Heavily passed on the world: Globally, the year 2022 started well in the sense that the global epidemic of Corona, which started in 2020 and faded significantly in 2021, decreased further in 2022. Even this year, vaccinations to prevent it continued to be administered on a global scale. But one thing that did not subside was the global inflation that gripped the world.
One of the main reasons for this was Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which proved to be the largest military conflict in Europe since World War II, resulting in the displacement of more than one and a half million people, half of whom were displaced within their own country. and others were forced to seek asylum internationally.
In 2022, many countries continued to condemn each other internationally, for example, the United States and China continued to blame each other for various crises, and in Europe, Russia continued to target the countries of Western Europe. The most dangerous thing was that after a long time, threats of using nuclear weapons started being made on the surface of Europe.
By the way, such threats are not new in South Asia and the Far East, but in Europe, the dangers of nuclear war were felt for the first time after the end of the Cold War. Along with this, economic restrictions continued to be used. Let’s take a look at some of the major events on the global scene this year.
At the beginning of 2022, everything was going well, then an important and positive development took place that the world’s largest trade bloc came into existence, which was named RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership). The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership – Free Trade Agreement was signed between the countries of Asia and the Pacific including Australia, Brunei, Colombia, Canada, China, Indonesia, Ghana, South Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam were included.
This block consisting of 15 member countries contains thirty percent of the world’s population, that is, it includes approximately two billion people. And they also produce about thirty percent of the world’s total production, which is about three trillion dollars. Undoubtedly, this is the largest trade bloc in the history of the world, although the agreement was signed in November 2021, but its formal implementation came into effect from January 2022.
It is the first free trade agreement between Asia’s largest economies. Negotiations for the treaty continued for some 10 years, with India initially involved but later withdrawing, even though it was told it could join whenever it wanted. After July 2023, other countries in the region will also be able to join the agreement if they wish. But what will happen to Pakistan is not yet known.
Russia invades Ukraine
From the beginning of 2022, such effects started to be noticeable that Russia is going to attack Ukraine. Obviously, such an attack could have resulted in a nuclear conflict, so in January, China, France, Russia, Great Britain and the United States issued a unique joint statement, declaring that any nuclear war would be won. Therefore, such a war should never be started.
It should be remembered that these five countries are also members of the United Nations Security Council and are among the powers that have hundreds of nuclear weapons, but still, in February, Russia deployed 100,000 missiles on the border of Ukraine. Amassed more troops and invaded Ukraine in the last week of February. In fact, Russia’s operations against Ukraine began in 2014. Thousands of people have died in the war so far, and Europe has experienced the biggest refugee crisis since World War II.
In the last week of February 2022, the President of Russia recognized the eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk as independent and continued his advance inside Ukraine despite international condemnation and sanctions – the US, EU and other allies have made Russia a global banker. separated from the SWIFT system and also imposed restrictions on the Central Bank of Russia. As a result of this, a situation like global financial crisis was created, the effects of which began to fall on both developed and developing countries. Along with this, the President of Russia also ordered to keep his nuclear weapons ready and said that the reason for this is the continuous aggressive statements of NATO.
As a result, the European nations began to impose restrictions on the flights of Russian aircraft in their airspace. In response, pro-Russian Belarus ended its non-nuclear status and allowed Russian forces to remain permanently stationed, and international sports organizations, including Switzerland, imposed sanctions on Russia. Countries like Monaco, Singapore and South Korea have also started operations to freeze imports from Russia and its assets. By the end of the year, Russia had failed to defeat Ukraine, but Russian control of the eastern regions remained.
Central Asia
In 2022, Central Asia’s largest country by area, Kazakhstan, has been in turmoil since January. As it happened, a series of public protests began in January, due to a sharp increase in LPG prices. In fact, the government had canceled the price ceiling imposed by the government. The protests soon turned into violent riots, with mostly the poor participating openly.
