Welcome to the Year of Elections. About four billion people – roughly half the world's population – will go to the polls in 2024, from India to Mexico, America to Russia, Pakistan to the European Parliament and many places in between.
We're pretty sure there will be a general election in dear old Blighty too. It would be reassuring to think of the coming year as a great Festival of Democracy: reassuring, but wrong.
Even though votes will take place in more than 60 countries, it is more likely that 2024 will be a year of crisis for democracy, which is in greater danger than at any time since the Cold War, perhaps even since the 1930s. Far from this being the Year of Democracy, there is a greater danger that this will become the Year of Despots.
For starters, some of the elections scheduled for 2024 will be neither free nor fair. Who can doubt that President Vladimir Putin will be restored to power in the Kremlin, regardless of what Russian voters actually think?
Indian democracy is now tainted by an ugly Hindu nationalism promoted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who will almost certainly be re-elected, and will likely become even more authoritarian – and even more pro-Moscow. In Pakistan it doesn't seem to matter how people vote, the military and intelligence services remain in control one way or another.
ANDREW NEIL: Putin claimed in his New Year's message that Russia would 'never withdraw' from Ukraine
Some election results could make the world less safe for democracy. If Donald Trump returns to the White House in November – which all polls suggest is likely – what hope for Ukraine? He would cut off U.S. military aid and force President Volodymyr Zelensky to sue for a loser's peace. Putin would play hardball and take as much as he could.
Even without a second Trump presidency, America's willingness to support Ukraine is waning: a $60 billion military aid package is deadlocked in Congress, thanks to the machinations of Republican isolationists. It is not just Ukraine that has reason to fear Trump. His established antipathy to NATO will weaken and undermine, perhaps even destroy, the vital military alliance that keeps Europe, including Britain, safe.
Endangering NATO while insisting that Kiev hand over large parts of Ukraine to Putin would reinvigorate Russian revanchism and drive like a spear to the heart of European democracy. You hardly have to think about it.
The European Parliament has little or no geopolitical significance. But the prospect of a rightward swing in this year's elections would normally be seen as an encouraging stiffening of the bloc's backbone on defense spending – and a more robust stance on Russian expansionism.
However, Europe's new populist right, which could form the largest political grouping in Parliament after June's elections, has a depressingly close relationship with the Kremlin. Many of the leading leaders in France, Italy, Germany and elsewhere are content to parrot Putinite talking points and act as apologists for the dictator.
European democracy thus runs the risk of being undermined by the rise of the New Right – and of further emboldening Russia. The despots certainly started the year as if their time had come.
Putin claimed in his New Year's message that Russia would “never withdraw” from Ukraine. It's more than a blunder. Ukraine does not have the missiles and artillery to make a dent in Russian fortifications along the front line. Indeed, Russia now has a five-to-one superiority in artillery, and therefore Zelensky must strengthen the defense of his own front line rather than prepare for a new offensive.
ANDREW NEIL: Chinese President Xi Jinping is also rattling his sabers and ratcheting up rhetoric against Taiwan
Chinese President Xi Jinping is also rattling his sabers and ratcheting up the rhetoric against Taiwan, whose “reunification” with China, by force if necessary, is, according to him, a “historical inevitability.” Democratic Taiwan votes on January 13.
The political forces most steadfast in defying Chinese threats to Taiwan's independence are currently at the top of the polls. If they form the next government, Xi will view this as a provocation. But I suspect he will wait for the outcome of the US election before doing anything.
After all, if a Trump America subsequently defaults on its commitments to Ukraine, what weight would you give to its promises to Taiwan?
Even North Korea's dictator, the ridiculous and chubby Kim Jong-un, is joining in, threatening to “thoroughly destroy” America this week and warning that “war could break out on the Korean Peninsula at any moment.”
His threats against America are of course farcical, but his ability to cause regional chaos is all too real. Even as his people suffer misery and hunger, he is spending more on 21st century military paraphernalia, including spy satellites, nuclear weapons, missiles and drones.
Iran is already showing how much suffering a dictatorship can cause to democracies. After unleashing Hamas, its ally, on Israel on October 7, Israel is now bogged down in a grueling and globally unpopular war of attrition in Gaza.
At the same time, other Iranian allies have launched low-level attacks on US bases in Syria, while yet other allies, Yemen's Houthi, now threaten crucial shipping lanes at the southern end of the Red Sea. Western navies, including the Royal Navy, are responding, but slowly and without the requisite scale of force.
ANDREW NEIL: North Korean dictator, the ridiculous and chubby Kim Jong-un, takes action and threatens to 'thoroughly destroy' America this week
While dictators strut, preen, threaten and in too many places call the shots, democracies are depressingly slow to respond – and, worst of all, bereft of necessary leadership. President Joe Biden and America's European allies responded well to Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022. But they are now struggling to maintain their support.
An unreliable, weak American president is unable to unite the world's democracies. He only gives comfort to the dictators. The likely alternative for him would be to sell out Ukraine – and perhaps much of Europe as well. Rarely has American politics offered so little hope for global leadership and direction.
The Europeans are no better. They are more likely to lecture Israel over Gaza than to rise up against Iran. Despite repeated warnings of the dangers lurking in their own neighborhoods, they continue to spend ridiculously small amounts of money on defense while remaining virtually unable to project power even to nearby problem areas.
Neither President Emmanuel Macron of France nor Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany has the willpower or political capital to lead Europe out of this quagmire. In Rishi Sunak, Britain is governed by a geopolitical novice who is reluctant to take our defense spending above 2 percent of GDP (it was 5 percent during the Cold War).
Elections this year and in the years to come will not bring any delay. Trump would be even worse than Biden at defending democracy. Keir Starmer is even more of a foreign affairs novice than Mr Sunak. Marine Le Pen, whose previous campaigns were financed by Kremlin-friendly banks, is the favorite to succeed Macron as French president.
Whoever succeeds Scholz in Germany will likely lead another weak coalition and an economy in long-term decline.
There are grim echoes of the 1930s, when stumbling democracies under unimpressive leaders too often let dictators have their way, with dire consequences that required a world war to reverse.
I'm not saying we're there yet. Nor do I underestimate the ability of democracies to eventually get their act together, as they did under Churchill and Roosevelt in 1940/41. But I am not farsighted enough to identify a Churchill or a Roosevelt among the potential leaders of tomorrow. That's why I fear that things will get worse in 2024 and beyond, before democracies finally discover the backbone needed to resist dictatorship.
We've done it before and we'll do it again. But until then, we will continue to live in the age of autocrats, no matter how many elections there are in the world.