Anthony Manduca reviews the world in 2016 which was dominated by Donald Trump winning the US presidential election, Brexit and the terrible situation in Syria.

It was not a good year at all: Donald Trump was elected US President, Britain voted to leave the European Union and the situation in Syria was simply horrendous.

Trump’s victory in the US took everyone by surprise, although it has to be stressed that the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, won the popular vote by a wide margin of over 2.8 million votes. Trump, who easily beat 16 other Republican candidates to become his party’s nominee, ran an ugly, deceitful, ‘America first’ and divisive campaign, yet he managed to get a majority of Electoral College votes.

Trump’s success was due to him winning three states which had voted Democratic in the last six presidential elections: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, where a large number of voters felt they had been let down by trade deals and globalisation. Coupled with winning a number of key battleground states like Florida, Ohio and North Carolina, Trump won a comfortable victory in the Electoral College.

Clinton’s e-mail ‘scandal’, the perception that she was part of an ‘elite’, the ridiculous announcement by FBI director James Comey – 10 days before the election – that investigators were looking into another cache of discovered e-mails, as well as Russian interference in the election (which has been confirmed by the CIA and FBI) certainly harmed the Democratic candidate.

The new US President is not sworn in until January 20, but Trump has already raised eyebrows around the world. Most of his Cabinet and top White House appointments have been terrible, he has personally attacked individuals on Twitter, and his lack of diplomatic skills has been very evident – such as when he publicly questioned the ‘One China’ policy and criticised Beijing on Twitter. His perceived closeness to Vladimir Putin is also very worrying.

Barack Obama, meanwhile, is leaving office with a record high approval rating of 57 per cent, which makes it even more difficult to come to terms with Trump’s victory.

In Britain, voters voted in a referendum to leave the European Union, by a margin of 52 per cent to 48 per cent, sending shockwaves throughout the bloc. Backed by the anti-EU tabloid press, the ‘Leave’ side invented a number of claims, such as that £350 million a week would be channelled to the NHS if the UK left the EU.

David Cameron subsequently resigned and was replaced as Prime Minister by Theresa May who then appointed a number of key ‘Leave’ campaigners to her Cabinet, including Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary. Mrs May has not spelled out what type of Brexit she envisages for the UK but has indicated quite strongly that she does not favour remaining in the Single Market.

Mrs May will trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty – which sets in motion the process of leaving the bloc – by March next year. A High Court, however, ruled that Parliament will have to be involved in triggering Article 50, a ruling that the government has appealed.

The situation in Syria deteriorated drastically and Russia’s policy was simply to defend its ally President Bashar al-Assad at all costs. The city of Aleppo, subjected to horrendous Russian and Syrian government bombardments – many of them targeted at hospitals and civilians – which are war crimes – came to symbolise the suffering of the Syrian people.

Over 13 million Syrians are in need of critical humanitarian assistance, 6.5 million people are displaced inside Syria and over 4.8 million have fled the country. The country’s infrastructure has been severely damaged, and over 400,000 people have been killed since the conflict began.

There was some good news in 2016. At the beginning of the year the International Atomic Energy Agency announced that Iran had dismantled its nuclear weapons programme, allowing the UN to lift sanctions. And in September the US and China, which are responsible for 40 per cent of the world’s carbon emissions, ratified the Paris global climate agreement. Unfortunately, both these accords are now under threat from the incoming Trump administration in the US.

The fight against the so-called Islamic State in both Syria and Iraq registered a lot of progress, no thanks to Russia, which concentrated its attacks in Syria on the moderate rebels opposed to President Assad. The United States, however, carried out over 16,000 airstrikes against IS in both Syria and Iraq, which combined with ground offensives in both countries by moderate Syrian rebels, Kurds and the Iraqi army, led to whole swathes of territory being retaken from IS.