Kazakhstan’s new president, Islam Qasim, on Thursday imposed a state of emergency in some areas and dismissed Prime Minister Asghar Momin, as well as ordered the army to deal with protesters harshly. After controlling the protests, the president held early presidential elections to consolidate himself. In November 2022, he was elected president again by getting more than eighty percent of the votes. Along with this came international reports that the President and his family were involved in large-scale corruption.
Turkmenistan, another country in Central Asia, also held presidential elections this year, when then-President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov resigned himself and elected his son as president – Turkmenistan first became an independent country in 1991, sixteen years zero. Murad was under Niyazov’s rule, then Gurbanguly Bardimohamedov ruled for sixteen years from 2006 to 2022 and made his son Sardar Bardimohamedov the new president. This was surprising, because Qurban Quli is only sixty-five years old and could easily have stayed in power for another ten to fifteen years if he wanted to, but resigned in March 2022.
The new president, Sardar, is only forty years old, and may be re-elected for twenty-two years. In the 2022 elections, they got a better percentage of the votes, if they wanted, they could have got 90%, as is often the case in Central Asian countries.
The other two countries of Central Asia, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, were victims of mutual conflict. In fact, these two countries are embroiled in border disputes and have claims on each other’s territories, resulting in clashes between them. Tajikistan is a smaller country in terms of area than Kyrgyzstan, but in terms of population and national product, it is a large country. The population of Tajikistan is 90 million while that of Kyrgyzstan is 70 million, yet the two countries are at odds with each other.
2022 President of Tajikistan Imam Ali Rehman also completed thirty years of his power. In this way, we see that most of the countries of Central Asia came under the influence of family governments after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Thus, Central Asia has seen more personal dictatorships than the Soviet Union.
Presidential elections were also held in 2022 in Armenia, another state of the former Soviet Union. As President Armin Sarkisyan resigned in January 2022 after four years as president, he said that the Constitution of Armenia does not give the president much power, so it is better to resign – interestingly, Armin Sarkisian Sayan had been ambassador to Britain for twenty years on behalf of Armenia. However, after the resignation, Ilham Ali F was elected as the new president of Armenia.
Riots in Sri Lanka
2022 was a particularly turbulent year for Sri Lanka, as Prime Minister Mahendra Rajapaksa was forced to resign following mass protests. In March 2022, large protests started against the government of Sri Lanka, the main reason for which was the deterioration of the economy and one crisis after another. Inflation had skyrocketed and there was a severe power shortage. Along with this, fuel scarcity also started, in which gas for domestic use became scarce and other necessities of life also disappeared. As a result, demands were made for the resignation of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa.
It should be remembered that the ruling family of Sri Lanka was so nepotistic, one brother was the president and the other was the prime minister, as if the entire government was subordinate to the Rajapaksa family. The interesting thing is that the leadership of these anti-government protests was not in the hands of any opposition party, rather, most of the people, especially the youth, came out for the protests on their own, even though the government imposed emergency conditions. tried to bring the situation under control, but despite imposing curfew and banning social media, the government had to resign.
In July 2022, the protesters took over the presidency in Colombo and then the parliament elected Wickremesinghe as the new president. Speaking of Asia, let’s go to the Philippines, there were presidential elections in May 2022, in which the son of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Bongbong Marcos was elected president with nearly 60 percent of the vote, thirty-six years after the son of the dictator who was ousted by popular struggle in 1986.
NATO activities
Before and after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, NATO, the Western military alliance, showed considerable enthusiasm. One of the reasons given by Russia for the attack was that NATO wanted to include Ukraine in its alliance, which Russia would not allow. America, NATO and Ukraine themselves were saying that Russia does not have the authority to decide which country can join NATO. Ukraine expected that if Russia showed aggression, NATO countries would jump into the war, but this did not happen, and Russia occupied almost twenty percent of Ukraine, so NATO did not intervene directly in this war. , but kept claiming to help Ukraine.
