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The writer is the regional security director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies and co-editor of the newly released ‘Turbulence in the Eastern Mediterranean: Geopolitical, Security and Energy Dynamics’

If there is a time to use superlatives about the affairs of the Middle East, it is the year 2024. The cascade of events that began in October 2023 is no reason to be dizzy. If the important mix of tragedies, surprises and strategic episodes takes time to resolve, what has already happened will undoubtedly have lasting effects.

The diverse and fragmented Levantine societies underwent many historical changes. In doing so, they are unlikely to find much outside help because of local reluctance and global fatigue. The reorganization of the region was accompanied by great violence and renewed competition.

Palestinians have experienced unprecedented suffering in Gaza at the hands of the Israeli military. The failed bloody bet of Hamas, and the inability of its partners to deliver, is a reminder, when needed, that the only path for Palestinian statehood is its internationalization and a negotiated outcome. The coalition for a two-state solution organized by Saudi Arabia, other Arab states and European countries emerged as the most likely vehicle for this. The Palestinians must be convinced that this is more than a symbolic diplomatic dance but they must also show ownership of the process, something that a long-awaited reform of the Palestinian Authority can do. However, such aspirations remain exposed to Israeli hostility and the potential wrath of Donald Trump.

Similarly, Israeli society went from severe trauma to military victory in just one year. It reinforces the belief that Israel can only rely on its military might and that expansion into Gaza, the occupied West Bank and now southern Syria is not only justified but necessary. The unconditional support that Israel gets from the US and some European states allows it to reject the need for a fair peace that will provide security for all.

But this mindset of security alone has dire consequences. It is expensive, it increases confidence in the US, and it alienates current and would-be neighborhood partners, who fear that Israel will expand the conflict by hitting Iran’s leadership and nuclear facilities. The reputational losses of the war in Gaza are enormous and legal liabilities. The authority of Benjamin Netanyahu and his radical allies seems as assured as the internal fractures in the nature of the state of Israel.

For the Lebanese, an opposite dynamic is at play. A hubristic Hizbollah must consider the collapse of military strategy, ideological narrative and overall credibility. Reviving its resistance ethos is a tall order given the need to lick its deep wounds, the sudden loss of Syria and the dire straits of its constituency. Many Lebanese who sensed an opportunity faced two opposing forces: they knew they would not get more chances to change their state but they also knew the danger of provocation. of a wounded Hizbollah, which could spark domestic strife.

More importantly, Syrians have their first taste of freedom after decades of oppression. The corruption of the Assad regime allowed for its rapid collapse, without the feared scenes of mass sectarian violence. However, the new Islamist administration in Damascus has shown restraint and some wisdom. Securing peace, however, requires many feats of magnanimity and dedication to inclusive governance despite internal and external detractors.

At the very least, Syrians can take pleasure in the fact that they are exposing the flaws in realpolitik. It is the ultimate irony that, a decade ago, most Arabs and western states wanted the Assad regime gone but Syrians were divided. By early December, many Arab and western states wanted Assad to stay but Syrians were largely united in imposing internal change. They need foreign goodwill. To achieve Arab-Kurdish reconciliation, Turkish moderation and US diplomacy are essential. To reassure the Alawite community, Russian mediation will help. Gulf states can help neutralize Iran’s influence.

Iran is the undeniable loser in all this. It has partnered with militias to increase its influence in fractured states and divided societies. It expects these groups to advance their interests, instead dragging them into the wars they started. Turkey exploits Tehran in Syria, the central geopolitical arena of the region.

Many of the capitals of the west will find comfort that until now, these changes in history have been in the strange. No major migration crisis, no protracted state-on-state war, no massive out-of-area terrorist attack, no ongoing impact on oil prices, no consequential global disruption trade. It is complacency that paves the way for unwanted surprises.

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Investors have poured record amounts into global bond funds this year as they bet on a shift toward easier monetary policy by major central banks.

Bond funds have attracted more than $600bn inflows so far this year, according to data provider EPFR, topping a previous high of nearly $500bn in 2021, as investors note that the Slowing inflation could be a turning point for global fixed income.

This “is the year that investors are betting big on a big shift in monetary policy” that has historically supported bond returns, said Matthias Scheiber, a senior portfolio manager at asset manager Allspring.

