As 2020 begins, the world feels precariously calm. The turn of the calendar has rarely been this heavy with unresolved tensions and unstable balances. The first days of this year carry echoes of uncertainty that may shape not only international politics, but also the world we as young students will step into.
The death of Qasem Suleimani, commander of Iran’s Quds Force, in a U.S. drone strike near Baghdad on 3 January jolted global diplomacy. Alongside him, a top Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al‑Muhandis was also killed in the same raid. What might have been dismissed as another remote act of aggression quickly turned into a moment of regional crisis. Within days, Iraq’s parliament held a vote calling for foreign forces’ withdrawal. The knock-on effect: the political architecture of the Middle East, already fragile, seems more volatile now than in recent years.
In parallel, the conflict in Libya expanded again. On 2 January 2020, Grand National Assembly of Turkey approved a mandate to deploy troops to support the existing government: a decision that began to reshape the balance of power in North Africa and the Mediterranean. By 5 January, Turkey’s deployment had started, signaling that the Libyan civil war might escalate into a larger regional confrontation.
These two developments, in Iraq and Libya, are not isolated. They reflect a broader pattern of global uncertainty. Power is being re-negotiated, often hastily, across multiple regions. Alliances, once stable, now feel tentative. The assumptions that held the post-Cold War order together are being tested.
Yet even as these shocks occur, the world feels strangely calm on the surface. There are no new treaties, no peace agreements, no grand resolutions. Instead, there are votes, troop deployments, missile strikes, and political manoeuvring. The dangers are structural, not spectacular. They accumulate quietly, often out of public view.
For someone like me, born in 2009 and watching from afar, these moments matter. They will shape the global institutions I might study, the international dynamics I will try to understand as a student of international relations. The lesson is that big moments rarely arrive with clarity. They are often the result of many small fractures: slow shifts in alliances, sharpened silos of identity, pressure points building for years until they crack.
In 2020, I want to cultivate the habit of looking beyond headlines. I want to ask what isn’t said, what is postponed, what is tolerated until the tipping point. I want to see how people — citizens, leaders, diplomats — respond when pressure rises. And I want to think about how values like stability, sovereignty and justice will be redefined under new global stress.
This opening week has reminded me that the structures of power are fragile. What holds them up is not just treaties or agreements, but trust, foresight, and political maturity. As the world braces for a year that may test all of them, I hope to keep learning, questioning, and preparing: quietly, deliberately, as a student of history in the making.
