Ringing Down the Curtains on 2022

The year started on a positive note, with the Coronavirus on the back foot and vaccines gaining ascendancy over the pandemic at a rate which science had never attained before. Then Ukraine happened, and the Russian 'special military operation' turned everything on its head. The Doomsday Clock has never clicked closer to midnight since the fall of the Berlin War.

Of course, the ‘Person of the Year’ has been Ukraine, facing fearful odds; no one gave it the slimmest of chances to keep out the rampaging Russian mechanised columns for more than a few weeks. Ten months later, they went on the offensive and wrested back control of many strategic cities in the East and the South while comprehensively beating back the invading Russian forces from Kyiv. Muted pleas for a negotiated end are now emanating from the Kremlin as the year comes to an end.

The liberal West also proved its detractors wrong. Accused of narrow self-serving interests, which it constantly strived to pursue, the West, under the leadership of Washington, was able to cobble together a strong anti-Russian front that has not only piled sanctions after sanctions on Moscow but also created new paradigms in its security outlook. Pacifist nations like Germany are now actively involved in supplying lethal weapons to Ukraine, while historically neutral Sweden is joining NATO along with Finland, which has long existed under the shadow of the Russian bear by adopting a neutral face. The West appears to have united as never before, and the ultimate proof was agreeing to forsake cheap Russian gas and oil for the sake of European unity.

Politics globally continues to throw curve balls at you. President Joe Biden scraped through the midterm elections putting rest to fears of a Republican takeover of the Senate. Mr Trump's acerbic election campaigning, long his trademark, did not do just service to his party but could be blamed for the absence of the 'red tide' that pollsters were predicting. The US Supreme Court’s overturning of the Roe v Wade judgment is also being seen as a factor in making the younger generation vote Democrats. While Mr Trump has formally announced his intention to contest the 2024 presidential elections, there is increasing competition within the Republican ranks, ensuring that Mr Trump will have to fight his way to the nomination. Elsewhere too, politics were chaotic, and nowhere else was this more in evidence than in the South American giant Brazil, where Jair Bolsonaro's razor-thin election defeat is being seen as a victory for democracy. In France, Emmanuel Macron, dogged by his poor performance in the economic field, was just able to scrape through the final line with a resurgent Le Pen snapping at his heels, having cleverly camouflaged her far-right instincts. However, the far right won a victory in Italy after Giorgia Meloni became Italy’s first far-right post-war prime minister; her late grandfather Il Duce would be justifiably pleased! Israel's swinging door politics saw disgraced Benjamin Netanyahu coming back to power on the back of an extreme right coalition still stubbornly fighting to stay out of jail for corruption charges.

Closer to home, we saw the messy eviction of Prime Minister Imran Khan, once the 'deep state' found him more of a liability than an asset. Our southern nation, Sri Lanka, saw the sad spectacle of an elected President fleeing from the Presidential Palace like a common thief, unable or unwilling to face the wrath of his citizens desperately looking for a way out of an economic collapse that threatened to starve the nation of food, fuel and finances. Afghanistan remained as out of touch with reality as we had feared, passing anti-women edicts like a medieval despotic regime, forbidding its women from attending schools, colleges and offices. The rest of the world retaliated by keeping the Taliban out of the international financial support system, but the ultimate sufferers are the poor Afghan people; the Taliban could not care less! Pakistan's evergreen friend China held the grand festival of the 20^th Congress of the CCP, which formally crowned President Xi Jinping in his record third (and perhaps lifelong) term, eclipsing even the venerated Chairman Mao himself in power and control. But the celebrations of President Xi's coronation did not last long as China faced its worst outbreak of the Covid virus, with much of the blame being heaped on President Xi himself for his unrealistic 'Zero Covid' policy and lackadaisical efforts on vaccination.

In the Islamic Republic of Iran, the hated Moral Police went a step too far when they accosted young Mahsa Amini for not wearing the hijab and, the next day, handed over her dead body to her distraught family. In a spontaneous outpouring of grief and anger, women-led protests spread like wildfire across the country, with young and old women getting shot and abused in the bargain. The protests have spread over the last three months, and a discredited government headed by clerics is not hesitant in using violence as the only tool to calm matters. More blood will flow in Iran's streets before things cool down.

The economic outlook is bleak, with many pundits predicting a recession in major economies. The unnecessary prolonging of the war in Ukraine by a megalomaniac authoritarian leader is once again taking the world to the brink of a cold war or even worse. The geopolitical situation has been worsened by the growing U.S.-China tensions, with Taiwan emerging as the next potential arena for a superpower confrontation.

The climatic events, which at times were record-breaking like the 'Bomb Blizzard' that swept across Northern America, shutting down entire cities and covering them with ice, the heat in Europe, and the devastating floods in Australia and South Asia, were signs of nature going out of control. COP 15 and COP 27 reflected governments' trepidation by the increasing number of climatic events, and some ground-breaking agreements could be arrived at.

So, what did mankind learn from 2022? Not to get too smug with their technology, knowledge, and wealth- we are still not away from the nuclear Armageddon that dominated the narrative post World War II until the 1980s. We are running out of time and options to preserve what remains of our environment and its biodiversity. While economic nationalism may be popular in garnering votes, it will create greater inequity that will ultimately lead to widespread conflicts, terror and destruction from which none are safe, rich or poor. Respect for human dignity and faith in human progress must be universal, a lesson that the pandemic forced upon us but which we continue to disregard.