Global Election Year Ahead Lays Bare Strife Between East and West

Gabriel Levin- In the wake of its invasion of Ukraine nearly two years ago, Kyiv’s allies have made Russia the most sanctioned country on Earth, disrupting its economy and driving it closer to Beijing, now its top trade partner. Despite soaring inflation, analysts don’t expect Russian President Vladimir Putin to be unseated in 2024, with his most formidable political rivals jailed, exiled, missing or dead under dubious circumstances.

"Elections in Russia have long been tightly controlled," said Sergey Radchenko, a professor of Soviet history at Johns Hopkins University. If Putin wins another six years, the Kremlin will pursue "the same brutal agenda in Ukraine and increasingly autocratic policies at home," Radchenko said.

When it comes to how much success Putin will find in his war with Ukraine, the wildcard is who his American counterpart will be.

If reelected, "Biden will continue to claw his way to some form of victory in Ukraine through military means," Radchenko said. "If Trump comes to power, on the other hand, the real question will be whether he will effectively give up on Ukraine, allowing a very rapid settlement of this conflict on Russia’s terms."

As Trump’s allies in the U.S. House of Representatives grow impatient with Ukraine’s slow progress on the battlefield, "Putin is interested in playing the United States against its Western European allies," Radchenko said.

The U.S. Congress passed a bill in December 2023 requiring Senate approval before the U.S. can withdraw from NATO. That means Trump, if he wins a second term, wouldn't be able to unilaterally pull America out of the alliance, as he has threatened before. But Trump’s skepticism about NATO could still sow the sort of chaos and division in the West that Putin would find useful, Radchenko said.
The European Union is heading for elections in June. Anti-immigration populists with lax positions on Russia and China are set to push the European Parliament rightward. The Parliament, though, plays only a supervisory role in the EU.

The European Commission, whose president, Ursula von der Leyen, has yet to announce her reelection bid for 2024, outweighs the Parliament in power. Von der Leyen has been resolute in her support of Ukraine and has pressed Xi to address China’s staggering trade imbalance with Europe.

If reelected, von der Leyen would serve as an equalizing force in an increasingly populist EU, working across the aisle to balance the diverse and oftentimes conflicting interests of different member nations with her stated goal of containing Russia.

Ivana Karaskova, an EU commissioner for values and transparency, told VOA that European nations are cautious "to put China and Russia into the same basket of authoritarian regimes," fearing that alienating Xi could draw the EU into yet another economically ruinous trade war.

"We have already seen moves in Central and Eastern Europe to normalize relations with China," Karaskova said.

The EU under von der Leyen has been careful not to cut off China, though it has been critical of Beijing for helping Moscow evade Western sanctions. But what the elections in 2024 will decide is how much pushback von der Leyen’s pro-Ukraine agenda will face from an incoming coalition of right-wing European lawmakers as Kyiv inches closer to becoming a member nation.

Critics of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party say the country’s religious minorities are facing widespread persecution. As Modi’s Hindu nationalist agenda has gained traction, violence against Sikh and Muslim Indians has become increasingly commonplace.

Those criticisms are not limited to the confines of India. Modi’s government stands accused of assassinating a Sikh expatriate in Toronto last summer and a foiled plot to kill another Sikh activist living in New York City in November. Those scandals have shaken India’s diplomatic ties with the West.

Still, former U.S. Assistant Defense Secretary Joseph Nye predicts that neither India nor the U.S. will let their bond crumble. What unites the two nations, Nye said, are shared concerns about China’s rise to global power.

As the world’s largest liberal democracy, India has proved itself to be a regional counterweight to China and North Korea.

"I don’t think the Americans are going to do anything that would destabilize their relationship with India," Nye said, no matter if the U.S. will be led by Biden or Trump. Both presidents know that keeping close with India is vital to advancing the cause of democracy in Asia, even if Modi’s government has at times leaned into autocracy.

