TWTW: The World This Week #125 + Unleashed Memoir #7

All bets are off: views of TrumpWorld approaching....Elon & Alice: what the L?...LePen: an Unleashed Memoir...Other battlegrounds...Greenback surging...& for our paid: bananas from Ecuador & Cartoons!

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.

To emphasize, we cover lots of ground….So, you may not want to read it all, but it's all here for you!

If your preferred delivery is audio, we’ve debuted, for our (lightly) paid members, a new Unleashed Audio version read by the author with a link below the fold!

How others see America

All bets, all pledges are off

Remember the candidate who was determined to avoid American involvements in any foreign war, who wanted to avoid committing a single US soldier, sailor, marine or airman to a single battle abroad. The same individual who, innumerable media around the world are reminding readers and viewers persistently today that he had promised an end to the war in Ukraine, bring all hostages home from Gaza—all in the first 24 hours of his reign? Well, maybe not so firm, these pledges today.

Our SubStack colleagues at La Matinale Européenne were most direct:

The European Union is on the floor, stunned by the violence of the blows dealt by the next American president. It is not yet “brain dead”, but the silence of the institutions and the weakness of the reactions to the attacks launched by the leader of an “ally and friend” country against European democracies and the inviolability of their borders is terrible.

Europeans were preparing for turbulence if Donald Trump returned to the White House, but they were expecting a confrontation on the economic front, not on politics and diplomacy. Ursula von der Leyen and Antonio Costa are not in the same league as the new American president. Donald Trump is behaving like Russia's Vladimir Putin and the [European] Union is not ready for a showdown.

Donald Trump does not hold Europeans in high esteem. They know this and they reciprocate. They consider him vindictive and protectionist. They were therefore preparing for a transactional relationship. They discover an unrestrained and expansionist leader, ready to sweep aside all the rules that prevent him from making the United States great again….

Trump has made no secret of wanting to be “a dictator”, like the “Russian Tsar” Vladimir Putin, the “Emperor of China” Xi Jinping and the “Turkish Sultan” Recep Tayyip Erdogan, qualifiers used by the former head of European diplomacy Josep Borrell.

^{Vadot (France): Geography lesson of Professor Trump}

“Europe needs to wake up and understand that Trump doesn’t care about Ukraine and would be more than happy to sit down with Putin, Xi and their ilk to divide the world between the great powers. Putin gets Ukraine, Trump gets Greenland, Canada, the Panama Canal, and Xi gets Taiwan,” argues British historian Timothy Garton Ash. “The return of Lebensraum to the White House: welcome 2025,” grumbles Gilles Gressani, editor of Le Grand Continent magazine….The concept was used to justify the expansionist policy of Nazi Germany, particularly on the Eastern Front.

Going even further, Eddy Wax pointed out in Politico Brussels Playbook:

The conversation in Brussels has swiftly moved from “Will Donald Trump defend Europe?” to “Will Donald Trump invade it?”

A year ago, we revealed Trump had reportedly said he’d “never” come to Europe’s aid if it was attacked. As recently as late December the talk in town was all about whether European security guarantees for Ukraine would be worth a centime without U.S. backing. Come 2025, the threat of invasion is coming not only from Russia, but seemingly from Trump’s own desire to take over mineral-rich Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark.

Trump’s refusal in a press conference Tuesday to rule out using military force to get his way triggered furious responses from the French and German governments….

But overnight, Mike Waltz (tapped to be Trump’s national security adviser) and his nominee for Ukraine and Russia envoy Keith Kellogg both seemed to double down on the Greenland rhetoric in separate Fox News interviews….

And in Greenland, not to mention Denmark, preparations seem already to be underway….

But for the BBC, what it calls "the nuclear option" is the worst of all…

Essentially, it wouldn't be hard for the US to take control, given that they already have bases and plenty of troops in Greenland….Any use of military force by Washington would create an international incident.

"If they invade Greenland, they invade Nato," says Elisabet Svane, chief political correspondent for Politiken newspaper. "So that's where it stops. Article 5 would have to be triggered. And if a Nato country invades Nato then there's no Nato."

Ulrik Gad, a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies, says Trump sounds like Chinese President Xi Jinping talking about Taiwan or Russia's Vladimir Putin talking about Ukraine.

"He's saying it's legitimate for us to take this piece of land," he says. "If we take him really seriously this is a bad omen for the whole of the Western alliance."

Or as Le Monde finally concluded:

What the L ?

