Elections: US (a world paralyzed with fear), Moldova’s higher stakes…Tensions off Taiwan…Migration-stops across Europe… Sinwar fallout… Rain go away … Cartoonist Al Hazza jailed for life (?) by Saudis
In this weekly feature for Andelman Unleashed, we continue to explore how the media of other nations are reporting and commenting on the United States, and how they are viewing the rest of the world.
Just arrived back in Paris…..But before we go any further …. We’ve lost….
One of the Great Unleashed family ….
Nicholas Daniloff, a great correspondent and friend whom I knew as Nick, passed away this week at the age of 89. As The New York Times’ Robert D. McFadden described him in his obituary:
…an American news correspondent whose 1986 arrest in Moscow on trumped-up espionage charges ignited a political firestorm in the United States and an international crisis in the latter days of the Cold War…with intrigues fit for a John le Carré novel.
Indeed, after the similar seizure by the FSB and imprisonment last year of Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkowitz, I caught up with Nick in Cambridge and wrote this tribute for the (now defunct)CNN Opinion:
As it happened, as a European correspondent for CBS News, I actually rode with Nick on the flight that took him on his journey out of captivity, picking up his connecting flight in Frankfurt to Washington DC, though like the great journalist that he was, he reserved the best tidbits for his own editors at US News and World Report, after serving 5+ years as their Moscow correspondent.
Friday morning, emerging from the lift in our apartment building on Paris’s left bank, just as we were arriving from New York, was our 2nd floor neighbor. The first question from the mouth of our dear friend, Monsieur Baudoux, who’s owned the eponymous children’s boutique on the ground floor and moved into the apartment we’d vacated 37 years earlier: What’s going to happen in America? Can Donald Trump win? His fear, echoed an hour later by our barber, Alain Afota, Moroccan by birth, who served in the Israeli Defense Forces in the Yom Kippur War, but has been a French citizen for much of his life: what will happen to his beloved country, his continent, the world, should Trump triumph. It’s a fear I’ve been hearing with every encounter since.
I had little to reassure them. The immediate panic of most, echoed in the frontpage banner headline in France’s leading daily, Le Monde is the very dark possibility, even a probability, that a major democracy will disappear from the planet. Its place would be taken by a suddenly isolationist, somewhat enfeebled and meta-stable nuclear power with a residue of economic dominance that’s still more than capable of plunging the world into a morass of protectionist tariffs, deporting millions of its residents, and ending freedoms for a shrinking portion of the world that has all too long taken democracy for granted. Indeed, it would appear that many abroad can see the dangerous implications far more clearly than half of America.
As the Le Monde headline screamed:
United States: Trump’s extremist one-upmanship
· Less than three week before the presidential election of November 5, Donald Trump is increasing his extremist and lying remarks.
· The Republican mocks his Democratic rival Kamala Harris, describing her as mentally deficient, and calls for a hunt for “the enemy within.”
· Few business leaders follow Elon Musk in his support of Donald Trump, whose irrationality worries them.
· Kamala Harris intends to embody the social advancement of the middle classes and wants to be more favorable to the business world.
Inside, Le Monde’s veteran New York correspondent Arnaud Leparmentier is given an entire page to examine how each candidate is trying desperately to win over corporate support, though “beyond a lowering of taxes on businesses, Trump’s program is resolutely hostile to multinationals.” It’s his third in a series the newspaper is calling: “America Fractured.”
And then Le Monde’s editorial:
The irresponsible headlong rush of Donald Trump
The worrying signals regarding the state of democracy are accumulating in the United States. On October 15, Republican candidate Donald Trump refused to speak out in favor of a peaceful transition of power following the presidential election to be held on November 5….This latest outrage came just two days after the Republican had agonized his political opponents, calling them the "enemy within" against whom it would be appropriate to dispatch "the National Guard" or even "the army."
How could the world not be desperately afraid of what may well lie ahead?
For instance, in London, the Financial Times featured a report from Lauren Fedor in Washington and Anna Nicolaou in New York:
Donald Trump has called on Rupert Murdoch to stop Fox News from airing “negative commercials” that might damage his re-election campaign, saying the conservative media billionaire should help deliver “victory” for him in November….the former president saying he would tell Murdoch that the influential cable network should keep “horrible people” off air to aid his campaign in the final days of the White House race.
