Who didn't move the world in 2009

The oddest thing about 2009 was how normal it was. At the beginning of the year, the global economic crisis was still causing panic in prime ministers' offices and presidential palaces across the world. Many politicians were looking anxiously back to the 1930s.

Those fears of a return to a world of soup kitchens and fascist marches turned out to be overdone. The German economy contracted by more than 5 per cent in the year to September. But in that month, the Germans still re-elected Angela Merkel – the very epitome of stolid, centrist good sense. The Japanese elections, a month earlier, were more dramatic – marking the end of the Liberal Democratic party's almost uninterrupted hegemony over postwar politics. But it is still too early to tell whether Japan has really changed as a country.

For that reason, neither the Japanese nor the German elections make my annual list of the five most important events of the year. Instead, my top five for 2009 are as follows.

January: Barack Obama's inauguration. The most ardent Obamaphiles might argue that the five most significant events of the year were all speeches by the new American president. There was the inaugural address; the speech in Prague in which he called for a world free of nuclear weapons; the speech in Cairo in which he reached out to the Muslim world; the speech at the United Nations in which he said that speeches would not solve the problems of the world; and the speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, in which Obama surprised and delighted American conservatives by talking about "evil” and the need for war. The inaugural address – although perhaps the least memorable oration – was probably the most significant moment, as America's first black president inspired hopes of national recovery and international peace.

June: The Iranian presidential election raised and then dashed the hopes for change in Iran – but left a permanent impression of the instability and illegitimacy of the Iranian government. The widespread assumption that the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad was rigged provoked large popular protests that were violently put down. This repression, combined with an apparent acceleration of the Iranian nuclear programme, has effectively scuppered Obama's hope to make engagement with Iran a centrepiece of his foreign policy.

September: The G20 summit in Pittsburgh was where it was formally announced that the new 20 would replace the old G8 as the main forum for discussion of global economic issues. The decision formalised the transition from a world dominated by the west to a new multi-polar global order. The G8 was a club for North Americans and Europeans, plus Japan. The G20 includes the big emerging powers – above all China, India and Brazil. But whether this new, larger grouping can actually prove effective is still very much an open question.

December: The Afghan surge. After months of agonising and deliberation, Obama announced his decision. The US will send another 30,000 troops to fight the Afghan war – on top of the additional 15,000 or so that Obama dispatched shortly after his election. The result is that almost two-thirds of the foreign troops in Afghanistan will now be Americans
– and the fate of the Obama presidency may hang on the outcome of the war. This is not an encouraging thought, given the farce surrounding the re-election of President Hamid Karzai earlier in the year and the continuing strength of the Taliban insurgency.

December: The Copenhagen climate summit. Despite the valiant efforts by assorted politicians to put a positive spin on Copenhagen, it was a disaster. The failure to agree legally binding limits on the emission of greenhouse gases meant that the summit was little more than a vague statement of intent, which will do almost nothing to combat global warming. Let us hope that the climate-change sceptics (who grew in influence over the course of a chilly year) are right. If not, we may all be cooked.

What is missing from that list? Nothing that happened in Europe makes my top five. The final passage of the Lisbon treaty and the appointment of Herman van Rompuy as the European Union's new president might, however, make it on to a list of the five biggest non-events of the year. There are also no big economic events – which might seem odd in a year dominated by the world's efforts to recover from the biggest global recession since 1945. But the main economic news of the year was a process, not an event – the gradual return of growth to the global economy.

Is there anything that links my five events? I am afraid so. The big theme of 2009 was the gradual dispersal of the international euphoria that surrounded the election of Obama. That euphoria probably peaked on the very day of his inauguration. It has been downhill all the way since then, as it has gradually become clear that, these days, no US president – however gifted and charismatic – can snap his fingers and change the world. From Iran to Afghanistan to the G20 and the failure of the Copenhagen summit, the year 2009 has offered a long tutorial on the intractable nature of global problems and the limits of American power.