Putinesque upset in Romania ...Trump, a world of worry…leaves China resurgent…COP on the rocks…Netanyahu beached…Ukraine battling…for our paid: Singapore ‘cuisine’ & cartoonists tremble for Trump
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.
This week, back in Paris….from a two-week swing through Romania, Moldova, even Transnistria [think great Russian-style caviar without sanctions!]
Late word….a stunning upset from Romania
Before we begin, an update. Overnight, far-right independent candidate, fervent admirer of Vladimir Putin and all he stands for and opponent of NATO, has surged into the lead in Romania’s presidential elections, sending tremors across Europe, though he will still face a runoff with a far more moderate opponents in two weeks.
As London’s Guardian headlined Monday morning:
Scroll down for further details and analysis….meanwhile….
How others see America
It’s difficult to overstate the panic—privately or more rarely publicly—expressed abroad by the choices made by Donald Trump for his new cabinet, now all but complete, and senior White House aides. In some quarters there is publicly expressed resignation—we just need to deal with him and his utter craziness for the next four years since this is, after all, what the American people chose (though hardly by an overwhelming majority). Certainly, in public forums like the German Marshall Fund convened in the halls of the Quai d’Orsay or in interviews like the one given by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to the great Munich daily Süddeutsche Zeitung last week:
You spoke to Donald Trump on the phone. Will the US remain a supporter, or will the Europeans have to step in?
That was—perhaps surprisingly—a very detailed and good conversation with the designated US president. We talked at length about Ukraine. It would be inappropriate to describe the details of this conversation, but I got the impression that he has a more differentiated position than is often assumed here.
You are not afraid of a deal over Ukraine's head between Trump and Putin?
At least there was no indication of this in the conversation.
But it is only the most naïve—as I do hesitate to label my friend David Ignatius, whose Washington Post column surfaced a series of public sessions convened by the German Marshall Fund—who could possibly accept that this is how Europeans or Asians, Africans, or Latinos really feel when they come up against the hard reality of Trump 47.
Certainly that was the case for any number of individuals—including a leader of Romania’s moderate right Liberal Party (the equivalent of a Mitt Romney Republican)—who I encountered in Bucharest. In each case, they did express the view that “the American people have chosen.” That’s before they continued to express unbridled fear over the consequences —in each case abjuring me not to identify them in print or anywhere else.
If there was a single commentator or cartoonist who best captured the moment anywhere in the world this week, however, it was the remarkable Jordanian-Palestinian artist Emad Hajjaj, born in the West Bank and member of Paris-based collective Cartooning for Peace. His caricature of what’s shaping up to be the menagerie of a Trump cabinet was published on the front page of French daily Le Monde—a happy meal of mediocrity but healthy for no one.
A portfolio of other cartoonists’ takes on TrumpWorld America may be found at the end below for our valued paid subscribers.
Eric Gujer, editor-in-chief of the Swiss daily Neue Zürcher Zeitung, in his column “Der andere Blic,” by contrast appears to be trying to reassure his Schweitzerdeutsch readers:
The American Constitution, which was created in the Enlightenment era, has a strong monarchical character. Trump is taking advantage of the powers granted to him.
However, other presidents have done that before. The Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson got America involved in the Vietnam War by deceiving the Senate. The media even accused his Republican successor of an "Imperial Presidency": the alleged emperor Richard Nixon as the reincarnation of Nero and Caligula. Some things never change in Washington.
It doesn't take any prophetic gifts to say that Hegseth will fail in the Pentagon. No defense minister has ever bitten off more than he can chew with this mammoth agency. The apparatus beats the person. Putin apologist Tulsi Gabbard, whom Trump nominated as coordinator of the intelligence services, will also find this out. In Washington, no one has a greater life of their own than the shadowy world of the services. Moreover, many candidates will fail in the Senate hearings. That is also part of American democracy.
There is currently a boom in forecasts that accurately predict the misdeeds of the next administration. Perhaps things will turn out differently. All governments make mistakes anyway, whether Republican or Democratic.
