David Pratt on The World: Don't forget those ‘other’ global news stories of 2020

Yes, admittedly there was that one international heart-stopping moment right at the very outset of 2020, when the US administration of President Donald Trump decided the time had come to kill top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani with a drone strike.

Amid the terrible tension that lasted all of three days there was even talk of it leading to World War III.

But who among us for one minute back then could have envisaged that though volatile and serious as this international crisis was in term of its potential implications, it was a mere warm-up for the annus horribilis that 2020 would become – and is still persistently proving to be.

In any “normal” year our diet of global news stories would be wide and varied and there will always be those standout crises during which much of the world sits up and takes notice.

The killing of Soleimani was one of them but the pandemic around the corner was to prove something else entirely by way of impact and a threat to countless lives.

Outwith the onset of Covid-19, 2020 has, oddly enough, otherwise been a busy time in terms of international headline-making.

Perhaps only the US presidential election, with its incredible drama, gravitas, shock value and political implications, was the only other story that held us in its grip.

In “normal” times too it would have been the biggest story for decades – and still to some extent is – were it not for the long, slow, painful, lingering of this disease that altered so much of our perception of the world.

While things might have taken a turn for the worst recently on the Covid front the medium to long-term outlook is thankfully much better with the vaccine making its way to all of us who desire it and one hopes without exception in terms of nation or nationality.

With such a looming improvement the time is coming when we will fully re-engage with the world and catch up on those lapses of news-gathering or dissemination of stories from far-flung places, some of which was hindered by the pandemic and/or exploited by those who used it for their own political ends.

In the interim many of us will have fallen a little behind with some of the stories that perhaps never caught the attention they deserved during this past pandemic year.

Some of these stories I have already written about here, but certain themes remain worthy of revisiting again briefly at the end of the year, if only to get some understanding of how they might evolve in 2021.

So, just what were those other stories that we largely overlooked these past 10 or so months – and what others should we look out for on the foreign news horizon next year?

One country that obviously made headlines in 2020 and will continue to do so this coming year is China. This huge nation might have been where coronavirus originated, but it’s not for that reason alone that it will be making news in 2021 and beyond.

It was former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping who coined the mantra “hide brilliance, cherish obscurity” for China’s foreign policy, but there has been precious little of that approach implemented by current leader Xi Jinping.

Instead, Xi has set out unequivocally to make sure Beijing’s weight is felt around the world.

While all eyes were on Wuhan and Covid-19, China was still pushing on relentlessly with its “wolf warrior” diplomacy. Australia was economically bludgeoned into line for daring to raise the issue of an inquiry into the origins of the virus, while a new security law in Hong Kong brushed aside the terms of the treaty governing the city’s handover to the UK. Beijing is not fearful of throwing its weight around and that is sure to be a regular storyline next year.

Writing in last week’s Financial Times, journalist Ryosuke Harada outlined how as “Western countries flounder in the face of the pandemic and face challenges to their own democracies, China has pulled ahead by containing the disease through technology and authoritarian rule”.

As Harada sees it, it’s not hard to imagine that “in five years time, China’s ambitions and technological progress, particularly in mitigating climate change, will determine the state of the world”.

Hardly surprising, then, that most international observers agree that next year China’s rise and future direction will give us continued headlines, especially over trade and relations with the US under the new presidency of Joe Biden.

In short, Xi Jinping will continue to remake the landscape of global politics and all eyes will be on not only how he goes about it, but on how Biden’s incoming administration will manage the bilateral relationship with Bejing.

And speaking on a wider footing of related issues to US foreign policy, one of the other stories to look out for will be the extent to which America decides to re-engage generally on the world stage.

Biden will have his work cut out for him whether it be with old adversaries like China and Russia or allies and friends like the EU and Nato, with whom Trump has left him to pick up the pieces of treaties, agreements and trust.

In Russia’s case it was curious to see how long it took president Vladimir Putin to congratulate Biden on his election victory, a hesitancy designed to put maximum pressure on the US president-elect.

“It’s classic Putin,” observed Konstantin Eggert, a well-known Russian journalist and political commentator recently on US National Public Radio (NPR)

“By not congratulating Biden for so long, he – in his eyes at least – proved that he’s tough, he’s strong, and, if need be, he’s ready to take the fight all the way to Washington.”

