It may not seem like it with the news from Syria, Libya, Ukraine, Yemen, Cameroon, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but 2018 may be remembered as a year of peace.
The two Koreas have entered a period of Detente, Eritrea and Ethiopia have formally ended hostilities, a new peace agreement has been launched in South Sudan, Serbia has opened up peace negotiations with Kosovo, and the Macedonian name dispute has been virtually resolved.
However, 2019 will prove to be the year that determines whether or not these new developments in the pursuit of global peace will hold.
Indeed, there have been setbacks. The Saudi-UAE alliance was briefly fractured when UAE troops occupied the island of Socrota. The name dispute resolution was met with considerable outrage in both Athens and Skopje. The negotiations between Belgrade and Pristina have not made any advancement, and while tensions between North Korea and South Korea have lessened, tensions between North Korea and the United States have not.
And there will be wars that will carry over into 2019. The war in Syria may very well end in 2019 with Assad launching an offensive to retake Idlib, the war in Cameroon is reaching the boiling point, violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo Continues, the Taliban wreak havoc all over Afghanistan, and post-civil war Iraq is realizing it has the same corruption problems pre-civil war Iraq had.
And new conflicts will take their place. Socrota proves that sooner or later, the Saudi-UAE alliance will collapse, Iran will become a vocal point for the Trump administration to distract the public from domestic scandals, the war in Pakistan, though having died down in recent years, msy heat up again as the government tries to crack down on corruption, and India will finally decide whether or not it is commited to her preffered outcome of the war in Afghanistan.