Still Herr Gujer does suggest some caveats:
One of [the media’s] weapons is—to paraphrase Martin Walser—the fascism club.
The fact that Trump is unlikely to organize a second Holocaust does not invalidate the thesis. You do not have to build concentration camps to be a fascist. Fascism has evolved over the hundred years of its existence.
Don’t forget Africa….
…..where a kaleidoscope of views, mirroring publicly and privately many in the West, as veteran African observer and political risk analyst Chris O. Ogunmodede observed on his SubStack page Penkelemesi [Yorubanisation of the phrase, "peculiar mess"] :
African leaders were quick to join their global peers in congratulating Trump on his victory. A collection of the continent’s heads of state and government, from Nigeria’s Bola Tinubu and Zimbabwe’s Emmerson Mnangagwa to Djibouti’s Ismail Omar Guelleh and Rwanda’s Paul Kagame, sent their well-wishes and expressed their desire for close cooperation with his incoming administration…
Gabon is something of a wildcard given its broad ties with a range of non-Western partners like Morocco and China and the relative newness of the regime of Gen. Brice Oligui Nguema, who deposed longtime President Ali Bongo Ondimba last year in a military coup. As for South Africa, it is arguably the sharpest African thorn in Washington’s side given its prominence, spats with the U.S. on issues linked to Russia’s war in Ukraine and the genocide case it is pursuing against Israel at the International Court of Justice.
As NPR reported in April 2018…”In his first meeting at the White House with a sub-Saharan African leader, President Trump said controversial remarks he reportedly made, in which he referred to some developing nations as "shithole countries," didn't come up. Trump, however, didn't deny making the comment, and as Nigeria's president, Muhammadu Buhari, chuckled, Trump said at a news conference Monday, ‘You do have some countries that are in very bad shape — and very tough places to live in.’ Trump also chose not to apologize…..
Ogunmodede continued this week:
The leaders of these countries sought to appeal to Trump’s well-known appreciation for flattery in their congratulatory messages….
Many African leaders and senior officials likely welcomed Trump’s return to the White House based on a belief that it would mean a reduced U.S. emphasis on matters like human rights, anti-corruption and LGTBQ issues.
This assumption might explain why the speaker of Uganda’s parliament said that sanctions imposed on her by the Biden administration were “gone” after Trump’s win.
But Le Monde columnist Alain Fraichon, himself a former Washington correspondent for the paper, wrote this week with a soupçon of nostalgia for the past before the arrival of the “the latest gravedigger of the liberal international order”:
For a short while, the Joe Biden years allowed us to dream. The pax Americana was not quite dead. In foreign policy, the president was returning to familiar paths. Thus, America still cherished its alliances, in Europe as well as in the Asia-Pacific. It still believed that promoting democracy was in line with its “historical destiny” and its strategic and economic interests – a happy concordance.
So we were starting again "as before." In the name of defending the "liberal international order," we were going to oppose Moscow's expansionism in Europe and Beijing's imperialism in the Pacific zone. It was at this price that the United States would maintain its predominance in world affairs—what the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, wrongly call "Western hegemony".
Let us put forward another interpretation. Donald Trump's second election brings Biden's term back to parenthesis status. A short remission. The heavy trend is Trump, not the return to the hopes of the early 1990s that the elegant octogenarian Democrat was able to embody.
Sadly, it is the very thought a senior French diplomat expressed to me back in January 2021 when Biden was being sworn in and hope sprang eternal: It was Biden who was the interregnum, Trump the continuum.
In Asia, Lin Suling, senior columnist and counterpart of Fraichon at the Singapore daily The Straits Times, observed, while painting with a somewhat divergent tablet:
Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s phonecall with Trump was a masterclass in diplomacy, as The Straits Times’ Indonesia correspondent Hariz Baharudin puts it in a commentary last week. Oddly, however, his proactive approach to call Trump and offer to meet him in person met with some public eyebrow raising, even criticism.
Yet a dispassionate analysis would suggest Mr Prabowo is simply taking a leaf from history, from the era of great Asian statesmen. Strong personal relationships have reinforced and anchored bilateral cooperation, placing ties on an even keel since the days of Mr Lee Kuan Yew, president Sukarno and Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad….
