding BRICS, meant to be some sort of counter to the Western-dominated G-7, but that organization is so fraught with internal discord even mutual hatred of the West probably won’t be enough to keep it together. But the threat and possibility of some sort of more formal, Warsaw Pact-like alliance is real.

The Israel-Hamas war displaced Ukraine as the top-of-line international crisis on Oct. 7 when Hamas launched the worst slaughter of Jews since the holocaust, and did so on Israeli soil. Israel’s defensive war slogs on, against a vicious and sociopathic enemy firmly entrenched among civilian population and infrastructure.

Israel has the advantage in technology, leadership, righteousness of cause, etc., but Hamas has two main things going for it:

1) Unlike Israel, Hamas is unhindered by any moral compulsion to try to conform with internationally recognized norms or rules of war.

2) A pliant Western media and the faltering courage of fellow democratic governments, especially the United States. President Joe Biden showed some backbone in the early days of the war, and said the right things, but is progressively caving to demands from the far left, calling for pressure on Israel to “scale back” its counter-offensive.

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This is how Hamas believes, not without merit, they will prevail. Hamas will be destroyed to the last terrorist if the IDF is allowed to do so. Hamas needs the U.S. to tie one hand behind Israel’s back, and then simply hold out for the “ceasefire” which keeps them intact and in business. Hamas controls the aid that the U.S. has insisted upon being allowed into Gaza, hijacking those supplies, especially fuel, it needs to keep shooting at Israeli soldiers from hospitals and schools. They are at the point where they are no longer desperate for a few days to regroup, hence their refusal to accept any more deals, however sweet for the terrorists, to release any of the remaining hostages. Hamas is counting on the U.S. being as firm in its commitment to Israeli security as it was to South Vietnam’s or Afghanistan’s. The best thing for Israelis and innocent Palestinians alike would be for Israel to ignore the U.S. and win the war as quickly and completely as possible.

Meanwhile, a couple thousand miles north, the Ukraine war also continues to rage, though most people who don’t live in eastern Europe or Ukraine have mostly forgotten about it. The much-anticipated Ukrainian counter-offensive has pretty much ground to a halt, aside from some brilliantly successful missile strikes on Russian naval assets in Crimean ports which are keeping the Black Sea free from Russian control, and the front lines in eastern Ukraine now resemble the Somme in 1917, with drones. Those few Ukrainian successes were brought about by long-range missiles, the kind of weaponry needed for a real breakout, and which the Biden administration (aided by some recalcitrant Republicans) dithers on supplying.

And finally, the two hot wars divert our gaze from Taiwan, still under the shadow of the PRC. At the U.S.-China summit in freshly cleaned San Fransisco last summer, Biden courted Chinese President Xi Jinping as though the whole thing had been arranged on an online dating site, but nothing substantial changed. According to NBC News, Xi told Biden quite plainly Beijing intends to “reunite” Taiwan with the PRC. “Reunite” is an interesting phrase to use in reference to Taiwan, which has never been a part of Communist China. It applies in the same sense as saying Hitler intended to “reunify” France with Germany in 1940.

This is a presidential election year, and the ultimate outcome of each of these crises depends, in one way or another, on solid U.S. leadership. There is an obvious dearth of that currently, but a nascent Republican tilt to the left on foreign policy does not bode well for an alternative. Presidential candidate Nikki Haley is well versed, and experienced enough, to provide that alternative, but she faces an uphill climb to wrest the nomination from the far less-equipped Donald Trump. How much more dangerous the world will be at the end of 2024 than at the beginning seems to depend far more on the Republican primaries this spring than the general election next fall.

Kelly Sloan is a political and public affairs consultant and a recovering journalist based in Denver.