Whether your preferred metaphor is a roller coaster or an outright dumpster fire, the year 2020 has been an outlier, to put it mildly. A few big stories dominated the news cycle, and our lives — the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. election, widespread protests over racial justice issues — while many others carried on in their shadow, sometimes with explosive effects and sometimes with underappreciated ones.
Many people are eager to pack memories from this year onto a funeral pyre and cast it off to sea. Before we do, a quick recap of how the world changed in 2020 can help prepare us for what may come. As always, Brookings foreign policy and national security experts illuminated what this year’s big events meant, as well as what they portend. Both are of utmost importance as new leadership prepares to take the reins in Washington, with the world watching.