Jihadist terrorism, however, mainly carried out by IS, continued to spread its ugly face, not only in Iraq and Syria but around the globe. A number of fatal bomb attacks in took place in Belgium, Turkey, Libya, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Indonesia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Malaysia. In France, Germany, Belgium, and the US, a number of ‘lone wolf’ terrorist attacks also took place, including a truck being deliberately driven into crowds celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, killing 86 people, the killing of French priest while celebrating Mass in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, a lorry attack at a Christmas market in Berlin which killed 12 people and a mass shooting at a nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

Sadly, relations between Russia and the US (and Europe) deteriorated to a new low. Russian President Vladimir Putin suspended an agreement with the US on the disposal of surplus weapons-grade plutonium, Russian jets violated European airspace on a number of occasions, Moscow continued to cause trouble in eastern Ukraine and US officials formally accused Russia of cyber-attacks “to interfere with the US election”.

Barack Obama is leaving office with a record high approval rating of 57 per cent

Furthermore, a Dutch-led Joint Investigation Team said there was “no doubt” that the missile that downed Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine in 2014 – resulting in the death of all 298 people on board – was brought in from Russia and fired from rebel-controlled territory, during the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

In Russia’s elections, Putin’s United Russia party took three-quarters of the parliamentary seats, a huge increase compared to the last poll, paving the way for him to run for a fourth term as President. Liberal Opposition parties failed to win a single seat.

It was not an easy year for the European Union. Besides the obvious setback of Brexit there was no consensus over the redistribution of migrants within the bloc, although progress was made on the external side of the EU’s migration policy. In 2016, Austria, Denmark, Germany, Norway, Poland and Sweden temporarily imposed controls on some or all of their borders with other Schengen States, while France kept some border control measures in place that it had introduced after the November 2015 Paris attacks.

In Italy, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi resigned after a referendum on the reform of the Senate was soundly defeated by 60 per cent to 40 per cent. He was replaced by Paolo Gentiloni, his Foreign Minister. Renzi’s mistake was to link the referendum to his political future, so the Opposition parties took advantage of this and campaigned for a ‘No’ vote. The negative result was also due to a lack of economic progress and voters’ fear that a weakened Senate would give too much power to the central government.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel remained Europe’s undisputed leader and champion of liberal values. Merkel, however, suffered a number of setbacks in regional elections where her Christian Democratic Union (as did other mainstream parties) lost votes to the Alternative for Germany, the anti-migration party which is likely to make it to the federal Parliament in next year’s national elections. Nevertheless, Merkel declared she will stand for a fourth term as Chancellor.

In France, Socialist President François Hollande declared, not surprisingly, that he will not run in next year’s presidential election. Facing very low popularity ratings and high unemployment, Hollande is the first sitting president in modern French history not to seek re-election. Prime Minister Manual Valls then resigned and announced he would seek the Socialist nomination. He was replaced by Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve. The centre-right Republicans, meanwhile, chose former French prime minister François Fillon as their candidate.

In Spain, Prime Minister and Popular Party leader Mariano Rajoy managed to form a minority administration after 10 months of a caretaker government. This was made possible through the support of the liberal centrist Ciudadanos party and the Socialists abstaining in a parliamentary vote of confidence. Despite having only a caretaker government for most of the year, however, the Spanish economy is expected to grow by 3.1 per cent this year.

Concern was expressed in Brussels over the direction of the Polish government led by the right-wing Law and Justice Party, which has been accused of undermining democracy, the rule of law and press freedom. A number of pro-European protests in Poland took place throughout the year.

In Greece, a debt-relief deal with the European Stability Mechanism, the body that helps eurozone governments in trouble, was agreed earlier this month. However, a few days later the Greek government announced a bonus for pensioners earning below €800 a month without consulting the eurozone representatives, leading to the ESM to suspend the agreement.

In Austria’s presidential election, the pro-European candidate, Alexander Van der Bellen, defeated the far-right candidate, Norbert Hofer from the Freedom Party by a margin of 54 per cent to 46 per cent. It was an excellent result for Austria and the EU in the wake of the rise of right-wing populist parties in Europe.