A combination of slow growth and slowing inflation is encouraging investors to plow into “high” yield bonds, he added.

The record inflows came despite a patchy year for bonds, which rallied in the summer before giving up their year-end gains on rising concerns that the pace of global decline rate may be slower than previously expected.

The Bloomberg global aggregate bond index – a broad benchmark of sovereign and corporate debt – surged in the third quarter of the year but fell in the past three months, leaving it at 1.7 percent for the year.

The Federal Reserve this week lowered rates by a quarter of a percentage point, its third cut in a row. But signs that inflation is proving tougher than expected mean the central bank has signaled a slower pace of easing next year, sending US government bond prices lower and the dollar at a two-year high.

Despite record inflows into bond funds over the course of the year, investors withdrew $6bn in the week to December 18, the biggest weekly outflow in almost two years, according to EPFR data.

The 10-year US Treasury yield – a benchmark for global fixed income markets – is currently back at 4.5 percent, having started the year below 4 percent. Yields rise while prices fall.

Investors flocking to bond funds are driven by a “widespread fear about a (US) recession coupled with disinflation,” said Shaniel Ramjee, co-head of multi-asset at Pictet Asset Management. .

“While disinflation has occurred, recession has not,” he said, adding that for many investors, high initial yields on government bonds may not be enough to offset price losses experienced. of the year.

Corporate credit markets have strengthened, with credit spreads over corporate bonds reaching their lowest in decades in the US and Europe. That prompted a surge in bond issuance as companies sought to take advantage of the easy cash situation.

Risk-averse investors have also been attracted to fixed-income products as equities, particularly in the US, have become more expensive, according to James Athey, a bond portfolio manager at Marlborough.

“US equities have been soaking up flows like there’s no tomorrow, but as interest rates have normalized investors are starting to shift back to traditionally safer bets,” he said.

“Inflation has fallen everywhere, growth has softened everywhere . . . and that’s a much friendlier environment to be a bond investor,” Athey added.

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Sweden has sharply criticized China for refusing to allow the Nordic country’s top investigator aboard a Chinese ship suspected of cutting two cables in the Baltic Sea.

The Yi Peng 3 sailed from its berth in international waters between Denmark and Sweden on Saturday, and appears to be headed for Egypt after Chinese investigators boarded the vessel on Thursday.

The Chinese team allowed representatives from Sweden, Germany, Finland and Denmark on board as observers, but denied access for Henrik Söderman, the Swedish public prosecutor, according to authorities in Stockholm.

“This is something the government takes seriously. It is unusual that the ship left without the prosecutor being given the opportunity to inspect the ship and question the crew within the framework of a Swedish criminal investigation,” said the foreigner. minister Maria Malmer Stenergard in comments given to the Financial Times.

The Swedish government has forced the Chinese authorities for the bulk carrier to move from international waters to Swedish territory to allow a full investigation into the cutting of the Swedish-Lithuanian and Finnish-German data cables. last month.

People close to the investigation said Thursday’s boarding showed there was little doubt it was involved in the incident.

Yi Peng 3 belongs to Ningbo Yipeng Shipping, a company that owns only one other ship and is based near the eastern Chinese port city of Ningbo. A representative of Ningbo Yipeng told the FT in November that “the government has asked the company to cooperate with the investigation”, but did not respond to further questions.

There is division among countries over the motivation behind cutting the cables. Some people close to the investigation said they believe it was poor seamanship that may have caused the Yi Peng 3’s anchor to drag on the seabed in the Baltic Sea.

However, other governments have said privately that they suspect Russia was behind the damage and may have paid off the ship’s crew.

The severing of the two cables is the second time in 13 months that a Chinese ship has damaged infrastructure in the Baltic Sea.

The New Polar Bear, a Chinese container ship, damaged a gas pipeline in October 2023 by dragging its anchor under the Baltic Sea for a long distance during a storm. Officials reacted slowly to the incident, allowing the ship to leave the region without stopping, something they wanted to prevent in the case of the Yi Peng 3.

Nordic and Baltic officials are skeptical about the possibility of the same thing happening twice in quick succession. “The Chinese must be terrible captains if this continues to happen without fault,” said a Baltic minister.

