In this episode of the Alongside: Future Thinking mini-series we look at the state of the world at the start of 2024 and look ahead to some of the key geopolitical events of the next 12 months.

Mike Salthouse is joined by Dr Dominick Donald, a geopolitical advisor and analyst with 25 years' experience in business intelligence, diplomacy, media and academia.

As well as looking at the war in Ukraine, the conflict in Gaza and the Red Sea attacks, Dominick also shares his thoughts on what the impact might be of Donald Trump winning a second term as US president.

To look at this and other key geopolitical events in 2024, I'm joined by Dr Dominic Donald, Director at Autolysis Advisory. Dominic is a geopolitical advisor and analyst with 25 years experience in business intelligence, diplomacy, media, and academia. Dominic, welcome, delighted that you could join us. I thought we might start, um, by your take on what is going on in the world as we, at the start of 2024.

Obviously we've got a, from your point of view, we've got a very exciting year ahead of us, um, but I'd, I'd be Really interested to hear what, what you, you make of all the challenges we've got in geopolitics.

One of the things I always tell my clients is when they're consuming the news, bear in mind. How they consume news that's about something they know about, that's their sector, their company, their region, their football club. And when they consume that news, when it's about something they really know about, they are very sceptical and they're pretty analytical and they kind of know almost automatically, uh, whether something is tripe or not.

But strangely, most people don't then apply that same kind of prism of critical thinking to. news coverage of things that they don't know about, or might only know a tiny bit about. And there's a tendency to, to take it all at face value. And, uh, they shouldn't.

I think everybody was surprised that so much stuff came by. See out of the black sea. Um, so from a shipping point of view, we were all, um. Uh, well, I guess the ship owners will have, will have known, but certainly as a, as a marine insurer, I was, I was quite surprised to find out just how much, um, sunflower oil, uh, came from, uh, came from Ukraine.

What does the Black Sea region look like? What does, what, what, in, in, in, you know, within the context of the wider Ukraine Russia war?

That's the narrative that people who aren't in the shipping world have been following. But the people in the shipping world can see that this stuff is indeed coming out of the Black Sea. And that is, for me, the biggest, most strategically important. development of the past year, uh, in this war. And that is that Russia has lost control of the Northern Black Sea.

Now what that means for trade is, uh, essentially because Russia doesn't want to admit that it's lost control. It's pretending that everything is, is in essence going on as it was before. On one side, that means that Ukraine is able to, to do business, get things in. get things out. But another side of this is that in terms of the overall strategic military picture, if you like, Russia, having lost control of the North Black Sea, cannot hold on to Crimea. And the reason it can't hold on to Crimea is because to hold on to Crimea, they've got to be able to secure the Kerch Strait Bridge. And if they can't secure the Kerch Strait Bridge, Crimea can't be And Crimea is the strategic center of this war. The fighting is going on in other places, but in essence, the one thing that will end this war that can end this war straight out is if Ukraine takes back Crimea.

[00:05:26] Dominick Donald: Um, it's a good question. I think a lot of the energy that would be released by Ukrainian reconquest of, of Crimea, a lot of that Russian energy would be focused within Russia, it. Would be a body blow for the Putin regime. And, uh, while it might not necessarily, um, force him out, it would certainly create huge political tensions that the state might not be able to contain.

I think the chances of, of, of Russia. Mounting a serious effort to interrupt, uh, trade to be an international tricky customer a bit like the hooties, but on a, on a larger scale, I think the chances of that are quite small, partly because Russia is going to have these internal convulsions one way or another, but also, uh, because of Russian capabilities, the people who Russia would use to do this have Uh, to a certain extent been put in tanks, it's warships, uh, uh, you know, have lost half their crews to, to being tank crews.

But I think the real thing is that the, you know, the Russian state is going to be fighting for its own political survival.

And the longer that goes on, presumably the, the, the, the greater the chance of broader, broader escalation that particularly affects shipping.

They didn't expect the barbarism of the Hamas attack to have been so widespread. To have been so fundamental, uh, in its effect on the state of Israel. Iran is, is trying not to get caught up in this. And a lot of what has happened involving Iran over the last couple of months actually is a continuation of old business.

[00:08:16] Dominick Donald: There is always that danger, particularly while, uh, Netanyahu, um, is prime minister. Um, and particularly while Netanyahu's political survival as prime minister is dependent upon. Um, the support of some extreme right wing, um, parties and individuals. It is. Also clear that there has to be some kind of Palestinian political arrangement at the end of this, that takes over some of the responsibility of, of Gaza, and that's not achievable with Netanyahu in charge and the people who Israel needs to get it out of the political.

