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We were 72 hours into the new year as we typed these words in a Google document. And already Japan (Ryosuke’s home), went through a 7.2-magnitude earthquake and a burning passenger jet following an aviation accident. (Laura’s home Romania, in contrast, began 2024 well, by finally being accepted into the Schengen area.) While Ryosuke tried to be optimistic about how the rest of the year might go for his home, (after all, how much worse can it get for Japan?) we kept on wondering if the last three days were foreshadowing what the rest of 2024 may bring, not only for Japan but for us all.
We have good reason to predict that 2024 will be a tumultuous year. As we bring to you the second edition journal of our 2023 cycle, we cannot help but ponder how the issues our group of talented writers delved into in their essays will develop this year. Globally, as climate change continues to transform our world, the intense debate on how we should protest it has become one we are all familiar with. At home, we wonder if the Tories’ Autumn Budget will signal a much-needed return to fiscal stability after the spectacular ride the UK economy was put through the last few years. In Europe, the political aftermath of the 2015 Syrian refugee crisis is still in full swing and populist leaders still represent a strong and resilient undercurrent in sentiment. This is a troubling notion, considering that Germany, Europe’s economic engine, is expected to stutter this year. In the Caucasus, the “frozen war” over Nagorno-Karabakh flared up once again, emphasising the salience of the still-ongoing trauma resulting from the collapse of the Soviet Union. In Africa, the greater geopolitical impact of the sting of military coups and the subsequent decline of French influence is still to be understood. Turning to Asia, we arrive in Myanmar, where a brutal genocidal civil war fuelled with drug money is expected to rage on. Lastly, we are reminded that the worst legacies of the Cold War never went away, as nuclear tensions heightened between the great powers.
Whenever we have the chance to read the liberal, optimistic, utopianistic literature of the early 1990s, we are reminded of the impossibility of predicting the future. Always some form of classical GenZ banter, something along the lines of “the end of history? Nah this is when the fun begins” (but usually less polite) pops in our heads. But of course, no one could have predicted the state of affairs we are in. Everyone ranging from Mearsheimer to Fukuyama made many predictions, and the vast majority were far short in foreseeing what would happen. As we bring you these articles, we cannot help but try to imagine how different the world will be in the short time until our next publication. We hope to have your readership then as well.
Laura Ionescu and Ryosuke Kohatsu
January 2024
Issue 10 - Peacebuilding in a World at War