The Losers of 2024: The UK, Germany, Hamas, and More

Iran: Tehran is a clear loser despite the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) states gently trying to find a less stressful modus vivendi with the country. Israel’s response to Hamas’s 7 October 2023 massacre and hostage-taking, and the takeover of Syria by Sunni extremists, effectively split Iran’s so-called Shia Crescent across the Levant. Now, less able to press its beneficiaries into action against Israel, Iran will need a major rethink. A weak economy, ageing leaders, domestic stress, loss of face, greater foreign pressure, and bounded help from Russia and China make 2025 a year for Iran to try something different, if at all possible.
United States: After its Democrat leaning elites hid an incapable president in 2024, and subsequently losing the presidential election, the US now must establish workable ideas for its future. The nation lost its image as governor of a widely beneficial post-World War Two global order. Trust in American commitments is down, and to its friends, security, even amid NATO, seems wobbly. Its competitors show a surprising level of open and also disguised virulence. More countries, for instance, have joined the inchoate BRICS arrangement as a speculative parallel political and economic cluster, hedging against US influence. Meanwhile, Donald’s Trump’s election shocked America’s A-list celebrities who hold much self-importance. Now facing political isolation and possibly introspection, many celebrities mostly in liberal California, seem literally burnt-out.
Ukraine: After mobilising astonishing resistance, diplomacy, and supply chains against Russia’s invasion, Ukraine’s supporters are wearying while Moscow is not. Western supporters of Kyiv overstretched their arms production capability and remain nervous of Russia’s evident symphonic range of options in response to Western actions against Moscow. Only when militarily robust can the US, EU, and NATO members give Ukraine security guarantees adequate to settle the war. Meanwhile, in 2024, Ukraine’s grasp of principles of democracy was under strain due to the exigencies of war, and as corruption remains a problem.
Germany: The German nation went from powerhouse to doghouse across many indicators. Its domestic and international energy supply lost predictability. The trickle-down of policies adopted under Angela Merkel’s permissive migration policies, public disquiet against the undeliverable goal of green energy, industrial unemployment, and revenue instability, along with its low-grade military response to Russia in the Ukraine (a region unhappily well known to it), leave Germany facing a major political correction in 2025.
European Union: The EU now needs to deal with internal pressures and divisions which grew in 2024 against its rush to de-carbonise and de-nuclearise energy sources. These will force a wealthy cluster of EU member nations to look to their real needs, which are power for industry, offices, homes, and transport. The EU’s major car manufacturers are dropping electric vehicle (EV) production targets. Non-EU member Britain is slamming its vehicle makers with policy-based penalties for failing government-set EV sales targets. The market is not buying, and vehicle discounts and subsidies do not attract enough sales. Meanwhile Chinese pre-made imports set up the destruction of not only UK but wider EU industrial capacity and stable employment.
Egypt: Once the voice of the Arabs, Egypt’s diplomatic profile has been well eclipsed by the monied and hyperactive Gulf Co-operation Council states. In 2024, Cairo failed to influence the neighbouring Sudanese civil war or the endless Libyan conflict, now joined by spreading instability across the Sahel. Greasing Cairo’s slippage was its public hard cop act on Israel in Gaza—while privately seeking assurances there would be no disruptive Palestinian issues on its territory, or nearby. Despite its delayed opening of the wondrous Grand Egyptian Museum at the Pyramids, a world status symbol, Cairo lost strategic standing in 2024.
Boeing: Once a behemoth, Boeing is beset by safety faults, turmoil in senior management, delays in production of the new 777X and 737Max, and labour strikes along with reliability and reputational problems. It no longer looks promising for its part in this decade’s future air travel. Meanwhile, despite booming consumer demand, military and security issues gave a blow to global air travel in 2024. The major Europe-to-Asia routes were strangled by conflict-based airspace closures leaving only three flight routes between these hemispheres at northern and tropical latitudes.
In big business, Intel, a darling and major player in the global IT sector, lost 57 percent of its stock value in 2024. Moderna, the vaccine maker, lost market share due to quality and safety issues, and about 64 percent of its share price value. It even tumbled eight percent when vaccine sceptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr was announced as Secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services by President-Elect Donald Trump. In other areas, cotton prices fell about 14 percent in 2024. Despite greater supply, many growers had temperature-related lower production rates and increased pest problems. Consumer choice leaned toward artificial fabrics, adding to cotton’s price weakness. This matters due to cotton’s established and current global labour and land use patterns (even in Australia). In Germany, Olymp, a cotton clothing maker, uses the Global Organic Textile Standard plus a responsive market-oriented focus on low maintenance clothing as a key to keeping demand for cotton open.
Hamas and Fatah, two Palestinian organisations, violently oppositional, and focussed on two different areas of Palestine (Gaza and West Bank), were also major losers in 2024. During late 2024, local Gazan criticism emerged about Hamas’s judgement to ignite the war in 2023. Hamas leaders announced that the deaths were worth the publicity for the Palestine cause. Hamas may now ask why Gaza celebrates a ceasefire in January 2025. Perhaps physical relief. Perhaps private rejection of Hamas’s territorial control. But it looks like survivor syndrome. Differences between the two governing Palestinian bodies have not stopped. Neither group, at the end of 2024, were capable of marshalling public support for territorial and unified governance, a precondition to a two-state solution. This goal is off the table despite the policies of many countries, including Australia, which are in 2025 hollow cant.
Philip Eliason, former Australian diplomat and independent international security consultant was also Senior Adviser Middle East to Australian former Foreign Minister Hon. Julie Bishop.
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