Whole, it's dug itself into with Gaza, that states like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, um, perhaps Egypt, those states are very clearly saying, we will only help you get out of this if there is some kind of Palestinian political arrangement, the carrot we will offer you is, is recognition of Israel, but in return, there's got to be something like the two state solution.

[00:09:39] Dominick Donald: It might well have Plateaued in terms of effect. I think a lot of the comment on the strikes against the Houthis are missing what seems to me to be the fundamental objective of those strikes. And I'm not surprised the comment is missing it because neither the US government nor the UK government will say this explicitly, but the point of the strikes is not to stop the Houthis. Firing rockets, firing missiles, sending off drones. It's to stop the Houthis being able to see what they're firing at. It won't necessarily stop them firing because in part they're firing stuff is the political objective they are seeking to achieve. They don't necessarily need to hit. Anything they can claim it after all, if they want to for their own internal political purposes, and that's the only reason they've done this.

This isn't about Israel. This isn't about the Palestinians. This is entirely about making the Houthis stronger within Yemen and making them a more important international negotiating partner. For those purposes, they can just keep firing stuff. So I would see, in the months ahead, a continuing naval presence that essentially manages to turn the Huthi threat into an irritation rather than a threat, and the odd ship still being hit from time to time.

And, uh, what might be the impacts for, um, another, another Biden term.

Where the United States political environment might play out in the shipping world is when the election has happened and the result is known.

[00:12:22] Dominick Donald: I think a lot of the, the elements that one saw in the first Trump administration would return, but I think they would return in a stronger and more concrete. He's likely to be much closer to, uh, dictators, um, generally try to, to make deals on a sort of bilateral level that will overturn, um, existing arrangements, whether that's in relation to NATO, which I would expect him to.

Try to get the United States to withdraw from whether that's China and Taiwan. Um, I strongly suspect he would like to, um, essentially give China carte blanche over Taiwan. I think in trade policy terms, there would obviously be a very big difference with the Biden administration. I think it would be a strongly protectionist administration.

Um, I think that the Trump, uh, administration would probably seek to essentially dismantle a lot of the architecture of, of, um, global trade. Having painted that rather sort of shocking, perhaps bleak picture, while he might want to achieve these revolutionary effects, much of it might actually just get lost in process and lawsuits and difficulties with Congress.

Um, and I'd be interested in, in what you think that might look like if it happens.

The reality is that China has its own timetable. Xi has his own timetable. We're not entirely sure what it is, but there are strong indications that he wants Taiwan returned to the control of the mainland by the beginning of 2030. If this is the case, what we don't know is whether he has said, I want to achieve this by peaceful means.

I want to achieve this by invasion, or I just want to achieve this, I don't care how. The, the Chinese strategy for regaining Taiwan was essentially a political one. Uh, it was to take the one country, two systems idea that had been put together, put in place for, for, for Hong Kong, but actually was devised.

For Taiwan to take that system and sell it to the Taiwanese so that they would say, okay, we want to go back to China because we'll be able to retain our effective independence and we'll be able to have our own elections and, and it'll be like being in Taiwan, but just will be part of great, marvelous, uh, communist China, but that's dead.

That political scheme is dead because of the way that she has essentially driven a tank through one country, two systems in Hong Kong. So nobody in Taiwan really believes in one country, two systems anymore. That means they're left with a military route. And the military route is going to be problematic for several years, in substantial part because the Chinese military, which is rebuilding, is only now really beginning to find out how difficult it is to mount an amphibious assault on somewhere that doesn't want you assaulting it.

The process of learning that, the process of working out the kinks in that. It requires a kind of lessons learned program that actually the Chinese military can't do because the Chinese military is political and the lessons learned is all about identifying without blaming, identifying what went wrong and correcting it.

So, the process of learning how to do this kind of operation is incredibly involved, very difficult, structurally very difficult for the Chinese military to absorb, and that therefore means that they will, uh, be taking longer uh, Transcribed To mount any putative attack than would otherwise be the case.

The danger time for me is the second half of, uh, the next U. S. administration. And particularly if, if Trump is back in office, I don't think anybody would really believe that Trump would be ready to see the United States go to war on Bah, for Taiwan.

[00:17:08] Dominick Donald: My pleasure.

In future episodes, we will discuss sanctions in the maritime industry, including the Russian oil price cap scheme. We speak to somebody who worked with Donald Trump when he was US president to find out what a second Trump term might mean for the shipping industry.

You’ll find the Alongside podcast and these Future Thinking episodes on the NorthStandard website at north-standard.com, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also click follow to ensure you don’t miss an episode! From me Mike Salthouse, it’s bye for now.