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Your guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the world

Who is running the US now? Jill Biden? Kamala Harris? President-in-charge Joe Biden? Or is it actually president-elect Donald Trump? Many signs point to the latter, especially the undeniable reality that the center of American political power has shifted about 1,000 miles to the south: from the grand neoclassical designs of the White House and the Capitol to the gilded- age-meets-Louis. -XIV shrine at Mar-a-Lago.

When Marjorie Merriweather Post — the breakfast cereal heiress who commissioned the Florida resort a century ago — left Mar-a-Lago to the federal government upon her death in 1973, the then administration decided that it is not worth the trouble or expense. The land was given back to the Post Foundation, which sold it to Trump in 1985. He made it a private members’ club in 1994. But the Post’s idea that it should be a “Winter White House” eventually became a reality during the 45th president’s First term in office. And despite the fact that he is not yet 47, the description now seems more appropriate than ever.

In recent weeks, a constant stream of billionaires, politicians and other forms of power brokers and sycophants have passed through the Palm Beach palace. Elon Musk seems to decamp there semi-permanently. Techno-romantic venture capitalist Marc Andreessen says he – how altruistic – spends half his time at the club to “help”. Reform UK party leader Nigel Farage and treasurer Nick Candy were pictured there, grinning with Musk.

And why not them? I’ve been inside Mar-a-Lago a few times and, contrary to popular belief, it’s usually very tasty. Trump was praised by members and local residents for preserving the original features. One finds that it is not Ketchup dripping down the walls. The only signs that you are on his property – rather than any other glitzy private club – are the “TRUMP” WI-FI network; the TRUMP coat of arms (changed from INTEGRITAS when he took over) placed on everything from napkins to doormats; framed magazines cover the walls of the entrance hall; and, yes, that quite a flattering picture at the bar.

Trump understands innately what other politicians struggle to get their heads around, including the power of how things look. And a beautiful private member’s club in a clean, sunny, palm-filled patch of land is a tempting invitation – even to the very rich (and even if the menu and music selection hasn’t changed within for about two decades, as members told me).

He understood that having a nice backdrop for announcements and interviews made him appear president when he was not in power. In fact, you only have to look at the towering Trump Tower in Manhattan, with its 34-inch tall copper capital letter above the entrance, to see how powerfully the former real estate developer wielded the architecture. as propaganda.

This thought occurred to me while watching a screening of stardust, a pleasant one new documentary about the postmodernist architectural power-couple Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown (I moderated a discussion at the Barbican with the directors, one of whom is the son of Venturi and Scott Brown). “It’s all propaganda,” says Scott Brown in the film, wryly comparing ancient Greek temples to Las Vegas billboards. “Would you rather sell religion or soap? I’m going to buy soap.”

The question of what exactly the American right has been trying to sell in its crusade against modern architecture over the last few years is fascinating. Last year, former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson went on a Roger Scruton-esque lamenting about how “postmodern” architecture is “designed to degrade and . . . destroy your spirit.”

And in 2020 Trump himself, a man who made his fortune in tower blocks, signed an executive order mandated that all new federal buildings must be “beautiful”. The order (later rescinded by Biden) also criticized the “discordant mixture of classical and modernist designs” seen in many federal buildings — an odd complaint, perhaps, from someone with Versailles-style apartment in the penthouse of a skyscraper, but then Trump don’t worry too much about consistency.

It comes down to selling the idea that traditional conservative values ​​are the only thing that can save America, and nostalgia for a country that no longer exists. I have sympathy for the idea that buildings should be beautiful, although I do not believe that Trump’s promised “golden age of America” ​​will happen. With his painted Winter White House, however, he pretended the influence of the dealers and greedy oligarchs around him could do it. For them, in fact, it is.

jemima.kelly@ft.com

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(adjective and noun) the current holder of a position or position

For more than a century, one of the most fundamental concepts in political science is that of incumbent advantage. You can call it electoral gravity, a force that pulls everyone towards the person or party running the show. The reasons are many. Being in power provides the benefits of strong name recognition, established fundraising networks, media relations and a track record.

But it’s no longer clear that it’s holding, and many of the things that once provided a boost at the ballot box may now generate a backlash. In 2024, if more than half of the world’s population eligible to vote in an election, incumbents are ousted from the US to the UK and beyond.

