The con­tin­u­ing in­ten­si­fi­ca­tion of Is­rael’s war on Gaza over the last three months, the Russ­ian in­va­sion and de­struc­tion of Ukraine as a means of oc­cu­py­ing the state, and the in­ten­tion of Venezuela to con­fis­cate the large Es­se­qui­bo re­gion of Guyana have been the ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al head­lines of 2023.

The even­tu­al out­comes of all three are go­ing to be even more ex­plo­sive in­to the com­ing year as they have not reached their peak po­ten­tial for mass death, de­struc­tion, dis­lo­ca­tion and trend-set­ting which can fo­ment and boil over in­to wars that can en­gage and spread across the globe; and that is not hy­per­bole.

In the in­stance of Rus­sia, the con­quest of Ukraine is mere­ly the first step along the way of Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin’s de­sign to re-es­tab­lish Rus­sia’s pride through the re-cre­ation of the So­vi­et Union to be a chal­lenger for world geo-po­lit­i­cal and mil­i­tary hege­mo­ny to ri­val the Unit­ed States.

Putin’s Strong­man am­bi­tion is dri­ven, much like Adolf Hitler’s and Ger­many’s de­ter­mi­na­tion to get even with Eu­ro-Amer­i­ca’s crush­ing of Ger­man pride re­sult­ing from the post-war Treaty of Ver­sailles which shared out por­tions of Ger­many and im­posed se­vere fi­nan­cial penal­ties on the van­quished state.

Aware of Putin’s in­tent, Fin­land and Swe­den have al­ready sought cov­er un­der the North At­lantic Treaty Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the West.

Pres­i­dent Putin has in­di­cat­ed that his as­sault on Ukraine is not go­ing to end un­til the Russ­ian flag is raised in Kiev. He must be con­scious that he can­not re­turn to Moscow emp­ty-hand­ed af­ter the cost in hu­man lives, fi­nan­cial re­sources ex­pend­ed and ex­po­sure to the world of the less-than-dom­i­nat­ing Russ­ian mil­i­tary fight­ing pow­er against a weak na­tion, even when it’s bol­stered by West­ern sup­port.

Can the Russ­ian econ­o­my, its avail­able fight­ing forces and mil­i­tary hard­ware last an­oth­er two years with­out re­sort­ing to nu­clear weapons to achieve Putin’s ob­jec­tive of mak­ing Ukraine Russ­ian ter­ri­to­ry? It’s the ques­tion the world will have to con­tem­plate in 2024, more so that Pres­i­dent Putin has with seem­ing­ly more than a bluff said the use of nu­clear weapons is not out­side of what’s pos­si­ble.

Typ­i­cal of his­tor­i­cal CIA so­lu­tions would be to ef­fect lead­er­ship change in Moscow through one means or the oth­er, as it has done on dozens of oc­ca­sions across the world. Rus­sia is ob­vi­ous­ly dif­fer­ent from Chile, Putin from Al­lende.

If set­tle­ment comes to the use of nu­clear weapon­ry, the world of 2024 will ex­plode with Ar­maged­don-type ef­fects in the con­text of the re­fusal of both the East and or the West to back down.

In Gaza, all the in­di­ca­tions are that Is­rael in­tends not mere­ly to an­ni­hi­late Hamas, its lead­ers and fight­ers, but to clear the land (Is­rael) of the Pales­tini­ans once and for all. The Is­raeli army has pushed the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple from the al­ready squashed con­fines of Gaza to the ex­treme south on the bor­ders of Egypt and Jor­dan.

Are the two mil­lion Gazans to be forced in­to ex­ile along­side the 750,000 Pales­tini­ans who were dri­ven out and with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of re­turn­ing to their home­land post the 1948 in­va­sion and 1967 war?

If the USA was not pre­vi­ous­ly ful­ly ex­posed for its un­remit­ting sup­port for what­ev­er Is­raeli lead­ers de­ter­mine, its grants of mil­i­tary equip­ment, its upped fi­nan­cial sup­port, its pro­tec­tion of Is­rael at the Unit­ed Na­tions Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil and its warn­ings of oth­er states favourable to Pales­tine not to get in­volved, now makes it known as an un­re­pen­tant sup­port­er of ter­ror­ism in its raw form.

Up to this point, the lead­ers of oth­er Arab coun­tries in the Mid­dle East have made but to­ken re­spons­es to the near-geno­ci­dal at­tacks on the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple. The 20,000-plus mur­dered vic­tims in­clude more than 70 per cent of civil­ians, women and chil­dren slaugh­tered by the big brave Is­raeli sol­diers.

What can be the boil­ing point of this war on the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple, will be when the two mil­lion res­i­dents of Gaza and the three mil­lion in the West Bank are shoved on­to the lands of oth­er Arab na­tions. And while US vice-pres­i­dent Ka­mala Har­ris has vowed that the US will not al­low that to hap­pen, Is­rael’s PM Ne­tanyahu has al­ready done a myr­i­ad of things which a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic and con­science-filled gov­ern­ment in Wash­ing­ton should not have al­lowed.

In our own back­yard, there are seem­ing­ly in­sol­u­ble con­tes­ta­tions be­tween Venezuela and Guyana over the Bo­li­var­i­an Re­pub­lic’s al­ready-dis­played in­tent to gob­ble up two-thirds of the rich­ly re­sourced por­tion of Guyana’s sov­er­eign ter­ri­to­ry, the Es­se­qui­bo.

This is yet an­oth­er build­ing con­test which will not be de­fin­i­tive­ly re­solved by diplo­ma­cy, in­ter­na­tion­al law and law courts. At the re­cent meet­ing in Ar­gyle, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines fo­cused on keep­ing the peace, Guyana’s Pres­i­dent Mo­hamed Ir­faan Ali made it clear there will be no com­pro­mise on Guyana’s sov­er­eign ter­ri­to­ry, no agree­ment to share the re­sources of Guyana’s Es­se­qui­bo; no deals with the South Amer­i­can mod­ern-day con­quis­ta­dors.

Raw pol­i­tics of con­quests, su­pe­ri­or mil­i­tary force and the sup­port of the ma­jor­i­ty of the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty will ul­ti­mate­ly de­ter­mine the res­o­lu­tion of the con­flict. Al­ready, both Amer­i­can and British bat­tle­ships have made re­con­nais­sance trips through the Caribbean Sea.

To be con­tin­ued: Cari­com’s chal­lenge. 

Tony Rakhal-Fras­er is a free­lance jour­nal­ist, for­mer re­porter and cur­rent af­fairs host at TTT, news Di­rec­tor of CN­MG and AVM Tele­vi­sion, cor­re­spon­dent to the BBC Caribbean Ser­vice, the As­so­ci­at­ed Press and cur­rent colum­nist for the Sun­day Guardian.