Mon. Feb 17th, 2025

“2024 in the world”, an ebook about the year we lived on the brink of a great war, written by the director of Infobae America

In the introduction to his book, which has just been published, Laureano Pérez Izquierdo recalls some of the most relevant events of the last twelve months and wonders what the future holds. It can be read on a tablet, phone or computer.

[Click here to download it for free]

By Laureano Perez Izquierdo

2024 in the world is a free download ebook about the year that is ending. Its author, Laureano Perez Izquierdo, is the director of Infobae America, the most widely read international news site in the world in Spanish. It writes weekly analyses, overviews and interviews on the threats to Western democracies.

A new year has begun, but what has 2024 left us with? The book makes it clear that we live “on the brink of a great war of global, and also nuclear, magnitude.” It is enough to go through the list of countries that have been in the news recently: Ukraine, Russia, Israel, Iran, Lebanon, Gaza, Syria, North Korea, China and Taiwan.

The book is divided into chapters representing three sectors in dispute: the Middle East, Latin America and Asia. There you can read the geopolitics exposed in a stark manner but also some key names and stories worth exploring in depth. Below we reproduce the introduction entitled “A year of upheaval”.

A turbulent year

Laureano Pérez Izquierdo, during the presentation of an award for Innovation Journalism to Infobae in Florida, United States

Theorists, academics and history books will be able to ask themselves in several decades: was 2024 the most turbulent year since the beginning of the XNUMXst century? While the debate could go on indefinitely, at least there is no discussion of the intensity with which some events were precipitated and how the planet lived - after decades - on the brink of a great war of global and nuclear magnitude.

Ukraine, Russia, Israel, Iran, Lebanon, Gaza, Syria, North Korea, China and Taiwan are the first scenarios whose conflicts emerge immediately without the need to strain one's memory.

It is impossible not to overlook the shocking events that continue to occur in Ukrainian territory, whose government - in order to maintain some strength at a possible negotiating table - decided on an armed incursion in Kursk, in hostile Russia. Vladimir Putin then decided to resort to his alliance with Kim Jong-un, who willingly lent him North Korean soldiers to counteract this offensive.

In the Middle East, Israel's response to the Hamas terror attack of October 2023 extended to Iran and Hezbollah. The Houthis in Yemen and jihadist groups in Iraq also suffered losses. This response ended in the worst way - so far - for the theocratic regime: its strongest affiliates in Gaza and Lebanon suffered losses that were unthinkable a year ago.

The popes of Hamas y Hezbollah were eliminated and the military structures of these extremist organizations were almost completely dismembered. Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif e Ismail Haniya on the one hand; Hassan Nasrallah and all his subordinates, on the other. One of these deaths occurred under the very nose of the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, while his Revolutionary Guard guarded him in the Iranian capital.

Tehran tried to respond to one of the many humiliations by launching hundreds of rockets and missiles that were intercepted by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Shame - and fear of all-out war - was mounting across the globe.

Iran was soon left without its armed forces in Gaza and Lebanon and with the feeling that it could not respond technologically or militarily to Israel, not even through the use of its terrorist arms.

Israel, on the other hand, has proven to have penetrated - for years - the entrails of the Iranian government and defense structure. It has also been aware of each and every one of the Iranian forces' movements. Hezbollah -both in southern Lebanon and in Beirut-, a terrorist army that was seriously wounded last September in an operation involving the explosion of thousands of radio beacons that shocked the world. Jerusalem has never acknowledged the authorship of this intelligence operation.

America

It is also not difficult to remember that in our American continent two elections were decisive and equally surprising, although by different resolutions. On the one hand, the people of Venezuela elected at the polls Edmundo González Urrutia by a large majority, although the dictatorship led by Nicolás Maduro and the rest of its leaders decided to commit the most monumental fraud to steal the presidential election and finally expel the inconvenient opponent from the country under threat of arrest.

On the other hand, Donald Trump achieved a resounding victory over Kamala Harris winning in districts that have historically been elusive to the Republican PartyBut that election had a previous ingredient: the president Joe Biden He ran for a time as a rival to the former head of state until signs of a deterioration in his health became evident and forced him - both him and the Democratic Party– to change candidate and strategy.

Asia

China has maintained suffocating pressure on Taiwan. It has increased its harassment of the democratic island since the new president took office last May. Lai Ching-te, a leader who does not tremble when it comes to ensuring that his country is independent Chinese Communist Party which governs under the command of Xi Jinping. Historical truths that infuriate Beijing.

There, in the troubled South China Sea, Japan, South Korea and the Philippines remain on constant alert for any manoeuvres that China and North Korea might undertake. If a major conflict were to occur in that region, in addition to the human losses and geopolitical disaster, the world economy would suffer one of the biggest recessions in its history.

Meanwhile, Latin America is trying to adapt to these realities with governments that often focus more on their political surroundings than on what is happening in the world. An evil that has plagued the region for decades.

Will 2025 definitively clear up any of these conflicts or will it accentuate them? Next December will provide the answer.

Who is Laureano Perez Izquierdo?

♦ Laureano Pérez Izquierdo is 47 years old and is a journalist.

♦ He studied Social Communication at the Universidad Austral. He worked in radio, television, magazines and newspapers.

♦ He is currently the director of Infobae America, the most widely read international news site in Spanish in the world.

♦ He writes weekly analyses, overviews and interviews focused mainly on topics related to autocracies and their permanent threats to Western democracies.

♦ He is also a keen observer of changes and trends in the media and the future of communications. He actively participates in talks, presentations and moderation of debates on all these topics.

♦ He is married and has three children.

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