The Best (and Worst) Foreign Policy Decisions of 2024

Hosted by Christina Ruffini and Sir Richard Dearlove

Guests

Prashant Rao

Prashant Rao is a Semafor journalist who discusses the year's biggest developments in foreign policy and shares perspectives on the best and worst decisions of 2024.

Margot Haddad

Margot Haddad is France's TF1 journalist who discusses how the year's biggest foreign policy developments have reshaped the global political landscape and explores expectations for a second Trump administration.

Episode Summary

In the last episode of 2024, Times Radio political editor Kate McCann sits down with Prashant Rao of Semafor and Margot Haddad of France's TF1 to discuss how the year's biggest developments in foreign policy have reshaped the current global political landscape. They share what they believe are the worst and best decisions of 2024, the current state of war conflicts and how they will evolve in 2025, what to expect from a second Trump administration, and the new major players emerging on the global stage. Plus how climate change could shape international relations, the possibility of a trade war, and more.

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Transcript

COLD OPEN

Rao: In some ways, The United States has more power over China because China's economy is slowing so much. Seems like Giorgia Meloni is really the only kind of standout, solid leader in Europe at the moment. A lot of European countries don't have good enough posture to speak to these countries anymore. That being said, it is hard to make the argument to me that Iran is strengthened by what has happened in the past year.

INTRODUCTION

Mccann: Hello, and welcome to the final edition of One Decision for 2024. I'm Kate McCann, and on the panel today, I'm joined by Margot Haddad from France's TF1 and Prashant Rao from Semafor to get into everything that happened in 2024 and what it means for the year ahead in 2025. I'll get them to share their best and worst decisions, some of them might surprise you, and we'll talk about where those big conflicts are going to go in the year ahead. But there's plenty of surprising bits too, including who the new strong men leaders are in the world today. Not The UK, not The US, not France and Germany either. Lots of turbulence in all of those nations. So who is the big new name on the world stage? We'll tell you that. We'll also talk about climate change and why that played a big part in what's happened in 2024 and why it might be one of the worst decisions to come in the years ahead. Join us for all of that and more. Well, thank you both for being here. I'm going to start by asking about the best decision of 2024. Prashant, I'll start with you. Which one stands out?

THE BEST DECISIONS OF 2024

Rao: Yeah. Wish we could sort of go in reverse and start with the bad decisions, and then get to the

Mccann: Well, you can start there if you want to. If you prefer to start with bad, we can start with bad.

Rao: I've got a few that I'm, like, mulling as, like, what are the good decisions? It's weird to ascribe this as a good decision, but the net result was good. But I would be curious what you both think of, you know, Bashar al-Assad not sticking around to fight would probably save quite a few lives. This is not to say that Bashar al-Assad is a good person or what he has done is good, but the net result of that decision was, I would say, broadly somewhat positive and allowed for a measure of, you know, hope in Syria. And then the other thing, I think, in a geopolitical sense, I think is broadly good is the leaders of Britain and Australia in particular have tried to make some moves to engage with China and not taken a blanket adversarial stance. Australia in particular is very interesting because Australia is probably the best example of a country that was really hammered by China in the post-2021 kind of COVID era and has managed to repair relations, which is you can debate whether, I guess, that is good from the Australian point. What I mean is, like, it is good that it illustrates that relations with China are not on a relentlessly negative path, that, actually, we are not condemned to eventual inevitable war. These are two countries. They have interests. They might converge. They may not. And Australia is a really good example of a country that kind of seems to have figured it out. It's kind of cool.

Mccann: Yeah. And I think The UK is still a little bit hesitant when it comes especially over the last couple of weeks and some allegations of Chinese spying, which but have let's come back to that. Margot, what would your best decision of the year be?

Haddad: I would say maintaining the Olympic Games in the center of Paris and not being destabilized by potential threats, jihadi threats as well, terrorism, that could have happened throughout the Olympic Games and just making sure that everything could happen, especially for Parisians, would say, French people that got a glimpse of hope throughout the Olympic Games. And because the political environment has been so tough, so harsh on French people these days, that was a good time to make a sense and make people agree together for just a bit of time.