“I’m going to tell him something very simple, because I can’t talk to anybody else about it,” Trump said: “Don’t put on negative commercials for 21 days.” “And don’t put on there, there are horrible people that come and lie,” Trump said.
Trump’s comments about Murdoch and Fox come a week after he called for CBS News to lose its broadcasting licence over a recent interview with Harris.
In Singapore The Straits-Times worries:
China, Vietnam, South Korea could see 1% GDP hit from Trump presidency
A second Donald Trump presidency could lead to significantly lower economic growth in several Asian economies, with China, South Korea and Vietnam particularly affected….The former president, as part of his pitch to voters in the knife-edge election, has floated plans for blanket tariffs of 10% to 20% on virtually all imports as well as tariffs of 60% or more on goods from China.
From Beijing, correspondent Sylvie Zhuang reported for Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post, whose line has become increasingly congruent with mainland China’s:
US elections are losing shine for educated Chinese once drawn to democratic process
Observers cite the rise of Donald Trump, the American pandemic death toll and China-US tension as contributing to changing Chinese attitudes.
The sheen of US politics dimmed from around 2019 following then-president Donald Trump’s aggressive policies against China and his “America first” approach to international affairs.
A sizeable group of educated Chinese have had a significant shift in perception towards US presidential elections, and America’s political system as a whole.
The Latin America newspaper El Pais observes:
There are less than twenty days left and the concern experienced four years ago is repeated.
These elections are transcendent for us too because their result will impact the declining quality of Western democracies, the development of the wars underway in Ukraine and the Middle East and the geopolitical order under construction. Its impact will be global, but the vote is on a national level in a country with rampant polarization. The disunity of the country is heard in the mainstream soundtracks of the rallies and, at the same time, there are authors who continue to substantiate the voice of minorities to rethink the image of a complex country that, as some recent shocking films show, feels besieged by the abyss.
And then there’s Moldova
Moldova cast its lot firmly with the European Union on Sunday, nearly 1.5 million voters going to the polls to vote for president and especially for a referendum that would set their nation firmly on course to join the EU, that appeared headed for ratification.
Preliminary results issued at 10 pm by the national election commission showed a surprisingly tight race for president between incumbent Maia Sandu and her leading challenger, Alexandr Stoianoglo who has made no secret of his pro-Russian and anti-EU sympathies.
Sandu spent her entire first four year term campaigning vigorously for her nation’s entry into the E.U. that would likely take place in 2030. But on Sunday she fell short of a 50% voter threshold, so will have to face a runoff in two weeks against Stoianoglo. Five of her 10 challengers had urged their supporters to vote ‘no’ on the referendum or boycott it entirely.
Moldova President Maia Sandu (center) faces a scrum of journalists … Europe is riveted by the elections.
The stakes were potentially existential for the referendum that appeared on the ballot at the same time on Sunday, intimately tied to Moldova’s back story. In this corner of the world suspended between the threat of a war from Russian forces on its eastern flanks, with 1,500 Russian troops occupying a stretch of territory known as Transnistria that the Kremlin still claims. The referendum was founded on a desperate urge for many of Moldova’s people to break away (finally) from Soviet control and assert their place definitively with democratic nations of the rest of Europe to its west.
Full disclosure: My grandparents came to America as the 19th turned to the 20th century from a shtetl in what is now northwestern Moldova.
But it’s Russia that seemed really to be playing for keeps there at this moment. As the FT’s Polina Ivanova reported:
This summer, some elderly residents of the small Moldovan city of Orhei started receiving an unusual top-up to their monthly pension. It came not from the state but from a fugitive oligarch living in Moscow, via a Russian state bank subject to western sanctions, and was paid to Russian-issued credit cards outlawed in Moldova. Ilan Șor, the oligarch behind the scheme, announced that all Moldovan pensioners could receive this extra cash, provided they voted “No” in a referendum on EU membership taking place on Sunday.