Whether that fight escalates once Biden sits in the Oval office remains to be seen but it will undoubtedly also form part of this coming year’s dominant foreign news themes.

So much, then, for some of what might sit on the horizon, but what about those stories that have already been unfolding over the past months but been overshadowed by the pandemic and pushed to the side of our news radar?

Well, still on Russia, Moscow’s role in Belarus, a country often described as Europe’s last dictatorship, was worth noting this year.

While an estimated 30,000 people are thought to have been arrested since the August election for opposing the rule of

long-time president Alexander Lukashenko, he remains in power with Russia’s help, many observers insist.

So is the Kremlin’s role in “resolving” – for the time being at least – the short-lived war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, which passed many of us by as did the bloody events that played out there.

The role of Turkey’s involvement in the region also saw the laying down of an evermore obvious marker from Ankara by Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

As Paul Taylor, contributing editor at Politico magazine only half joking remarked last week: “It’s time to talk Turkey.”

He was, of course, referring in all seriousness to the need for a joint approach to reining in what many now see as Erdogan’s dangerous adventurism in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Middle East and the Caucasus, and the need for this to be high on the EU’s list of priorities with the incoming Biden administration.

Here again is another international story that did not make the headlines it should have in 2020 because of the pandemic. For throughout the time that most countries were preoccupied with the domestic implications of the virus and the economic crisis it presented on their own soil, 2020 saw Turkey under Erdogan intensify efforts to project Ankara’s influence far beyond its own borders.

As many sources have highlighted –even if few of us really noticed – for the past 11 months, during the timescale of the pandemic, Erdogan has brought Turkey’s presence to bear on so many of the world’s flashpoints.

To begin with, Ankara has intervened militarily in Libya’s civil war with arms supplies, drones and Syrian mercenaries to tilt the balance of power in favour of the Tripoli government.

Turkey has also under Erdogan’s rule prevented US-mandated French and German ships on a EU mission to enforce an arms embargo on Libya from inspecting Turkish cargo ships in the Central Mediterranean.

And then, in turn, Turkey also aided and abetted Azerbaijan in recapturing territory around the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave from Armenia. In short: Turkey has become a global powerbroker that will continue to make big headlines ahead – and how it plays off Russia and America will be well worth keeping an eye on.

And while we’re on the subject of other headlines gone almost unnoticed this year, watch as details surface of what has really unfolded in terms of human rights violations during the recent conflict between Ethiopia and the Tigray region.

If evidence is corroborated of locals describing civilians “slaughtered like chickens” then it will stand as a stark reminder of the importance of independently verified news reports and access on the ground in a year awash with disinformation and limited access to many stories.

And before I forget, much closer to home – here in Europe – it has been a difficult 2020 and one the EU has come out of better than might have been expected a few months ago.

Yes, I know the UK’s Brexit debacle rumbles on, but at least on some fronts, like budget, the EU managed some agreement at the year’s end after so much acrimony and disunity from some members.

But again this is a story only just entering a new chapter in 2021.

As with every year’s end and the look backwards and forwards over world news, I’m often asked to make predictions. Indeed, as 2020 comes to a close, the usual mandate for end-of-year reflections carries a particular weight.

As for 2021, it goes without saying that some of the themes and stories I’ve outlined, whether connected directly to the pandemic or not, will all in some form inevitably be shaped by it.

On the widest possible scale, the coronavirus crisis has forced a review of societies and economies, a situation labelled the “Great Reset” by the World Economic Forum (WEF). In many ways events of 2020 have exposed the transnational brokenness of so many institutions riddled with injustice and systems ill-equipped to handle compounding disasters.

It has also revealed the glaring weakness in capitalism and democracy all over the world and these themes too will doubtless make for many of the global stories of 2021 and beyond. As the old news business saying goes “news never sleeps” and certainly not cross the globe.

But let’s not forget that alongside bad news often comes good news. The rolling out of the coronavirus vaccine is a point in case. So, too, is the fact that in the very same 2020 that saw a terrible global pandemic, Africa was able in August to declare itself free from wild polio, another virus that cost humanity dearly.

It was a story many of us will undoubtedly have missed but which Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organisation (WHO), described as “one of the greatest public health achievements of our time”.

Here’s to 2021 being full of many more positive stories like this.

I wish you a safe and peaceful New Year wherever in the world you might be.