MJ Akbar
NEW DELHI: It is not wise to complain about the editor, but the distinguished, mild-mannered dictator of this elegant publication might have committed a journalistic solecism by asking the wrong people to peer into time’s telescope. Given the dubious track record of media oracles, he should have invited astrologers, palmists, stargazers, doomsdayers, or sibyls as contributors.
If the deadline for this article had been January 2, not a single pundit would have placed the American abduction of Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro anywhere on the newslist of 2026. So much for collective insight.
Historians escape risk or censure because they focus on the past. A challenge for the best of them: prophesy, from the edge of a decade, what might happen over the following ten years. Facts will consistently outstrip the most inventive imagination.
World War I havoc
Even the bleakest Cassandra of 1910 never foresaw the havoc and spectacular geopolitical consequences of World War I. War, yes. Some optimists in August 1914 were contemplating its end by Christmas. But World War? Forty million casualties? Lenin and a Red Star over Russia? The collapse of the Chinese, Tsarist, Ottoman, and Austro-Hungarian empires which had controlled vast swathes of Europe and Asia for centuries, triggering a volcano which continues to stain headlines with blood more than a hundred years later?
The first great Arab intifada against the ‘Christian West’ began in Iraq in 1920 and consumed the region for two years as Britain and France expanded their colonisation into Ottoman lands through feudal surrogates instead of giving people freedom. The British Balfour Declaration of 1917 set off new episodes of bloodshed. Which English fatalist in 1910 foresaw the long sunset over the British Empire after the barbarism of Jallianwala Bagh? In 1920 contemporary British acolytes laughed at a strange fantasist-fetishist named Mohandas Gandhi who thought he could destroy the mighty British Empire clad in a dhoti, armed with ahimsa, or non-violence.
No American seer in 1920 saw the Crash of 1929, the near-collapse of capitalism and ensuing economic depression. Which European in 1930 mentioned that a certain Adolf Hitler would seize power in civilised Germany within three years, start the conquest of Europe in 1939, and order a Holocaust against Jews aimed at their elimination from the human race? Which Asian visualised Japan’s sweeping victories over Britain and America across the Pacific? Who in 1940 predicted Pearl Harbour? Or dared to suggest Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Or thought that World War II would be followed quickly by a Cold War which froze Europe and terrified the rest of the world with heat as hot as hell?
There was no Indian in 1940, even one with a particularly malicious mind, who believed that a pernicious secret deal between Viceroy Lord Linlithgow and malcontent Muhammad Ali Jinnah would lead to Partition in 1947 and a hundred-year war on the subcontinent. Who in 1950 thought a Korean War would unnerve America; Vietnam defeat France in 1954; and the Cold War stretch into space? Did anyone in 1960 predict Berlin or the Cuban Missile Crisis which brought the world as close as it has come to nuclear Armageddon?
There was certainly no one in Delhi who sensed that the Chinese would invade across the Himalayas in 1962, destroy Indian pride and wreck the credibility of Congress. In 1970 the most extravagant optimist did not envisage the birth of Bangladesh a year later; or a pessimist mourn the coming imprisonment of Indian democracy in 1975. Who in China knew about Mao Zedong’s last hurrah, the Cultural Revolution, and the dramatic transformation after his death?
Quick shorthand
You get the point, so some quick shorthand. 1980s: secessionism in Punjab, Operation Blue Star, Indira Gandhi’s assassination, India’s intervention in Sri Lanka offensive. 1990s: the young Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination. Mumbai bombing. Iraq war. Internet. Global media.
India’s economic reforms. 2000s: 9/11. Afghan war. Iraq war. Pakistan-sponsored terrorist horror in Mumbai. Fast forward: Did anyone take a bet on an international plague, called Covid? That was a long prelude. What does our new friend 2026 look like? Already, like the most dangerous year of the 21st century. January is named after Janus, the god with two faces, one looking back and the other ahead. When Janus 2026 looks back it sees the world ablaze with conflict; when it looks ahead it sees multiple derivative conflagrations. Every continent is septic with war. Benjamin Netanyahu’s war is not over. The ceasefire of 2025 is a comma, not a full stop. Each time he sees Washington’s belligerence, Netanyahu cheers and moves a step closer to a renewal of conflict through which he can acquire more land from Palestine and hope to destroy the 400kg of uranium which he believes Iran possesses.
A paradox is at play. If the mass protests across Iran destabilise the cleric regime in Tehran, Israel’s ability to intervene is reduced since the next government will be ipso facto less hostile to Tel Aviv. The window of opportunity, never fully open and never fully shut, is vulnerable to strange storms.
No one sets out to conquer a poor country. Even a civil war in starvation-stricken Sudan has its logic. They are not fighting for sand. Sudan mined 70 tonnes of gold in 2025. At $4,350 per ounce at the moment of writing and expected to touch $5,000 this year, do the calculus. Someone is getting very rich indeed, and they are not the ordinary people of Sudan. Saharan Africa is fragile; sub-Saharan Africa is incendiary. Radical armies, operating in the name of religion, are killing with impunity.