european union
2016 is over, and it's thus time to review the most significant events that occurred in each region and prognosticate how they may influence the coming year. The research is divided into 11 separate sections which will cover the entire world, with individual attention being given specifically to the EU, Mideast, Central Asia, South Asia, ASEAN, Northeast Asia, China, Russia, Africa, Latin America, and the US.

Each part will begin with a brief summary that sets the stage for analyzing the three main trends in the examined region, the aim of which is to provide a comprehensive overview of the most crucial developments which have occurred and are predicted to progressively unfold over the next 12 months. Finally, the last part will build off of the aforementioned research in concisely conveying the three most important global trends which can be observed all across the world.

For self-explanatory reasons related to time and space constraints, the work will of course be unable to touch upon each and every single event of significance which took place across the past year. Therefore, the reader should kindly understand that the following review and forecast is a curated list assembled as a result of the author's intuitive judgement and in accordance with the interpretative geopolitical framework which he's expounded upon in his works for Katehon and other media.

European Union

Summary

The continent's internal divisions between Eurocautionaries and Totalitarians are firmly entrenched and will only be accentuated across the coming year, potentially leading to a geopolitical division of the EU between East & West and/or North & South. The bloc's unity will be put to the test as it confronts emerging crises all across its periphery, ranging from the unresolved War on Donbass to Balkan revisionism and North African interlinked terrorist-immigrant invasions.

Eurocautionary Revolt

The term "Eurocautionary" is the author's more palatable label for what the Mainstream Media has smeared as "Euroskeptics", and this ideological movement has seen tremendous success across the last couple of years. Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban was the first real politician from this camp to enter into power, though he was soon thereafter followed by Poland's "Gray Cardinal" Jaroslaw Kaczynski after his PiS party swept the country's parliament last year and Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico's re-election in early 2016. Brexit shocked the entire world when it was voted for over the summer, and then Italy's political establishment was rocked by the failure of former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi's centralization referendum. Although the Freedom Party was narrowly defeated during the second round redo of Austria's presidential elections, they still command a lot of influence in the country and evidently have mass popular appeal.

Looking forward to 2017, France will face its ultimate moment of reckoning when Marine Le Pen faces off against Francois Fillon, as the firebrand female politician might realistically become the country's next leader. Even if she doesn't, then her opponent's victory would still signify France's decisive right-wing reorientation, as it's extremely unlikely that the socialist challenger will win. Taken together, all of the domestic political events in the EU are indicative of a continental-wide Eurocautionary revolt, fuelled to a large extent by the manufactured Immigrant Crisis and the "Secular Wahhabis'" related Fifth Generational Warfare objective of Civilizational Aggression. The odd member out is Germany, which is the last remaining bastion of the New World Order's "neoliberal" governing and economic systems. The chief objective of the Eurocautionaries is to replace the government in EU-leader Germany with a much more pragmatic and civilizationally reasonable one which would facilitate the continent's internal, and perhaps even geopolitical, rearrangement.

Cross-Continental Divides

The rise of the Eurocautionaries portends a possibly imminent reorganization of the EU, though it's uncertain exactly what this could look like in practice if it's ever implemented. The author forecast a few of the most likely scenarios in his Duran piece about the "Post-Brexit EU: Between Regional Breakdown And Full-Blown Dictatorship", which also mapped out some of the geopolitical changes that this could result in. The main idea is that the bloc is increasingly facing the inevitable choice of either clamping down on all existing "freedoms" and becoming a full-blown dictatorship in order to sustain its "unitary" totalitarianism, or that it must devolve by giving power back to its member-states' national capitals and potentially opening up the Pandora's Box of regionalization. The US stands to strategically benefit in either case, so it's a moot point to discuss which of the two scenarios Washington would most prefer, but nevertheless, if the second one enters into effect (which is what Trump might favor due to his own ideological leanings), then it could lead to an interesting cross-continental divide between East & West and North & South.

To explain, what former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld once unforgettably referred to as "New Europe" is by and large much more Eurocautionary than its western "Old European" counterparts, so there's the very real prospect that it might be the former communist countries of Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and possibly even a few others which lead the way in pushing through the bloc's comprehensive reform. If for whatever reason France doesn't join in on this process, such as if its prospective right-wing president ends up being as much of an anti-establishment fraud as Greece's left-wing Syriza one proved itself to be, then the East-West divide between "New" and "Old" Europe would be greatly accentuated. Likewise, if France does in fact shift to the anti-establishment right and decisively moves forward with Eurocautionary reforms in the EU, this might put it at loggerheads with neoliberal Germany, with the two European leaders quickly dividing the continent up into ideological spheres of influence between themselves. In this scenario, France would team up with Eastern and Southern Europe, whereas Germany would remain dominant in the Central and Northern (Scandinavian) parts of the EU.