Mccann: Yeah. You think, I mean, linking two of your best decisions together, do you think there is a risk now of more terror, given what's happening in Syria? I mean, how do we assess the risk?

Haddad: It really depends what they do with the regime, the new regime, with al-Jolani and what we call HTS, this new jihadi group. Because basically if the Turkish get involved and what they say is that they had been involved with Russia and Iran and trying to be kind of the middle ground between these two leaders and find a way to install a Sunni kind of regime very similar to Qatar or Saudi Arabia that would be a country that has different culture, different values, that has an Islamic tribunal, Islamic justice, but it's still a country that we are able to talk to and have kind of a sense of diplomacy that is able to lay ground on with different kind of countries. That's one possibility. The other one is to let all the terror groups not gathering and not finding a way to install a proper regime and being blind by the fact that these people were jihadi, even if they kind of try to find a way to be very different from ISIS.

Mccann: Rebrand.

Haddad: To rebrand, exactly, from ISIS, they're still jihadi. Do they want global jihad or do they want a Syria jihad? That's actually the question that we need to understand and to find out the answer because we need to focus on the fact that in Islam the fall of Damascus is a way to extend Islam throughout the region.

Mccann: Prashant, let's just pick up on a few of these points and just take it back a little bit, because your good decision is obviously Assad's decision. It is and has been and was at the time difficult to understand why it played out that way. Everything seemed to happen quite quickly. In the immediate aftermath, there was this sense that he was going, there was a bit of misinformation about whether the plane had been shot down, and then, you know, a statement which came out later. What's your assessment of how well planned that was, and whether there was a logic there, or whether it was just a last minute decision to go in the way that he did?

Rao: So, I guess ascribing sort of agency to his choice is a complicated thing, right, because he will have made that decision for a variety of different reasons that were forced upon him as well as through active agency. There is also, you know, the idea that Turkey, as you correctly pointed out, had been supporting, you know, Jolani, Ahmad al-Sharaa, however, he now uses his real name in HTS, and that allowed for this really aggressive kind of push. Well, I did say it was the best decision because it is sort of, I think, saved a lot of lives in the short term. Right? I covered Iraq for several years, and we learned over time that actually one of the things that Saddam had sort of planned for was for an active insurgency to proliferate in the months and years that followed. So I think we should be a little careful of ascribing too much agency to Assad and being a little too confident as to how many lives have been saved. Because in fullness of time, the worry would be that this is an Iraq-like scenario, when in fact a Baathist regime with an enormous army melted away, and we are euphoric and triumphant when in fact history will remind us that there was a strategy to melting away.

Haddad: The other thing that we need to be careful about is how they will treat minorities, especially the Kurds. The Kurds who have one of the biggest prisons where ISIS fighters are. If the international community doesn't support the Kurds, that might leave an open prison, an open jail of jihadi outside in Syria, maybe willing to come back. We don't know. We don't know what they want. And the Kurds have been the one fighting for democracy, for a new regime, standing close to the Western allies with the coalition. And if we don't protect them, that might be the worst scenario actually on the table.

IRAN AT YEAR'S END

Mccann: I mean, Prashant, we've talked quite a lot about some of the countries that have had an impact and a sort of role in what's happening in Syria. At the end of the year, where do you assess how Iran now stands?

Rao: Oh, Iran. I mean, with all these things, we have to always caveat what we don't know. Right? Iran is an extraordinarily opaque country in which I think more people have gotten wrong over the past twenty years than have gotten right. We should be a little humble as to what we see is happening in Iran because even the decision making apparatus, I think, is, like, largely a mystery to most. That being said, it is hard to make the argument to me that Iran is strengthened by what has happened in the past year. My sense is it is quite extraordinarily weakened by a sort of series of different things that have happened in the past three months from the election of Donald Trump to the sort of weakening of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Syria or the ousting of Bashar al-Assad. Now just because Iran has been weakened, I think, does not mean that that is net good because the fear among US officials in particular is that actually a weakened Iran is more likely to actively accelerate its pursuit of nuclear weapons because that is actually the only protection it has against the, quote unquote, threat from Israel or The United States or The UK and various other Western powers that it sort of rails against. A weaker Iran is not necessarily a good or a bad thing. Right? It just creates new options and new strategic choices. But I personally would find it a little hard to take seriously an argument that Iran has strengthened net net over the past twelve months.