In June 2022, four months after the attack, NATO heads of state met in Spain. It should be remembered that exactly forty years ago in 1982, Spain joined NATO. Now in 2022, Finland and Sweden applied to join NATO, which was initially objected by Turkey, but after some assurances, the objection was withdrawn, then in September 2022, Ukraine also formally applied to join NATO. In this way, Russia’s goal could not be solved, rather, NATO was strengthened and even those countries that were not applying before now regularly joined this queue.
It should be remembered that at the time of the establishment of NATO in 1949, the number of its member countries was only 12, then in 1952, with the inclusion of Greece, this number increased to thirteen. The next member was West Germany, which became the fourteenth member in 1955, then in 1982, with the addition of Spain, the number increased to fifteen. After the end of the Cold War, in 1999, twelve Eastern European countries joined NATO for the first time, and with the addition of the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland, the number of NATO member states increased to eighteen.
In 2004, seven Eastern European countries joined together, bringing NATO membership to twenty-five, and by 2020, four more countries had joined, bringing NATO to 29. Now, if so many countries did not attack Russia together, what would be the threat to Russia in 2022 due to the inclusion of Ukraine?
However, as a result of NATO’s activities, this alliance is now getting stronger, which will have an impact on Russia and China. 2022 proved to be beneficial for NATO but very harmful for Ukraine in this sense as European countries also suffered severe energy crisis due to Russian gas shutdown. But they are now focusing more on alternative sources and the impact of Russian gas on Europe seems to be diminishing.
China
Now let’s look at China, the largest country in the world in terms of population, where the most important event of this year was that the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party was held here. The Congress was held in October 2022, in which the 20th Central Committee of the Party was elected and the Politburo was elected. At this congress, the General Secretary of the Party, Xi Jinping, assumed the leadership of the Party for the third term.
In a two-hour speech at the congress, Xi Jinping clarified the party’s policy, followed by some amendments to the Chinese constitution, under which the party leader, Xi, was declared the main pillar of the Central Committee and his ideas. was given constitutional protection. At the same time, Taiwan was once again declared a part of China.
In 2022, after Russia’s attack on Ukraine, China further strengthened its relations with Russia, even though it insisted on the end of the war, but there was no condemnation of the attack. At the end of this year, the corona virus started to rise again in China and an attempt was made to control the virus by imposing strict restrictions. This year, India mistakenly fired a BrahMos missile towards Pakistan which landed near Mian Chanu.
India declared this incident in March as an accidental mistake, but it started to raise questions about India’s capabilities, what would have happened if the war had started by mistake. In March 2022, the Legislative Assembly elections were held in five Indian states, in which the Bharatiya Janata Party maintained its supremacy in Uttar Pradesh and also won elections in Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur. It may be noted that the Indian National Congress has not been able to form a government even once in thirty years since 1989, while the BJP ruled from 1997 to 2002 and is now in control of UP since 2017.
In the 2022 state elections in Indian Punjab, the Aam Aadmi Party defeated the ruling Congress. In India, in 2022, the BJP government launched an army recruitment scheme called Agnipath, against which there were protests. Under this scheme, soldiers were recruited for four years. Earlier, soldiers were recruited for a minimum of fifteen years, after which they could retire. After 2019, there were no recruitments in the Indian Army, the reason was attributed to the Corona epidemic.
Fifty to sixty thousand soldiers retire in India every year. Under the Agnipath scheme, there was a program to give civilian people four years of military training and discharge them. The scheme was approved in June 2022 and implemented from September, under which boys and girls between the ages of 17 and 21 could undergo military training and employment for four years. The major criticism of this scheme is that the BJP will thereby indoctrinate the youth into the society with a military mindset, which is likely to lead to further violence.