Another piece of good news for Europe was the signing of the long-delayed Canada-EU trade agreement worth €10.9 billion a year, following weeks of uncertainty due to opposition from Belgium’s Wallonia region.

Pope Francis continued to stress the importance of mercy, compassion and helping the poor and marginalised. He presided over the Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy, met refugees on the Greek island of Lesbos and spoke of the possibility of people who divorce and remarry being allowed to receive Holy Communion. Pope Francis also extended indefinitely the power of Catholic priests to forgive abortions, continuing a special dispensation granted for the Year of Mercy. In a historic meeting, the Pope met with Patriarch Kirill – the first such encounter between leaders of the Catholic and Russian Orthodox Churches since their split in 1054.

The year started off with a war of words between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the respective leaders of the Sunni and Shi’ite branches of Islam, after Saudi Arabia executed 47 people for ‘terrorism’, including the prominent Shi’ite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr. After the Saudi embassy in Teheran was stormed by protesters, Saudi Arabia broke off diplomatic relations with Iran. Relations have not been re-established, and although the rhetoric has subsided somewhat, the two countries are heavily involved in a proxy war (as highlighted recently by Boris Johnson) in Yemen.

Yemen has been devastated by a war between forces loyal to the internationally-recognised government of President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi and those allied to the Houthi (who are Shi’ites) rebels. Over 10,000 people have been killed and 35,000 injured over the last two years, the majority as a result of airstrikes by a Saudi-led multinational coalition supporting the President. The situation is extremely volatile and al-Qaeda and IS are both present.

Turkey was very much in the news this year. An attempted coup in July allegedly orchestrated by the cleric Fethullah Gülen led to a crackdown by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan against the media, judiciary and civil service as well as a purge of the army and police. This led to a deterioration in relations with the EU.

A couple of months before the coup attempt, Ahmet Davutoglu resigned as prime minister and was replaced by Binali Yildirim. It is widely believed that Davutoglu stepped down because of differences with Erdogan over the latter’s plan to give the presidency wide executive powers as well as his hardline policies towards the Kurds and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

Throughout the year, Turkey was the victim of numerous terrorist attacks, both from IS and the PKK, and it had to deal with three million Syrian refugees on its soil. An EU-Turkey deal to tackle the migrant crisis came into effect in March. Turkey and Russia co-operated over Syria, even though they backed different sides, but the assassination in Ankara of the Russian Ambassador, Andrei Karlov, a few days ago, put this relationship to the test.

The Israeli-Palestinian peace process went nowhere and Israel continued to build illegal settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, ignoring international condemnation and making the possibility of a two-State solution even more remote. Unfortunately, the US, which is the only country Israel listens to, was unable to convince its ally to show some flexibility and goodwill towards the Palestinians.

Lebanon finally got a new President when MPs elected Michel Aoun, an 81-year-old Christian leader and a strong Hezbollah ally, after a presidential vacuum of two and a half years. Aoun then asked Sunni Muslim leader Saad al-Hariri, who voted for him, to form a new government.

In Libya, progress was made in defeating so-called Islamic State and in retaking territory the jihadists once controlled – made possible to a considerable extent by US airstrikes and Western Special Forces providing logistical support. However, Libya remained hopelessly divided between the various militias and national actors. The Presidential Council headed by Fayez al-Sarraj, which was set up as a result of a UN-brokered agreement, failed to exert its authority over the country.

In Tunisia, Youssef Chahed, 40, became the country’s youngest prime minister since its independence in 1956. A new unity government was overwhelmingly approved by Parliament after Chahed’s predecessor, Habib Essid, was dismissed in a no-confidence vote over his failure to push through economic reform.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel remained Europe’s undisputed leader and champion of liberal values

Egypt Air Flight 804 crashed with 66 people on board over the Mediterranean on its way from Paris to Cairo, killing all aboard. Traces of explosives were later found on some of the victims.