Mccann: Margot, where do we stand at the year's end on how the Iranian people feel about Iran? Because there have been, you know, there've been small uprisings, there've been small protests, and yet there still just isn't really a sense of momentum there.

Haddad: As we said, it's very opaque, so it's very difficult to kind of get a sense of what's going on there, especially that, as foreign journalists, it's been very hard to get in the field as well. But for what we have as testimonies from the youth in Iran or from the Iranians in exile, especially in France, where I live, is that they're still fighting, as we've seen. We see this young woman at university getting her clothes off on campus in front of everybody and not being afraid. You have small gestures that still continue, but you've seen how many people have been arrested. So the sense that we got is that the youth is a bit tired as well of what's going on and not being supported by the international community. I mean, have you heard anything from the international community supporting Iranian people except during some releases from governments around the world? Now, what we have from testimonies is that they're a bit tired of what's going on and not finding out an issue. Some of them in exile, would say, in France, hope that the Israelis would do something. That's the last thing that I've heard from the youth in Iran that is in exile, is that they're hoping for Israel to do something and change something in the region as well.

WESTERN INTERVENTION

Mccann: The argument about the international community and this non-intervention, I mean, works across the board. Afghanistan, what's happening to women in Afghanistan, has largely gone unnoticed this year, or certainly unremarked on in sort of greater sense. Prashant, what's your take on how willing governments like The UK, like France, like America are to get involved in these kinds of conflicts in a very real sense, and how that might shift with the new President Trump?

Rao: I think the lesson of the last twenty years is governments don't want to get involved. I mean, I think that is abundantly clear, whether it was the Syrian red line or I think the lesson of Iraq and Afghanistan is that the cost in Western blood and treasure is largely been determined by sort of Western leaders to not have been worth it. And that is why, actually, I think that has been a driving force in the election of president-elect Trump or other sort of leaders across Western Europe, is that, you know, Western leaders have been judged, correctly or incorrectly, to have been too interventionist, and that has not actually delivered the results. Afghanistan is a great example of women's rights did make lots of progress in Afghanistan when, you know, The United States was actively involved there, and yet the cost, I mean, to American taxpayers was determined by American voters to be too high. So I do not hold out much hope for the kind of intervention that you're suggesting for Iran. That being said, you know, Trump has been widely reported to be considering a return to maximum pressure. There will be lots of actions against Iran in an attempt to completely destroy its oil production system, its oil sales. You know, Iran, by multiple accounts, seems to be exploiting a huge number of loopholes to sell its oil on international markets. I suspect that again a return to maximum pressure will probably suggest that that will become harder and harder. Economic pressure on Iran will increase as it did under Trump one. But in terms of any kind of military intervention, the Americans, so far at least under Biden, very seriously counseled the Israelis not to go any further than they did. It's just kind of interesting, like, Labour in 2013 voted against the sort of symbolic vote, and that may have changed the course of history in its own little way because then, you know, Obama and the Brits would not intervene, and so all of this sort of multi-tenuous brings back Syria?

Mccann: Well, I mean, there's been real fallout from it over the last couple of weeks, and I think a bit of looking back in frustration and looking back and thinking maybe we should have. I mean, at the time, I remember being in the House of Commons for it. It was hugely emotional. It caused massive rifts in the Labour Party domestically. But I think it's always been very difficult to judge whether or not it was a good decision more broadly. The feeling in Parliament at the time was that Parliament had not risen to the occasion, like the Brits had not risen to the occasion. And that argument has come back again in the last couple of weeks with this new Labour government, and questions about how interventionist Keir Starmer is willing to be. And actually, it's a good question more broadly in Europe, because there's so much volatility in governments in France and Germany. I mean, seems like Giorgia Meloni is really the only kind of standout solid leader in Europe at the moment. But then Macron has been pretty active on the world stage. Is he the exception?

