OPINION: Predictions and Wishes for 2024 – Some Personal Thoughts

Predictions for a new year are like resolutions, rarely measured by success or failure. Generally, no one remembers them. As a society, we have short-term recall at best, and most pundits purporting to expertise only dare to answer serious questions with much levity.

I have lived for more than 70 years and have seen and heard almost everything imaginable, including the bravado of political scientists, pundits and other experts. These experts ought to be measured by their accuracy, but they are not. Henry Kissinger was a prime example. He got it wrong more times than not. 

Okay, I am neither a political scientist nor a pundit. My only qualifications are the ability to read, study and reason. I also have the luxury of listening to experts and laughing. I rarely cry. Experts abound! As a New York Jets football fan, I am reminded of this year’s Super Bowl predictions. Oh, those experts!

I offer my skills at forecasting what will happen in 2024 on a take it or leave it basis. That is to say, my prognostications can be reduced to wishes. However, my conclusions as a keen observer of the US and Ukrainian scenes as to the gravity of events facing us deserve to be considered. Even if their only result is to provoke reflection.

So here goes.

The war in Ukraine is a conundrum without a quick solution. For all the success of Ukraine’s military, a war lasting almost two years requires much weaponry, quite ordinary and high-tech. Ukraine has a military strategy, but as with most matters, it depends on its allies and operational conditions.

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America’s President Joe Biden has been Ukraine’s best friend and largely responsible for Ukraine’s military failures. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin have urged greater resoluteness.

Biden is by nature a very cautious person and apparently not so sophisticated in foreign affairs, notwithstanding almost 40 years of experience in politics. The history of this two-year relationship has been Ukraine needing and requesting specific weapons and the president arguing, strangely enough, that Ukraine needs other weapons. Shortly,  as events proved that Ukraine was right, Biden gave in, but only after Ukraine had lost both lives and opportunities.

Surprisingly, Ukraine’s biggest successes were in the sea and in the air, where Ukraine should not have been competitive at all. This is proof of the skill and creativity of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU). When NATO declined to invite Ukraine to join it in Vilnius and instead promised a faster pace of implementation of membership without MAP, America also promised a military relationship with Ukraine outside of NATO, as with Israel.

It is true that the US is fighting with Israel in the air of Syria and Iraq and in the Red Sea. America has not fought together with Ukraine anywhere, except for Afghanistan and Iraq, at the request of America.

My prediction or wish is that Ukraine will receive weapons from America and Europe in the shortest possible time, meaning early in 2024. This will repel the Russians and enhance a counteroffensive, but not in the style of the recent failed one, which involved large casualties.

The strategy of Ukraine should be different, since Ukraine does not have as many soldiers as Russia and because Ukraine values the life of every person and its own soldiers. The strategy needs to follow the aerial and maritime models, but now with American F-16s and drones and missiles that will be able to fire and bomb deeper into the territory of Russia as well as the occupied territories making a difference.

This way of fighting would give Ukraine an opportunity to win. However, this does not mean that the war will end in 2024.

The US presidential elections in November 2024 are probably the most important elections for Ukraine during the country’s 30-plus years of independent statehood. 

Not only the American president but all 435 members of the lower House of Congress and almost half of the members of the Senate will be elected. We have reached the point in America where democratic values and not the party line is important.

The Republicans have become unrecognizable from the party they were. Ex-president Donald Trump and his likeminded party colleagues have become a boon for Russia and a major threat to Ukraine’s future. Trump could spell disaster for the democratic world as a whole.

My prediction, or rather wish, is that Joe Biden will be re-elected and Democrats will take both houses. The abortion issue (freedom to choose), rights and freedoms, and a fear of extremism and even dictatorship will decide this election.

Support for democracy abroad will be a part of this platform. Immigration will not decide the election because America needs immigration reform not suppression, and Republicans have not addressed this issue.

I’m not an absolute realist. I am a bit of a dreamer with a strong will and determination despite the odds. I hold the conviction of Polish or Jewish Ukrainians that all who live in the present political nation that is Ukraine are Ukrainians; and such a mix, imbued with genuine love for Ukraine and its people, is what today’s Ukraine is all about.

Isn’t that a lesson we learned from the America we for so long viewed as an example of tolerance, democracy and leadership? Ukrainians, American-Ukrainians all the more, want the US to remain the beacon of the free and brave.

So, in short, I look forward to 2024 with much hope, yet anxiety. Either way 2024 will be a critical year for American democracy and leadership and crucial one for Ukraine’s freedom. And those two issues are inherently connected.

The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.