With a sky-high approval rating of 77%, according to Morning Consult, Modi sits in pole position to earn a third five-year term when voting opens in April. If he wins, expect Modi to build on the ties he has already forged with both Trump and Biden over his near-decade as prime minister.
South Africa’s ruling party is in its shakiest moment since 1994, when the then-newly elected president Nelson Mandela and his African National Congress Party (ANC) spelled the end of apartheid and ushered in a new era of majority rule. Now, for the first time in three decades, the ANC is at risk of losing its outright majority in the legislature. To stay in power, it likely will be forced to form a coalition with other parties.

South Africa may hold the title of the most industrialized nation in Africa, but it is by no means immune to the economic headwinds plaguing the post-pandemic world. With a one-third unemployment rate and power shortages sweeping the nation, younger South Africans in particular are turning away from the ANC as President Cyril Ramaphosa promises to root out graft in his party’s ranks.

In all likelihood, the ANC will stay in charge for the next five years, says Daniel Silke, a South African political analyst. But if the Democratic Alliance (DA), the largest opposition party, somehow scrapes together a long-shot victory, there would be "a substantial improvement in relations between South Africa and the West," Silke said. Unlike the ANC, which has long had close links with Russia and China, the white-led DA is built on a broad libertarian philosophy mirroring the U.S. and other major Western nations.

Silke said the ANC remaining in power could make way for an even stronger bond between China and South Africa.

"Given that we’ve had such a failure with our state-owned enterprises, there’s certainly more potential for China to assist the ANC government, be it in energy, logistics or transportation infrastructure," he said.

China has become a major investor in South Africa and other developing countries across the globe through Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative, a decade-old international program in which Beijing offers trade agreements, money-lending packages and infrastructure endowments to states in exchange, critics say, for undue influence.

Silke, speaking in buy-low-sell-high terms, noted that now would "certainly be a great opportunity for China to invest in a weakened South Africa."

Whether China will grow its already sizable role in South Africa, or the U.S. will gain more of an economic foothold there, depends on what ordinary South Africans think when they hit the polls next year.

Year of disinformation

In 2024, the world order hangs in the balance, and the still-incalculable threat of disinformation powered by artificial intelligence is sure to play a part in shaping it.

Joan Donovan, a leading expert on online disinformation and media manipulation, told VOA that voters all over the world will have to grapple with convincing AI-generated images and sounds. What makes that especially dangerous, she said, is an already volatile geopolitical landscape ravaged by wars and a pandemic.

"Causing confusion among populations when they are scared, hungry and broke can have disastrous consequences if those populations lose faith in democracy," Donovan said.

So, which antidemocratic meddlers should voters around the world look out for in 2024?

When it comes to election interference campaigns, Russia is "the leading culprit," the U.S. State Department warned in a leaked memo it shared with more than 100 embassies in October 2023. According to that report, Moscow is seeking "to sow instability" in democracies abroad by characterizing elections as "dysfunctional and resulting governments as illegitimate."

A study by Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center published in November 2023 predicts that in 2024, Russia, Iran and China are likely to interfere in pivotal elections across the globe, including in the U.S., using "memes, gifs, podcasts, video clips and influencers" on social media to propagate disinformation with unparalleled efficiency.

"For Russia, Iran and China, the next U.S. president will define the direction of conflict — whether wars might occur, or peace might prevail," the study’s authors wrote, adding that the 2024 race for U.S. president could be the first where "multiple authoritarian actors simultaneously attempt to interfere with and influence an election outcome."

Social media companies, for their part, must be held accountable, Donovan said.

In September, X, formerly known as Twitter, jettisoned its entire election integrity team, which was tasked with monitoring foreign influence campaigns on the platform. The European Commission recently announced days ago that it is investigating X for breaking EU law on spreading disinformation, alleging the platform isn’t doing enough to moderate its content.

"Meta has also rolled back significant improvements that they have made in the last decade on civic integrity and has laid off numerous research teams," Donovan said.

With internal oversight seeming to slowly vanish from some of the world’s most popular social media sites, reliable news is as critical as ever before in preserving global democracy, from Taiwan and the EU to the U.S. and beyond.

"Journalists are on the front line of debunking disinformation, often acting faster than the platforms themselves," Donovan said.
VOA