Haddad: No, he's been pretty active at the same time because he tried to find a deal with Russia at the beginning of the war, right? My only issue is that when we speak about intervention, we only speak about America or the Brits later on. But intervention doesn't mean getting troops on the ground all the time. Intervention could be helping different groups to protest, buy money, weapons, whatever you can find. And that's the future of Ukraine as well. We don't know what Donald Trump is going to do. We don't have a Europe of the defense yet, but Europe is trying to find a way to be an alternative to what's going on in America because they know and if you look at the polls in Europe they're not willing to get Western troops on the ground but they're willing to help till the end for Ukraine. There is still a massive support in the idea that Ukraine should have its own territory, not let Russia invade the rest of Ukraine. That's in the polls, that's very clear. But they're not willing to send troops on the ground. They're willing to let instructors choose whether or not they want to go and help if they want to go because it's their choice, but they're not willing to send troops on the ground. So that's why intervention has different meaning in terms of diplomacy because there is a way of supporting groups, supporting another regime by financing or finding ways to help these people against the regime to find a solution. And maybe that's softer than intervention with troops on the ground, but that's an idea that should be on the table as well because the future of Ukraine, for example, is key here. Europe knows that if they don't find ways to produce more ammunition, they don't find ways to send long range missiles to Ukraine themselves, then that's going to be an issue to keep the territory in Russia, Kursk, and also to be at the table of the negotiation and have leverage against the Russians.

UKRAINE AND A NEGOTIATED SETTLEMENT

Mccann: I think it's worth reflecting here that we are at the end of a year where very, very quickly we've moved from talking about Ukraine fighting to the end, Europe giving everything it's got until you can get those territories back. Very swiftly, after we get a new president in America, Trump, the conversation has turned, and the accepted conversation is now there is going to be a deal. We are going to negotiate a settlement. Some of the territory is going to be lost. It is remarkable how quickly that shift has happened. Do you think it could have happened without Donald Trump?

Rao: Yeah, I think it would have taken a little more time, but the writing was on the wall in Washington already, right? The amount of debate that was over that one sort of aid package earlier in the year in which the house had to pass it after, you know, the famous security briefing that the speaker of the house got, etcetera. I mean, US politics was already tilting away from, as you rightly described, this kind of, like, fight to the end for Ukraine. And I would also say that, you know, Trump has accelerated a lot of this, but European politics was moving. Like, you saw signs already prior to the election of Trump as to whether there would be unending support for Ukraine. We saw this in German politics in which there was a question as to whether Berlin would fund as much as it had promised. I think there are parts of Eastern Europe that have voting patterns indicate that there is a little more softness in that support for Ukraine than had previously been the case. You know, now we are going into it looks like for the moment, this winter is going to be mercifully a fairly mild one in Europe, but gas stocks are lower than they were in the prior two years because the fall was a colder fall. And so would European populations be willing to have, again, the unending support for Ukraine if domestic heating prices were once again, you know, extremely high? It's an open question. I think you're right that basically support is still extremely solid. But if you were to compare it to, as you say, the start of the year, I think there's been noticeable movement, and it would be wrong to ascribe that solely to Trump. I think he has, like, consolidated a lot of those trends into one space.

THE WORST DECISIONS OF 2024

Mccann: It feels like a good moment to ask you both. Margot, I'll start with you. The bad decision of the year. What would your bad decision be?

Haddad: I would say President Macron dissolving the National Assembly in France, which caused a lot of political turmoil in France, but also in Europe, because Germany is going through the same path right now with the vote of confidence of Olaf Scholz with now new elections in February. So you have two leaders of Europe who have tried to be on the same path towards Ukraine. They are now dealing with national and domestic issues when the world is pretty much collapsing right now and that would need strong leaders on the international scene. And now these two leaders are more focused on what's going on domestically than what's going on in the international scene. So this is a situation that we have. We have a second new prime minister. We had one. Didn't work out. We have a new one, François Bayrou, who hasn't announced his government right now, but it's going to be tricky because I need to say very loud and clear that 11,000,000 people voted for the far right in the legislative election, so they need to be part of society in some way. Same for the left wing parties. They are very strong in the National Assembly. And right now, we have an issue kind of representing the vote of the society in government and in parliament. So in that case, you need to find out a solution, but no one knows what is the solution. So they found François Bayrou, who is a center left politician who is able to gather forces. But as of right now, we don't know how long it will last and when will be the next elections. So there's a lot of domestic issues going on for the French and for the Germans in the coming months when you have Ukraine, Syria, Iran and China going on.