With the appointment of neoconservatives who support a strong US military—Marco Rubio as secretary of state, Mike Waltz as national security adviser—a second Trump era will likely see military might used to deter war….
Therein lies the fundamental difference between Trump and Mr Biden’s foreign policy: Trump does not hesitate in flexing American might to get others to back down. His track record speaks for itself: no major war broke out during the first Trump administration…..
And in this new period, nobody wants to be on America’s naughty list
Not the least China itself, though as Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post’s Orange Wang reported from Beijing:
Chinese President Xi Jinping delivered a stern warning to US President Joe Biden, widely perceived to be intended for Donald Trump’s incoming administration. The underlying message was loud and clear: do not try to seek regime change in China.
Xi outlined Beijing’s core stance, expectations and “guardrails” the Chinese leadership has mapped out for relations between the two powers during talks with the lame-duck American leader in Lima, Peru.
He said that “democracy and human rights” and “China’s path and system” were two of the “red lines” that “must not be challenged”.
The message was meant for someone not in the room, US president-elect Donald Trump, who has been assembling a national security team full of China hawks.
“Xi sent a clear message to Donald Trump and his team that Trump must avoid any moves to … push China towards democracy [or] undermine the Communist Party’s grip on power,” said Deng Yuwen, former deputy editor of Study Times, the newspaper of the cadre-training Central Party School. He said the Chinese leader was warning that Beijing would retaliate if the US touched those areas, while also setting an agenda for the future of Chinese-American relations.
Elections 2024: Romania, Uruguay
Romania on the edge
Updating with the latest shocking news from Bucharest…..
The shadow of Vladimir Putin was hanging over a bitterly-fought election for the new president of Romania. With 99.99% of the vote tabulated, the stunning results showed far-right Cǎlin Georgescu with a clearly unbridgeable lead, but with two more moderate candidates—progressive candidate Elena Lasconi, a Romanian mayor, ahead of Socialist prime minister Marcel Ciolacu—battling to face Georgescu in a two-person runoff in two weeks.
Lasconi’s lead has been widening from 44 votes to 2,297 with 99.99% counted. Romania’s G24Media observed this would be the first time since the violent overthrow of Communist leader Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989 that a candidate of the Socialist Party—successor to the communists—had not had a candidate in a presidential runoff.
As Bucharest’s Dig24.ro put it earl Monday morning:
It should be noted that Georgescu’s stunning upset may prove to be similar to that of other far-right European candidates such as France’s Marine Le Pen who have surged in a first round, then with a similarly-sized total in a two-person second round, failed in their bid for the presidency. Combining the votes of Lasconi, who early-on pledged to endorse Ciolacu in a second round if she had lost out, nd in turn asked for his, plus the votes of other moderates including Nicolae Ciucǎ, leader of the moderate right Liberal Party, could defeat Georgescu. Still, it was a frightening signal for the rest of Europe.
As the BBC put it early Monday:
Georgescu, who belongs to no party, has sworn to end what he calls subservience to the European Union and Nato, especially on support for Ukraine. He has condemned the Nato ballistic missile defence shield [based] in Deveselu, Romania.
First exit polls, minutes after balloting ended at 9 pm in Bucharest (2 pm in Washington), had showed another right-wing, anti-Ukranian candidate George Simeon in fourth spot, missing the two-person runoff.
Socialist prime minister Marcel Ciolacu, as expected, came out on top in exit polls, with Lasconi, a Romanian mayor, cruising to second with two right-wing candidates dividing that vote—the firm opponent of continuing aid to Ukraine and Trump-allied candidate George Simion in a distant fourth spot. Georgescu is avowedly pro-Putin and indeed proto-fascist who has openly supported views of the 1930s-vintage Iron Guard and Unsurprisingly, Simion charged immediately that public opinion “was manipulated by toxic polls.”
