Pakistan’s Imran Khan stepped down as prime minister in April after losing in a stand-off with Parliament. Then Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, meanwhile, was forced to flee his country after protesters stormed his official residence. In both cases, the two nations’ crashing economies – double-digit inflation, mounting public debts, and food and fuel shortages, caused in part by the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, but also by government’s ineptitude – were the catalyst.

IRAN’S GREAT UNVEILING

In Iran, the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini following her arrest for alleged violations of the country’s Islamic dress code sparks the biggest protests in years. On the street and on social media women and girls defiantly remove their headscarves in an unprecedented challenge to the country’s clerical leadership. Iran seeks to quell the protests by sentencing some of the protesters to death. The Oslo-based monitor Iran Human Rights on December 19 says Iran’s security forces have killed at least 469 people in the protests while at least 14,000 people have been arrested, according to the UN.

US-CHINA TENSIONS

The great power competition between China and the United States is fully underway. The Joe Biden administration’s National Security Strategy, released in October 2022, made the point bluntly. The administration pointed to Beijing’s militarization of the South China Sea, its support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, its efforts to intimidate Taiwan, and its rampant theft of intellectual property as evidence that Beijing’s behavior had forced the United States to abandon its policy of welcoming China’s rise. With President Xi Jinping cementing his control in China after winning a historic third term in November, the tensions between the two great powers are likely to dominate world affairs in years to come.