Peripheral Dangers

The EU's domestic difficulties are ominously occurring at a time of heightened peripheral danger in the East, Southeast, and Southern fringes of the bloc. To begin with the first one, this is Kiev's US-backed War on Donbass, which always has the potential to reignite into an all-out hot conflict. The consequences of this eventuality could be that the continuation war is played "for keeps", meaning that both sides fight to totally destroy the other once and for all. There's no telling if this would happen or if it would be a geographically limited conflict like the previous two rounds of violence, but in the case that it quickly spirals out of control, the EU would immediately regret recently giving Ukrainians visa-free access to the bloc because its eastern members could quickly become overwhelmed with refugees and far-right Nazi infiltrators if the tide of war turns against Kiev. This might lead to unilateral actions by the Eurocautionary governments of Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary to shut their borders with Ukraine just as the latter one did vis-à-vis Serbia as a result of the first Immigrant Crisis, thereby intensifying the East-West intra-organizational split with the neoliberal totalitarians in Brussels and Berlin.

The next forecasted crisis is actually a series thereof which could consequently erupt in a chain reaction all across the Balkans. The author thoroughly studied these scenarios in his Hybrid War research at Oriental Review, but they boil down to American-backed geopolitical revisionist projects targeting Republika Srpska, Serbia, and the Republic of Macedonia, otherwise categorized as the Central Balkans. NATO-member Croatia has been experiencing a revival of Nazi-era Ustasha ideology over the past couple of years, which dangerously threatens to upset the peace between itself and Serbia, to say nothing of the dysfunctional arrangement in the shared adjacent state of Bosnia. The latter country's "central" government in Sarajevo is working closely with the US and Croatia in order to begin the unconstitutional process of dismantling Republika Srpska's autonomy, and the influx of returning Daesh fighters into the country could prove to be the unpredictable trigger for sparking a renewed civil war in the country, albeit one which would once again result in NATO (US-Croatian) and Gulf interventionism. Relatedly, the Republic of Macedonia is threateningly menaced by the revival of the Nazi-era geopolitical zombie of "Greater Albania", which could also consume parts of Montenegro and Serbia. Interestingly, these two interlinked scenarios have been lobbied for by the influential Council on Foreign Relations.

Finally, the last possible peripheral crisis poised to upend the stability of the EU is the danger that North Africa might once again turn into an exporter of large-scale terrorism and illegal immigration. The region is already in a dire and tense position due to the disastrous aftermath of the NATO War on Libya, which has seen the once-prosperous country turn into a literal hellhole dominated by terrorist and human-trafficking militias. The centrally positioned North African state is already an exporter of human suffering to the EU, whether of the terrorist and/or illegal immigrant (popularly disguised in the Mainstream Media as mostly being "refugees") variety, but its role and that of its neighbors could increase exponentially in the event that Libya's violence spills across its border. For example, Egypt is occasionally victimized by Muslim Brotherhood terrorism, while Algeria - despite being an impressively secure state given its unstable neighborhood and legacy of a decade-long Salafist civil war in the 1990s - could explode if its "deep state" (permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies) doesn't follow the Central Asian model of orderly political transition after the eventual death of ailing President Bouteflika. A second Salafist civil war in the densely populated coastal region of northern Algeria could automatically lead to a large-scale and uncontrollable outflow of millions of terrorists-immigrants (not necessarily one in the same, though occasionally so) into Western Europe and thus deal a near-instantaneous death blow to the EU.

middle east map
Middle East

Summary

The Mideast is undergoing a fundamental geopolitical reorganization as Russia spearheads a Tripartite Concert of Great Powers between itself, Iran, and Turkey aimed at ending the War on Syria, though this game-changing partnership could be offset by conflicting objectives between the two Mideast powers in Iraq, which the US will try to exploit to all feasible ends. Furthermore, Turkey and Saudi Arabia - once the US' unipolar pillars of regional order - are each on the brink of prolonged domestic destabilization, albeit for polar opposite reasons, which could lead to previously unthinkable conflicts breaking out inside these erstwhile stable states.

The Tripartite

Long dismissed by alternative media "experts" as a "geopolitical fantasy" and at worst an ill-intentioned fabrication by "Turkish apologists", it's now indisputable that a trilateral arrangement between Russia, Iran, and Turkey is indeed in working effect following the historic Moscow Summit of 20 December. The author consistently forecast this in a series of articles which the reader is heavily encouraged to read through or skim if they're interested in the finer details: Additionally, the author also wrote a detailed book-length strategic analysis in early September about the geopolitical prospects of the Russian-Iranian-Turkish Tripartite in key regions of the world: This geopolitical partnership at the heartland of the Afro-Eurasian supercontinent and the entire Eastern Hemisphere has the possibility of completely upending the unipolar New World Order and paving the way for the creation of its emerging multipolar replacement, which is why the US will stop at nothing to turn its members against one another in a classic divide-and-rule gambit. President Putin alluded to this much when he said that the terrorist assassination of the Russian Ambassador to Turkey was a provocation aimed at derailing the historic 20 December Tripartite Summit in Moscow.