Mccann: Someone whose odds are not good to stay in office because they definitely won't be is President Biden. That would be my bad decision of the last year, which would be his decision not to step down sooner and make way for someone else for the Democrats. I don't believe they still would have been able to win the election. I just don't think they would have been able to do it anyway. But I think it might have given them a bit more credibility and something more to build from. But thinking about the year ahead, in terms of America, I mean, it's going to be a huge year in American politics. We know that Donald Trump is going to dominate that. We've peppered him through this conversation and his influence on lots of these big decisions, I suppose. But what, Margot, are you watching out for in the coming year from America?

Haddad: Trying to see how Donald Trump will try to make sense of what's going on in Russia and Ukraine, and also what's going on with Iran as well. If he will keep his posture about Iran or not, if he will change his mind, and also trying to find out if it's a new Trump or if it's a different Trump. Has he learned from his first term or not? Has he learned from different leaders that he met as well? Something really struck me during Notre Dame, for example. He was sitting right next to former Prime Minister Michel Barnier, who's 73 years old and Donald Trump is older. And he looked at Barnier and he said, What are you gonna do next? He said, well, I'm 73. I'm gonna retire. I'm old now. And you see the different state of mind between the Americans and the Europeans in that exact sentence is that Trump will keep up with what he has to do until the end of his term. He has a Congress on his side this time until the midterm elections at least. And to see whether or not he will keep up with his promises to end the wars in twenty-four hours that he said. When you look at the Abraham Accords agreements you can say that he managed to do something on the international scene. Will he be able to do so with the current situations that are very complex and different from the Abraham Accords? That's the big question. If he does so, I will give him a good grade, I would say.

Mccann: Prashant, what would you say? Bad decision of the year. I can see you scribbling. You must have lots to choose from.

Rao: I mean, there are plenty of bad decisions. I think there are some interesting decisions that are not ensconced in geography that often don't get thought about enough. I think a couple of things that are multi-geographic for lack of a better term. One, I think, you know, the COP29 deal in which the climate summit, not enough funding went towards the energy transition is in retrospect going to be a very bad decision because time and again, we prioritize the short term and the cliche of the urgent crowds out the important. And I think this is a great example of this where actually over time, more and more people will be affected by disruptions to the climate. It will lead to huge consequences of migration, economic issues. You already see this with the market for insurance rates are increasing, because now you can't insure against these things, against climate related disasters. It's like all of these would be so enormous. And so the lack of kind of any kind of consensus to build up financing for a significant energy transition, I think, is ultimately going to be a bad decision. The second, which is also, I think, a little bit sort of non-purely geographic is the kind of move towards restriction of trade flows is actually going to be extremely costly for a lot of us. And the problem with these costs is, you know, they'll be distributed, so none of us will be like, oh, yeah, my, like, phone is, like, x percent more expensive because of the chip ban. All these things that, like, will slow us down. Like, my solar panels in my community will be more expensive because suddenly I have to pay a tariff on them. My EV will be more expensive or whatever. There's no, like, sticker shock for tariffs because the costs are distributed.

Mccann: I like that turn of phrase, sticker shock.

Rao: Yeah. And so as a result, that I think will be a cost.

CHINA AND THE YEAR AHEAD

Mccann: And when we talk about trade, we often end up talking about China. What do you think in the coming year countries' attitude to China is going to be? Because we've referenced we've got a new government in The UK, Keir Starmer, Labour Prime Minister, seems open to better relations with China. He's sent more ministers out to China, they've had more meetings with Chinese officials, but it isn't without problems. In the last couple of weeks, there's been a story dominating in The UK press about an alleged Chinese spy, and links to the royal family, links to very senior politicians. And this whole question again about how close should we be, how much should we trust China, has sprung back onto the kind of main stage here. How do other countries feel about China, and especially with Donald Trump coming to government in America? What's your perception of where that relationship will go?

