Not With a Whimper, But With Noisy Astonishment

The poet T.S. Eliot’s famous closing line of “The Hollow Men” suggested the world would end “not with a bang, but a whimper.” What we call “the world” will presumably continue in 2025, but the annus mirabilis of 2024 is not ending with a quiet whimper — as some folks thought it would. It is ending with noisy upending astonishment.

The first sign, perhaps, of the chaos that would accompany the back half of 2024 was an unprecedented incumbent U.S. president’s last-minute withdrawal from re-election. Then there were two serious assassination attempts on the life of the Republican nominee Donald Trump, followed a few months later by his surprisingly decisive victory returning him to the presidency after he had been defeated in 2020.

At the same time, over a period of several months, President Biden tried to stop Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from destroying both the terrorist Hamas army, which had brutally attacked his country the year before, and its allied terrorist Hezbollah army, whose rocket attacks from southern Lebanon had made northern Israel uninhabitable. Mr. Netanyahu ignored Mr. Biden, and the Israeli military beat both terrorist armies, demonstrating to the world’s democracies how to effectively deal with state terrorism.

This led to a dramatic weakening of the prime mover of Middle East terrorism, Iran, and the sudden collapse of its key ally, the Assad regime in Syria, which, along with Hamas and Hezbollah (as well as Iraq and the Houthis in Yemen), had acted as proxies of Iran. The coup in Syria was led by a rebel group formerly associated with Al Qaeda that now claims to be a more moderate reform force and an ally of Turkey (which is part of NATO). The defeat for Iran was also a defeat for Russia which had sent aid to Assad — and received military and naval bases in Syria.

Russia, however, was unable to offer Assad any assistance against the rebel group because it had become embroiled in the other major military hotspot, the war in Ukraine, where hostilities have settled into a bloody and destructive stalemate between Ukraine and an invading army led by Russian President Putin and his allies.

In this war, the Russian army suffered huge losses of men and equipment, as well as attacks and bombings in its own territory from Ukrainian forces whose weaponry had been supplied by the U.S. and several other NATO countries. Immediately after the election of Donald Trump, both sides of the conflict, previously unwilling to end the war with any diplomatic compromise, indicated a sudden willingness to negotiate. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, after an initial post-election conversation with Mr. Trump, reversed his previous stand and said he was willing to trade land with Russia to reach a peace settlement.

Although Joe Biden still occupies the Oval Office, the focus of foreign governments is now on President-elect Trump, who, until January 20, 2025, holds no official power status. This remarkable informal power shift also reflects the sharply different goals of the Biden administration and the Trump administration-to-be. Republicans had for the past four years criticized the Biden administration for being weak and ineffective, and the new international response to the just-concluded U.S. elections seems to reinforce that conservative criticism.

Perhaps the least controversial Trump cabinet choice was nominating Florida Senator Marco Rubio to be his Secretary of State. Mr. Rubio ran against Mr. Trump in 2016 and has continued his high-profile U.S. Senate career ever since. Any conflict between them arising from 2016 was ended as the 2024 cycle was underway, and Senator Rubio became one of the finalists for vice president on this year’s ticket. Senator J.D. Vance was selected, but Mr. Rubio will, assuming his Senate colleagues confirm him, now have the key high profile job of running the State Department.

The most visible Hispanic political figure in the government, Mr. Rubio’s major foreign policy reputation has been as a leading Senate critic of Chinese labor and human rights abuses, and his appointment signals that the new Trump administration will ramp up a hardline approach to Chinese economic and military aggression.

With an aggressive border security policy, prompt deportation of lawbreaking undocumented immigrants, and the end of many Biden executive orders that increased questionable federal regulations and taxes, this year is set to end with impending change. The voters said they don’t want whimpering inertia — they said out loud they want action.

Barry Casselman is a contributor for AMAC Newsline.