Theodor Baconschi (a former Romanian foreign minister and former conservative politician) wrote on Facebook:
The promotion on Tik-Tok of this Călin Georgescu, an ultra-doubious character, with explicitly legionary positions, seems like a hybrid war in real time. Something is very rotten in this sudden, artificially pumped-up "rise".
LATE WORD: And then all hell broke loose in the overnight and early morning hours.
As Andelman Unleashed discovered during a swing last week through Romania and Moldova, which recently underwent its own bitter, closely-fought presidential election that may determine that country’s future path into the European Union, the stakes were equally high here. Here too, there a vast Romanian diaspora appeared to play a decisive role on Sunday, in the presidential runoff on December 8, and could continue to play a similar role in the critical parliamentary balloting December 1. Some 950 polling stations were fixed around the world. But the diaspora vote is not included in the first exit polls.
As Anda Bolaga of The Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) observed:
In 2024, a year packed with presidential, parliamentary, local, and European elections, Romanian voters face a familiar political landscape dominated by established interests. Despite the high stakes, the prospect of meaningful change remains frustratingly out of reach.
Romanians will choose leaders who will shape the country’s economic future and navigate complex geopolitical challenges, including Romania’s role in influencing European Union (EU) policies on critical issues such as energy security, defense, and the next Commission’s push for strategic autonomy.
Above all a victory by nationalist icon George Simion or especially Georgescu could well have meant yet another EU and NATO member-nation falling in step behind Hungary, Slovakia, Italy, and increasingly even Germany where the far-right is surging. And all seem to be lining right up behind Donald Trump as a paragon of leadership. Incidentally, it is unclear the role Simion’s full-throated endorsement of Trump played in his distant fourth-place finish on Sunday.
Uruguay….what difference?
As The Guardian put it:
Centre-left opposition candidate Yamandu Orsi secured victory in Uruguay’s presidential election, official results showed on Sunday, with 97% of votes tallied, ousting the conservative governing coalition and making the South American nation the latest to rebuke the incumbent party in a year of landmark elections.
….or as Reuters put it, this was a “presidential race between moderates [in] laid-back Uruguay, known for its beaches, legalized marijuana and stability…a small nation of 3.4 million people.”
A welcome respite as Andelman Unleashed winds toward the end of quite a fraught year chronicling elections across the globe.
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How others see the World
China resurgent…
If there was any doubt about how other major powers see their opportunities with the transfer of power in Washington, none is so clearly apparent as China—particularly in Latin America, as Michael Stott reported in London’s Financial Times:
Two recent photographs tell the story of the battle for primacy between the US and China in one of the world’s most resource-rich regions. In both images, President Xi Jinping stands front and centre, flanked by his Latin American host. President Joe Biden, on the other hand, lingers near the end of the back row in one picture and is absent from the other.
Naturally, there are official explanations. In the first picture at last week’s Apec summit in Peru, leaders stood in alphabetical order, which favoured China over a rival superpower starting with U. In the second, shot at this week’s G20 meeting in Rio de Janeiro, US diplomats said the group photo was taken early, before Biden had arrived. Yet the summit photographs serve as metaphors for the eclipse of the US by China in Latin America, a region that Washington used to call its backyard.
The superpower contest matters because the resources at stake are vast. Latin America has 57 per cent of global lithium reserves, 37 per cent of the copper, nearly a fifth of the oil and almost a third of the world’s fresh water and primary forest. Keenly aware of the region’s importance, Xi added a state visit to his schedule in Peru last week, heading a delegation of several hundred Chinese businesspeople and inaugurating the first phase of what will be a $3.5bn giant port intended to revolutionise shipping from Latin America’s Pacific coast to China. Biden, by contrast, announced nine Black Hawk helicopters for a $65mn anti-drug programme and a donation of second-hand trains from California for the Lima metro system….
In Brazil, the region’s biggest economy, it was a similar story. Xi was received with full honours in Brasília for a state visit after the G20, while Biden was flying home. The US leader visited the Amazon on his way to Rio and announced a $50mn donation to a conservation fund, while Xi was expected to focus on multibillion-dollar Chinese investments.