If the long-term trend across the democratic world is one of robust economic growth and development more broadly defined, having a record in power is a good thing. Barring a nasty economic shock or a serious misstep, parties can run successful campaigns centered on the tangible improvements they delivered during their tenure.

With stagnation now the norm, it was turned on his head. “Vote for us if you want another four years of flat living standards and other things getting worse” is not an obvious vote winner.

Likewise, in an increasingly fragmented media landscape where new politicians can speak directly to voters, the prominence of mainstream news organizations is no longer a great motivator. If Elon Musk had his wayeven the incumbent’s fundraising advantage may be a thing of the past.

If the trend continues, it will be bad for reasonable centers, for measured rhetoric and for further policy achievements. It appears that we are in a new era where all candidates, incumbents and outsiders, have a strong incentive to run as populist upstarts, promising quick wins and radical reforms.

john.burn-murdoch@ft.com

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Qatar has threatened to stop vital gas shipments to the EU if member states strictly enforce a new law that will punish companies that fail to meet set criteria on carbon emissions, rights to people and labor.

Qatar’s energy minister Saad al-Kaabi told the Financial Times that if any EU state imposes sanctions for non-compliance with a measure aimed at the corporate due diligence directive that Doha will stop -export its liquid natural gas to the bloc.

The law requires EU countries to introduce powers to impose fines for non-compliance with an upper limit of at least 5 percent of annual worldwide income.

“If the case is that I lose 5 percent of my generated income by going to Europe, I will not go to Europe. . . I am not bluffing,” said Kaabi. “Five percent of the generated revenue of QatarEnergy means 5 percent of the generated revenue of the state of Qatar. This is the people’s money . . . so I will not lose that kind of money – and no one will accept that lose that kind of money.

The EU adopted corporate due diligence rules in May of this year. They are part of a wider set of reporting requirements aimed at aligning companies with the EU’s ambitious goal of reaching net zero emissions by 2050.

But the directive has prompted a widespread backlash from companies, both inside and outside the EU, which complain that the rules are too onerous and put them at a competitive disadvantage.

Cefic, the chemical industry body, said due diligence rules “create significant litigation risks” and should be fully explored “to identify and address areas for simplification and burden reduction in order to . . . limit exposure to liability.”

Non-EU companies will be liable for penalties under the directive if they earn more than €450 million in net turnover in the bloc.

Qatar is one of the world’s leading LNG exporters and has become an increasingly important supplier of gas to Europe following the turmoil in energy markets caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

As European states seek to wean themselves off Russian gas, QatarEnergy has signed long-term agreements to supply LNG to Germany, France, Italy, and the Netherlands.

Kaabi suggested that in its current form the legislation – which will be implemented from 2027 – would not work for companies such as state-owned QatarEnergy, of which he is also the chief executive.

He said that this requires the company to do due diligence on the labor practices of all suppliers in the group, with a global supply chain that includes “100,000” companies.

“Perhaps I need a thousand people of my size and the billions we have spent, or (should) drop millions in a service . . . to go and audit every supplier,” he added.

Kaabi said it would also be impossible for an energy producer like QatarEnergy to comply with the EU’s net zero target as set by the directive due to the large amount of hydrocarbons it produces.

The EU directive includes an obligation for large companies to adopt a transition plan for mitigating climate change in line with the 2050 objective of climate neutrality in the Paris Agreement, as well as intermediate target under the European Climate Law.

Kaabi said the legislation would affect all of Qatar’s exports to Europe, including fertilizers and petrochemicals, and could also affect investment decisions by the Qatar Investment Authority, the sovereign wealth fund.

He said that QatarEnergy will not violate its LNG contracts, but it will look into legal ways if it faces heavy penalties.

“I do not accept that we will be punished,” he said. “I will stop sending gas to Europe.”

However, Kaabi suggested that there might be room for compromise if the sanctions were targeted only at European-generated income rather than global total income.

“If they say the penalty is 5 percent of your revenue from that contract you sold in Europe, I say, ‘OK, I have to check that. Does that make sense?'” he said. “But if you want to come up with my total earnings, come on, it doesn’t make any sense.”

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen promised last month to propose an “omnibus” legislation that would reduce reporting requirements from several of the bloc’s green finance laws, including the directive on due hard work