Haddad: Donald Trump has invited Xi Jinping at the inauguration, so that's the first sign on the table to show that America is willing to have discussions with China. I mean, the posture of different countries will be China is not the worst country to speak to in the coming months regarding what's going on on the planet. I mean, Macron has been in China. Donald Trump has invited Xi Jinping, and there are going to be talks around Ukraine with China. China has a posture that is trying to be in the middle of different negotiations and different wars around the world, which could be the Middle East, Ukraine, and Russia, but also the deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran. And they're trying to share their posture, their position towards different countries around the world to kind of show the Americans, but also Europe, that they're able to be part of the diplomacy and the discussions around the world. Some countries are not listening to the West anymore, and we need to be clear about that. They don't have the same values. They don't have the same way of governing. And the countries that they're listening to now are not The US, are not The UK, not France, not Germany, but more other countries such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Gulf countries, or China now.

Rao: China's the second biggest economy in the world. We should always be a little careful about trying to think that it's one way or the other way with China. Right? In fact, it is so big, it is so complicated, it is so powerful that I think countries are having to grapple with the notion that they will have to do many things with China at once. I think grappling with this is going to be one of the key kind of considerations for Starmer's government, for the Trump administration. Trump also has to deal with the notion that, you know, from 2016 to 2020, China was a different economy to the one it is now. Right?

Mccann: In some ways, The United States has more power over China because China's economy is slowing so much. I mean, in that context, Margot, who are the new kind of power brokers? I mean, we've talked a little bit about Trump, but obviously we don't really know how he's going to be in his second time around. But who do you see now as the major kind of power brokers on the world stage?

Haddad: Well, in terms of diplomacy, I would say China, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Gulf countries are the ones who are able to speak to two sides of the world that are not speaking to each other anymore. And being able to speak to the BRICS, but at the same time speaking to Europe and America and having a global vision and not being able to say, well, we're not gonna speak to you because we don't have the same values as we do. And that's a very important point right now because a lot of countries, and when I think about France, I think about West Africa and what happened in West Africa. A lot of Western African countries felt that they were being judged by France and that's why they turned to China and to Russia. That made the massive situation that we have right now with Chad, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali, with French forces forced to leave the country and not having any diplomatic discussion with these countries anymore that were so important for France at the same time. But in terms of having a discussion, a lot of European countries don't have good enough posture to speak to these countries anymore and that make these key actors that I mentioned, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Gulf countries, China, able to take a seat at the negotiation table that is now empty because we don't even know if France or any European country will be at the negotiation table for Ukraine and Russia, for example. We have no idea at this point.

ISRAEL AND NETANYAHU

Mccann: It says quite a lot about the state of international affairs that it's taken us this long to really get into a discussion about Israel, given where many people might have expected that that would be the biggest moment of the year. It potentially hasn't been. What next for Benjamin Netanyahu, in your view?

Rao: I mean, Netanyahu has successfully warded off a lot of the various political controversies that have dogged him for the last sort of two or three years. If you were to say, will Netanyahu still be Prime Minister of Israel a year from now? I would suspect probably yes, just because the Israeli opposition has not shown an ability to coalesce against him and that the voting patterns of Israeli voters seem to suggest that either Netanyahu's coalition is moving further to the right and they're able to, you know, increasingly gather those votes. And also, you know, in the immediate aftermath of the October 7 attack, Netanyahu faced such a torrent of criticism over, you know, the intelligence failures and then the failure to get hostages back. Now since then, the killing of Hassan Nasrallah, Yahya Sinwar, the defenestration of Iran, and the ouster of Assad, which he was not directly involved in but sort of supports this thesis, that he is the one who keeps Israel from the abyss. And so I suspect his odds are better than they were a year ago.