[ Note the red tie, white shirt, dark blue suit….Look familiar? ]
A former mayor of Orhei, the businessman fled Moldova in 2019 after being convicted of massive fraud and is now a Russian citizen. Moldovan authorities say the pension top-ups are just one of many methods the Kremlin is using to influence the referendum. The incumbent, Maia Sandu, is hoping to secure a second term and reaffirm the EU aspirations of her country, which is sandwiched between Romania and Ukraine. The two votes mark a “historic” choice for the ex-Soviet nation between a European path and a return to the Russian fold.
Taking no chances, Sandor took her re-election campaign and pitch for the referendum door-to-door across this tiny nation of fewer than 3 million population.
“We can see this big effort from Russia . . . it’s sort of mesmerizing,” said Mihai Duca, the general manager of a 100-year-old cognac distillery in Bardar, Moldova. “The Kremlin has unimaginable resources to buy votes, while people are poor and vulnerable . . . I hope we don’t get left behind on other side of a new iron curtain.”
Another interesting look at the problem is from Mariana Lastovyria, reporting from fellow SubStacker Tim Mak’s The Counteroffensive:
If the majority votes for the EU, Moldova’s path toward European integration will become nearly irreversible. Even if a pro-Russian government takes power in the future, the constitutional mandate could make any renewed rapprochement with Russia significantly more difficult.
Moldova’s sharp turn toward Europe has alarmed Russia, which continues to lose influence in its former Soviet sphere. As a result, Moldova is now viewed by some as a potential next target for Putin's aggression, following the invasion of Ukraine. In some ways, however, Moldova was the first country where Russia tested its hybrid warfare tactics after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1992—strategies later deployed in its war against Ukraine.
Outside one polling place in the capital, Vyacheslav, 60, and his wife Tamara, 63, told Reuters: "We voted for our children, for Europe and for our future."
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How others see the World
Remember that other war ….
….that might still happen? This past week it got just a trifle hotter. As Amber Wang and Hayley Wong, reported from Beijing in the South China Morning Post:
A record number of People’s Liberation Army (PLA) aircraft approached Taiwan in the 13-hour exercise dubbed “Joint Sword-2024B”, with the aircraft carrier Liaoning launching fighter jets toward the island from the east.
An unprecedented 17 coastguard vessels were part of the drills, as reported by Taiwan, compared to only seven deployed in Joint Sword-2024A drills in May….The coastguard ships were also operating alongside PLA naval vessels in each area of operation, north, south and west of Taiwan and in the Taiwan Strait…
The drills also signaled the PLA’s ability to control the strategic Bashi Channel between Taiwan and the Philippines by deploying its Liaoning aircraft carrier in the waterway.
And there is of course the reality that the drill also came less than a month before US elections. As did several other initiatives ….
China and Vietnam may be getting together, as the SCMP reported a new “vow to manage the South China Sea row ‘stems from mutual trust:’”
China and Vietnam’s reiteration of a pledge to better manage maritime disputes following a violent confrontation just weeks ago is the result of restraint born out of political trust. The two countries in a joint statement vowed to further manage tensions over the contested South China Sea “through friendly consultations”.
The statement came as Chinese Premier Li Qiang wrapped up a visit to Vietnam where he met his counterpart, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh, and top Vietnamese leader To Lam.
But while China has been going after Vietnam hammer and tong, especially in the Paracel Islands, it’s also looking to upgrade its communications, especially space-based, as the SCMP’s Zhang Tong reported from Beijing:
China has launched a second group of satellites for its G60 constellation to rival SpaceX’s Starlink. 18 satellites were sent into orbit on a Long March 6A rocket from the Taiyuan launch centre in Shanxi province, central China.
The project aims to rival Elon Musk’s Starlink with a low-orbit constellation goal of having over 15,000 satellites by 2030 to provide global broadband network coverage and move towards 6G connectivity.
Of course, Musk’s Starlink also has major military applications, already proven on the battlefield in Ukraine.