In Brazil, President Dilma Rousseff of the left-wing Workers’ Party, who presided over an economic recession, was removed from office by the Senate over charges of violating Budget laws. She was replaced by her former vice presi­dent, Michel Temer, from the more market-friendly Brazilian Democratic Movement Party.

In Colombia, a historic peace deal was agreed to between the government, led by President Juan Manuel Santos (who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize) and the left-wing Farc rebels, ending 52 years of armed conflict. A week later voters narrowly rejected the deal amid concerns the accord was too lenient to the rebels. Colombia’s Parliament then approved a revised peace agreement which included some last-minute compromises.

In Venezuela, demonstrations and riots continued against left-wing President Nicolas Maduro, who has presided over an almost total collapse of the economy as a result of mismanagement and doctrinaire Socialist policies.

Japan and India signed an important civil nuclear agreement after talks in Tokyo between prime ministers Shinzo Abe and Narendra Modi. Japan will supply fuel, equipment and technology to India, which wants more nuclear-generated electricity. In another development, Japan and Russia agreed to negotiate a ‘special system’ for joint economic activity on the disputed Kuril Islands, which are currently under Russian jurisdiction.

The Philippines elected Rodrigo Duterte as President – who gained global infamy for his hardline war on drugs which encourages the killing of drug dealers as well as addicts. The United Nations estimates that 6,000 people have so far been killed in a crackdown since the new President took office in July. Duterte, who recently admitted to personally killing three suspected criminals while serving as mayor of Davao City, has ignored international criticism.

Shortly after Duterte became President an international tribunal ruled against Chinese claims to rights in the South China Sea, backing a case brought by the Philippines. The Permanent Court of Arbitration said there was no evidence that China had historically exercised exclusive control over the waters or resources. China, which claims almost all of the South China Sea, called the ruling “ill-founded”.

In North Korea, Kim Jong-un’s regime continued to defy the international community and conducted its fifth nuclear test, believed to be its largest ever. The United Nations Security Council responded by imposing a new set of sanctions against Pyongyang, including slashing its exports of coal by about 60 per cent and banning copper, nickel, silver and zinc exports. Earlier in the year, North Korea launched a long-range rocket into space, violating multiple UN treaties.

In South Korea, lawmakers voted to impeach President Park Geun-hye over an alleged corruption scandal and her authority was transferred to Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn. The decision, however, still has to be approved by the country’s Constitutional Court.

There were a number of important convictions in various international criminal courts throughout the year. The International Criminal Court in The Hague sentenced former Democratic Republic of Congo vice president Jean-Pierre Bemba to 18 years in prison for war crimes and crimes against humanity, the first time the ICC convicted someone of sexual violence.

At the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague ex-Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžic was sentenced to 40 years in prison for genocide and crimes against humanity committed during the Bosnian War. And former Chadian President Hissène Habré was sentenced to life in prison by a court in Senegal for crimes against humanity committed from 1982 to 1990. This marked the first time an African Union-backed court convicted a former ruler of a country within its jurisdiction.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung published a set of 11.5 million confidential documents from the Panamanian corporate Mossack Fonseca that provided detailed information on more than 214,000 offshore companies, including the identities of shareholders and directors.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, demonstrations took place throughout the year over President Joseph Kabila’s failure to give up power. A number of protesters were killed in clashes with the police. Mr Kabila’s 15-year rule was due to have ended a week ago, but has now been extended to 2018.

In Gambia, President Yahya Jammeh, who took power in a coup 22 years ago, first conceded defeat in the presidential election, congratulating his opponent Adama Barrow, but a week later announced he was rejecting the result and called for new elections. However, the UN Security Council and the 15-member Economic Community of West African States called on him to step down.

International personalities who died in 2016 included former Cuban president Fidel Castro, former Israeli president and prime minister Shimon Peres, former German foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, American boxer Muhammad Ali, English singer David Bowie and Dutch footballer and manager Johan Cruyff.