Another conference into overtime … and a bitter taste
The COP29 environmental talks went into overtime and overdrive this weekend as a number of countries simply walked out of the global effort to preserve the planet in some fashion compatible with human existence. For the rest, it was a long Saturday night until finally, it was gaveled to a close with, as Le Monde put it:
Meanwhile, the shadow of Trump, one of whose earliest actions when he arrived in office in 2017 was simply to pull the US out of the agreement entirely, hung over the question of just where even the pared-down $300 billion a year for developing countries might be coming from. Heng Kim Song, cartoonist for Lianhe Zaobao, the largest daily newspaper in Singapore, has an idea of just where the entire COP process may be heading:
As UN Environment Program Executive Director Inger Andersen put it: “Climate crunch time is here. COP29 has delivered a hard-fought deal.” Let’s see what sticks.
Ukraine…Russia…nukes?
Lots of discussion of all these options since Joe Biden unleashed the hounds and allowed Ukraine to use American ATACMS missiles deep into Russian territory. But overlooked in most accounts was a new and hardly unwelcome reality in Kyiv, as Angelica Evans explained for the Institute for the Study of War [ISW] :
The Ukrainian Defense of Pokrovsk Has Compelled Russia to Change Its Approach in Eastern Ukraine
Russian forces launched offensive operations intended to seize Pokrovsk in Donetsk Oblast during Spring 2024 at the moment of greatest constraints on Ukraine's manpower and materiel following the suspension of US assistance in Fall 2023. Russian forces have not taken Pokrovsk after eight months of grinding but consistent advances in western Donetsk Oblast. Ukrainian defensive operations, based on the integration of successful Ukrainian drone innovators and operators with ground forces combined with constraints on Russia's strategic and operational-level manpower and materiel reserves have forced the Russian military command to abandon its original campaign design of a frontal assault on Pokrovsk….
Russian advances have come at very high costs in troops and armored vehicles and months of time. Ukrainian drone operations continue to play a critical role in constraining Russian mechanized maneuver and preventing Russian forces from fully exploiting Ukraine's ongoing manpower constraints. Ukraine’s ability to stave off the seizure of Pokrovsk thus far and force the Russian military to divert its efforts to advances in arguably the least operationally significant sector of the frontline is a positive indicator of Ukraine’s ability to continue fighting this war despite the challenges Ukraine faces and the setbacks it has suffered.
Ukrainian drone operations continue to be the backbone of Ukraine's war effort, particularly in western Donetsk Oblast where successful Ukrainian drone operations contributed to forcing the Russian military command to reorient its primary operational effort for 2024.
And then there’s Gaza, Lebanon, and Netanyahu….
In the wake of the International Criminal Court issuing arrest warrants for war crimes, for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, it would seem their vacation destinations might be shrinking, though the US, not having signed with the ICC, Washington wouldn’t have to arrest them if they should show up for a swim at Mar-a-Lago [though Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his country, as a founder of thre ICC would execute the warrant and Britain suggested the same outcome]….In his turn, Algerian cartoonist Ali Dilem chronicled Netanyahu’s ire:
Arrest warrants from the ICC: “It’s a crime against impunity!”
In its banner headline on p. 1, Le Monde called it “the clap of thunder” adding that “for the first time since creation of the ICC in 1998, political leaders have been indicted against the will of their Western allies.”
The tech giant has invested approximately 1.48 trillion Rupiah (around $95 million) of the promised 1.71 trillion Rupiah, resulting in a shortfall of about 230 billion Rupiah ($14.75 million).
Well now, it seems, Apple’s agreed to invest some $100 million in Indonesia, but as Indonesian news agency Antara reported, still not enough—they want more:
The Industry Ministry expects the American technology giant Apple to invest more than US$100 million in Indonesia. "From the government’s perspective, of course, we want this investment to be larger," ministry spokesperson Febri Hendri Antoni Arif said. A larger investment would facilitate the development of Indonesia's domestic manufacturing sector, helping the country become a part of Apple’s global supply chain, he emphasized.
The Indonesian government has also invited Apple to establish a research and development center for Industry 4.0, which is focused on artificial intelligence development.
And the beat goes on.
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