Mccann: I suppose my, it's not a good decision, but it's a decision that had a good impact was, and this is controversial, the guy who decided to shoot Trump in the ear. Because I think that was a turning point. I don't know whether you guys would agree, but I think if you think up until that point in the American election, Trump was struggling, I think, to get a foothold. He couldn't really find a narrative that was working for him. And that moment for me, as a journalist, just as a person actually, watching Trump stand up and fight, fight, fight. I just don't think that's going to be matched, you know, for many years, for a big political moment that had a huge impact, changed potentially, helped him in that election, maybe didn't change the course. What's your feeling about this new version of Trump? You know, we've seen him come back from that, start talking about religion, start talking about a purpose, but there are still some big questions, I think, about how he's going to be in the White House. What are your expectations for next year?

Rao: We have evidence from an actual presidential term, which I think indicates that much like his rhetoric, he will continue to be hard on trade and hard on immigration. That will have, you know, most economists suggest that the trade point in particular will be highly inflationary. But very easy for me to say this as a beneficiary of immigration and trade, but I think they're good. And I think The United States has benefited from them. Immigration in particular and cracking down on them will have huge costs that have not fully been baked in. That being said, you know, the Abraham Accords was a really good one. We're actually like, you know, that was unexpected and has stood the test of time. Right? Like, the fact that the Abraham Accords are still going despite the wars in Lebanon and Gaza and what's happened in Syria is fairly remarkable, that they have shown some durability and actually trade between Israel and The UAE, for example, is increasing year on year, etcetera. And then on China. Right? I think Trump did more to move the Washington consensus on China than any prior politician, and he did so aggressively and successfully. And so I suspect that those kind of trends will largely repeat themselves because he has taken such a hard move on China and the Washington consensus moved so far towards the hawkish end on China that I find it hard to believe that will change much.

TRENDS TO WATCH IN 2025

Mccann: I suppose what trends do you think, Prashant, are going to really define 2025? What should people look out for?

Rao: I think the one that actually brings a lot of these things together is actually Trump's central belief, which is that a trade war is good for The United States. It'll be interesting to see how much of his trade policies can get through because in theory, it is part of the prerogative of Congress. So how much of his trade policy can get through? What impact will that have on Canada and Mexico? Mexico is now The US's biggest trading partner. Canada's number three. China's number two. Taking that on, like, how does this trade war affect China? The various impacts of a slowdown in China could be just so enormous, both domestically and abroad. Right? You know, there is already reporting that suggests that Chinese authorities are fearful of social unrest because the gamble in China has always been economic growth in exchange for social stability. What if that falls apart? If China slows down, you know, it is the biggest trading partner for so many different countries that that then means that a lot of those countries have huge economic risk from a Chinese economic slowdown. So a trade war, I think, as Trump seems to want to institute at the scale he does, that to me as a kind of decision would just be enormous in its scale and scope.

Haddad: I would say two things. First one is a new hope for the Middle East. I think the Middle East will reshape in a different form with what happened with Hezbollah, with what happened with Iran as well, with what happened with Hamas in Gaza, the hope of a Palestinian state as well. The negotiation will open in probably the coming month in 2025. So a lot of new discussions that were put aside for years that will come back on the table. Bad news is the emergence of jihadi groups in West Africa. I think with the fall of so many regimes in Africa, in Niger, in Mali, in Chad, in Senegal, we will see with the porosity of the frontiers in between these countries. And because the last standing very wise president of West Africa, Alassane Ouattara of Ivory Coast, will be coming to the end of his terms very soon, that will reshape Western Africa with new leaders that don't wanna talk to Western leaders as well, don't have the same values, and think that a coup is better than democracy, and that will leave room for jihadi groups to be bigger and bigger in Western Africa.

Mccann: What a note to end on. Margot, Prashant, thank you both for your time.

Rao: Thank you very much.

Haddad: Thank you very much.

Mccann: Well, that's it for our final episode of 2024. Thanks for joining us. I'm Kate McCann for One Decision. And if you like this conversation, there's plenty more like it on onedecision.com. Have happy holidays and a great New Year.