In June 2022, the Supreme Court of India dismissed the petition filed by Ehsan Jafri’s widow against Narendra Modi and over sixty others in connection with the massacre in Gujarat. In July, India’s new female president, Draupadi Murmu, was sworn in. She is India’s first tribal president and the second after Pratibha Patil. India’s economic performance in 2022 has been impressive, growing at an annual rate of ten percent. .
United States
In 2022, the United States continued its hostile policy with China and Russia and made Europe war, which caused the biggest loss to Europe itself. Internally, the American society was shaken when the American Supreme Court refused to give women the right to abortion. Apart from this, shooting incidents were happening from time to time throughout the year in America, which increased the anxiety of the society.
In the mid-term elections, the Democratic Party retained its position in the Senate and added one seat after taking all of the old seats, while the Republican Party gained dominance in the House of Representatives, a form of national assembly. America tried to establish its leadership internationally, but it failed to isolate Russia and China. In this way, there was no improvement in its relations with the Arab countries, but Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states also continued to try to improve relations with China.
United Kingdom
Britain bid farewell to two Prime Ministers and a Queen in 2022. Indian-born Rishi Sunak was sworn in as Prime Minister in October, when he was Britain’s fifth Prime Minister in six years. He took over the government after just one and a half month of Lysister’s rule. Listers’ tenure was the shortest in British history for a prime minister. In the same year, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was forced to resign, as he was beset by a succession of crises, most of which were scandals of his own making.
In 2022, the UK agreed to all European and American strategies against Russia and took the lead in imposing sanctions. At the same time, Britain also faced the worst heat wave in history this year, in which the temperature reached forty degrees for the first time, as well as inflation and other problems like energy etc. The new King Charlie finally took the crown and Britain returned to the kingdom of one monarch after seventy years.
The Rise of the Right in Europe
In 2022, the far-right parties raised their flags. For example, in Italy, for the first time after the Second World War, Giorgia Meloni of an almost fascist party won. Early elections were held in September, as Prime Minister Mario Draghi, who had been in power for a year and a half, was in crisis and had to resign. Elections in 2018 resulted in a hung parliament.
Now, after the October 2022 elections, the neo-fascist “Brothers of Italy” party won a clear victory, winning 120 seats, while the relatively left-wing Democratic Party won only 70 seats. Thus Meloni became the first woman Prime Minister of Italy.
Meanwhile, in Sweden, the anti-immigration party won. Elections in September made Ulf Christoshon prime minister. Unlike Italy, Sweden’s governments have been relatively stable, and only four prime ministers held office in the twenty-five years before the current prime minister.
Now in Sweden too, the opposition to immigrants coming from abroad is increasing, which has been taken advantage of by right-wing parties and they are coming to power by promising to ban new arrivals. In this way, the countries of Scandinavia, which were considered to be the cradle of tolerance, are now experiencing intolerance.
In France, there was a possibility that the right-wing Marine Le Pen might win the presidential elections in April 2022, but President Emmanuel Macron retained his position. Remember that in France, after 2000, the term of the presidency was reduced to five years, before this term was seven years.
This was the first year after Angela Merkel’s 16-year rule in Germany that a chancellor from the Social Democratic Party took power, but she faces opposition from the right wing. Now Germany has fully supported Ukraine and stopped the work on the gas pipeline North Stream 2 coming from Russia. America was already against it and did not want Europe to get energy from Russia. Germany has also given shelter to millions of refugees from Ukraine and signed agreements to procure energy and fuel from Qatar and others.
Brazil
While the right wing was rising in Europe, the left wing was getting stronger in South America in 2022. In the October 2022 elections, former President Lula da Silva won, but this success was difficult, as Wilsonaro received 20 percent of the vote and Da Silva about 51 percent. Thus, right-wing President Wilsonaro’s bid for a second term failed.
Like America, in Brazil, the term of the president is only four years. In Brazil, the Workers’ Party is clearly a left-wing party, which has now regained power. Apart from these, leftist parties have also emerged in Colombia and Hondo Ross.
more update please visit continusly: abcexpress.pk