Syrian Centralization And Iraqi Fragmentation

The Moscow Declaration was the fruit of the Tripartite's meeting in late December and it paves the way for ending the War on Syria. Of particular geostrategic relevance is that it specifically says that all three Great Powers will work together in fighting terrorism and "respect the sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity of Syria". Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov even went as far as to herald the Tripartite as "the most effective way to settle the Syrian crisis", pointing to how the Moscow Declaration is promisingly able to achieve much more than any prior agreement which involved the US and its allies. The reader should pay attention to the words about Syria's territorial integrity, since this suggests that the Tripartite is opposed to the "federalization" (internal partition) plot of the country being advanced by the PYD-YPG Kurds and their American-'Israeli' backers. The author wrote a three-part series about this at the beginning of 2016 which can humbly be said in hindsight to have proven remarkably accurate at forecasting the behavior of these unipolar proxies in northern Syria, so the reader should reference it if they're interested in learning the guiding motivations behind the separatist Kurds. It was the threat that they pose to Syria, Turkey, and even Iran which served as the catalyst to the Tripartite's formation, so it's reasonable why all three Great Powers would be so firmly opposed to the unipolar-supported internal partition of the Arab Republic.

As for Iraq, that's an entirely different matter, and Turkey and Iran support different on-the-ground proxies fighting for separate political ends in the country's liberation campaign against Daesh. Although the Turkish-backed Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) and Iranian-supported Shiite militias are nominally united in the Battle for Mosul, they're in effect engaged in this conflict for different purposes, with the Kurds envisioning post-conflict independence from Iraq while the Shiites have no such political ambitions. To build off of that, the prospective independence of the KRG will immediately trigger a civil conflict inside of Iraq, as the Kurds currently control territory outside of their legally mandated statelet such as the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. There is a "solution", however, and it's the Identity Federalism of each of Iraq's three constituent peoples (Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds) into quasi-independent polities largely disengaged from both one another and the federal center of Baghdad, though this would of course have to entail a consensual agreement about a meticulous array of details such as those pertaining to revenue, the military (both a national one and militias for each statelet), and other matters in order to avoid a civil war. It's here where Turkey and Iran might come to an agreement as neither wants a failed state to persist along their shared border region, though the US and Saudi Arabia might see this to their cynical strategic advantage and press forward for extreme Sunni political demands in order to provoke a chain reaction of conflict.

Turkish Tumult And Saudi Destabilization

One of the most ironic results of the profound changes that have been taking place in the Mideast over the past year is that the former pillars of the US' unipolar-led regional order are now the two most conflict-prone states in the Mideast, just like the author first predicted in his October 2015 analysis about "'The New Middle East': Russian Style". Turkey's saga from American lapdog to multipolar partner is explained in the previously cited articles from the first section, though it generally comes down to Erdogan realizing that it's in his country's best strategic and existential interests to combat the US' efforts to forge a second geopolitical 'Israel' in the heart of the Mideast ("Kurdistan") and to embrace the New Silk Road future that Moscow and Tehran have already signed up for. In response, the US clumsily initiated the failed coup attempt against him, and despite having survived it, the domestic division within the country is now unprecedented as leftists, Kurds, and other sorts of opposition movements are now steadfastly against the government (though careful not to speak too loudly about it out of fear of being 'cleansed'/'purged' from public life). Additionally, Erdogan's cultivation of a broad Muslim Brotherhood-influenced base all across the country concurrent with his support for Daesh and other Salafist terrorist groups in Syria seems ready to combine into a nightmare scenario of blowback domestic terrorism which could seriously jeopardize the country's stability and pose a major obstacle to the Tripartite.

Concerning Saudi Arabia, the American-backed Wahhabi Kingdom was betrayed by its Washington patron during the course of the Energy War and is now bleeding billions of dollars every month since it's unable to properly fill its coffers. It also doesn't help that the failed War on Yemen is taking a heavy financial toll on Riyadh as well, and these two pressing economic-financial factors are setting Saudi Arabia up for a period of uncertainty in the coming years. The country's mostly spoiled middle-class inhabitants might have to experience unprecedented austerity which cuts into the standard of living that they had previously taken for granted, while the same budget cuts will disproportionately affect the already impoverished and discriminated Shiite minority of the oil-wealthy Eastern Province. Observers also shouldn't lose sight of the fact that there have been regular whispers about palace intrigue among the thousands-strong royal family in Riyadh, and that the reports speculating about some of the ruling family's dissatisfaction with the 31-year-old upstart Minister of Defense and Deputy Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman are probably credible. This might not necessarily signify that a palace coup is in the cards, but at the very least that the royal family is becoming more divided and that its ruling members are holding onto power in an even more dictatorial fashion than ever before. Altogether, none of these indicators are to Saudi Arabia's advantage, and the Kingdom convincingly seems to be approaching a period of domestic crisis, though of an uncertain length and intensity.