The big risks facing the world in 2024

Every year matters, every year is pivotal and every year brings surprises — good and bad. But it’s impossible to escape the sense that the world stands near a precipice and that in 2024 we will either take a step forward, upending the world order, or a step back, returning to a version of “normalcy.”

What will 2024 bring? “Predictions are tough, especially about the future,” goes the quip, a truism attributed to Hall of Fame catcher Yogi Berra, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Niels Bohr, and many others. The obviousness highlights just how uncertain the future is — as we learned in 2020 — and...