Refugees are (still) a problem
Migration and refugees may be as big a problem in Europe as in America. Except here there are 27 different countries, each with a proposed solution and several who’ve already gone off the reservation on their own in an effort to drive everyone either crazy or in their direction. Poland, which shocked the continent the previous week, as Andelman Unleashed reported, with a sudden, unilateral ban on immigration from Belarus and Russia, won a victory of sorts, as Politico Europe headlined:
Polish Prime Minister Donald Trusk was pretty happy with what he’d accomplished:
I have just come from a meeting with all the most important [European] leaders and what I wanted to achieve, I achieved.
In fact the heart of the matter for the EU and its leadership may be as our SubStack colleagues David Carretta and Christian Spillmann concluded as the headline for their La Matinale Européenne: “The EU's geopolitical selfie: ‘Nobody listens to us anymore.’”
EU leaders did gather in Brussels in an effort to hash out an accord—any accord. At the end of the day, Le Monde seemed happy to report:
The European Union wants to toughen the fight against illegal immigration
European heads of state and government asked the Commission to prepare legislation to speed up the return [to their country of origin] of those whose asylum applications have been rejected.
But Carretta and Spillmann had a more nuanced treatment:
The European Council managed to agree yesterday on conclusions on migration policies. The text is ambiguous, but it shows a willingness to strengthen the EU's border closure measures with new legislation on returns, new modalities such as "return hubs", the revision of the concept of a safe country to expel even those who are entitled to international protection. "The mainstream has shifted considerably," a source told us. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk threatened to veto, but finally obtained a mention in the text on solidarity with Poland. Above all, Ursula von der Leyen accepted his request to suspend asylum procedures for the increase in entries at the border with Belarus.
And especially interesting? Europe’s most powerful leader…
Von der Leyen attended a meeting hosted by Italian Giorgia Meloni [including] those who advocate the toughest policies towards migrants and asylum seekers, even in violation of current EU rules: Hungarian Viktor Orban, Austrian Karl Nehammer, Polish Donald Tusk, Czech Petr Fiala, Slovak Robert Fico, Maltese Robert Abela, Greek Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
In other words, to put it crudely—leaders who both love and detest Ukraine and its troubles with Moscow.
The topics discussed, according to Italian sources, were the protocol between Italy and Albania as a model for combating human traffickers—"return hubs" outside the EU and the reform of the concept of safe third countries.
Still, it may all come back to America’s elections. A second term for Trump would have systemic consequences for the EU. It is entirely possible that Trump could break America’s security guarantee. [Hence] the EU does not dare to mention the unthinkable.
The Middle East on the edge
Yes, it’s still tottering, ever more dangerously, despite all western efforts, existing carrots and sticks that are still threatened but hardly invoked. The week’s biggest headline: the “elimination” of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar as Le Figaro trumpeted on its front page….
A front-page editorial, headlined A Military Victory then set out the caveats:
The elimination of a terrorist leader does not make the threat disappear: his brother and number two, Mohammed Sinwar, instantly becomes Israel's main public enemy. Above all, the battle won on the ground does not guarantee winning the war, if Israel does not quickly design a plan for the aftermath, considering a political solution for Gaza. It is up to Netanyahu to show that he is not only a war leader, but a statesman.
Or in Switzerland, where the leading daily Neue Zürcher Zeitung, the Sinwar death battled for top honors with Europe’s fractured migrant crisis:
Israel kills Hamas leader Sinwar: The mastermind of the October 7 massacre was apparently discovered by accident … Sinwar was widely known in the world.
Some evidence of how transient this triumph may turn out came from the X page of Grand Mufti Ahmad bin Hamad Al-Khalili of Oman, addressing his 570,000 followers:
As Elana DeLozier, founder of The Sage Institute for Foreign Affairs, observed on the Gulf2000 news group which she leads: “This cleric is one to watch these days.”
And then there’s …. rain
More of it than France, for one, ever wanted….at least a part of every day since our arrival in Paris….and for our paying members below, a sense of just how bad it could become and its root cause(s)….
Plus the horrific plight of a 48-year-old Saudi cartoonist, Al Hazza, who’s faces 23 more years in a Saudi Arabian prison simply for expressing himself … (shades of Jamal Khashoggi?)
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