Meanwhile, Elon Musk and Alice Weidel, leader of Germany's far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, appear to have quite a lot in common, far beyond the shared second letter of their names. As the BBC's Berlin correspondent Jessica Parker reported:

Elon Musk took his endorsement of Germany's far-right party to the next level on Thursday, hosting a live chat with its frontwoman, Alice Weidel.

The 74-minute conversation ranged across energy policy, German bureaucracy, Adolf Hitler, Mars and the meaning of life.

The world's richest man unequivocally urged Germans to back Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in forthcoming elections.

It's the tech billionaire's latest controversial foray into European politics.

There'd been a considerable build-up to this discussion as Elon Musk faced accusations of meddling in Germany's snap election.

But the interview, conducted in English, was arguably as much a chance for the AfD to reach international audiences via Musk's X platform.

Knowing of his close relationship with Donald Trump, Alice Weidel made sure to express her support for the US president-elect and his team.

She insisted her party was "conservative" and "libertarian" but had been "negatively framed" by mainstream media as extremist.

Sections of the AfD have been officially classed as right-wing extremist by German authorities.

A BBC News investigation last year found connections between some party figures and far-right networks, while one leading light on the party's hard right, Björn Höcke, was fined last year for using a banned Nazi phrase—though he denied doing so knowingly.

During the conversation, Weidel declared that Hitler had in fact been a "communist", despite the notable anti-communism of the Nazi leader, who invaded the Soviet Union. "He wasn't a conservative," she said. "He wasn't a libertarian. He was this communist, socialist guy."

On other matters, she and Musk chimed—and at times giggled—over Germany's infamous bureaucracy, its "crazy" abandonment of nuclear power, the need for tax cuts, free speech and "wokeness"….

The AfD, which also opposes Berlin's weapons aid to Ukraine, is polling second in Germany, with a snap federal election scheduled for 23 February.

However, it won't be able to take power as other parties won't work with it. That hasn't stopped Elon Musk from hailing Weidel as the "leading candidate to run Germany".

Louis Lecomte of France's Le Figaro is more direct with the stakes from Elon's perspective:

Elon Musk's new passion is geopolitics.

Armed with his fortune, his influence over Donald Trump and his social network X, the richest man in the world destabilizes Europe with his outbursts, to the benefit of his industrial interests.

How others view the World

Speaking of leading candidates—and interests….

When a leading figure "disappears" from the French scene, this event is inevitably marked by the Elysée palace with a eulogy from the President of the Republic. At the death this week of Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the far-right Front Nationale, this was clearly a difficult duty—but a necessary one for Emmanuel Macron, who relishes his role as "president for all of France"……

A historic figure of the far right, [Le Pen] played a role in the public life of our country for almost seventy years, which is now the subject of the judgment of History. The President of the Republic expresses his condolences to his family and loved ones.

The leading French daily, Le Monde, pointed out a further reality with respect to the party of Le Pen, as renamed today:

For the National Rally, the death of Jean-Marie Le Pen makes it acceptable again.

The far-right party's leaders paid unreserved tribute to the co-founder of the National Front, ignoring his racist and anti-Semitic statements.

A key member of his family is his daughter, Marine Le Pen, who has taken over the party's leadership role and candidacy for the presidency of France which her father sought with no more success beginning a half century ago.

Unleashed Memoir: I first met Jean-Marie Le Pen….

It was in November 1984, when his career was just taking off, that my piece for the CBS Evening News marked his first appearance on any American network television.

For weeks, we trailed Le Pen across France, but two moments stuck out as I've chronicled for my memoir-in-progress and here as Unleashed Memoir…..

We first met Le Pen as we followed a march he was leading for 1.3 miles from the Place de Clichy to the Mairie (town hall) of the 18^th arrondissement at the entrance to the Metro named for Jules Joffrin, another firebrand French politico of the 19th century. The following Saturday, I took an Air France flight to Geneva, then motored across the border to the French village of Annecy, dropped in on a Le Pen press conference that evening, overnighted at the magnificent Auberge du Père Bise overlooking the pristine Lake Annecy, then met the CBS camera crew when they came down from Paris the next morning on the TGV. Our destination was a sprawling white canvas tent on a grassy plain, where Le Pen held a vast gathering of supporters. I can only describe it as a Trump-style revival meeting, thousands of his faithful packed to the walls, screaming his name, throwing themselves at him in ecstasy as he entered, arms outstretched—beaming and sweating as he pranced down the aisle. All this is perhaps best conveyed here by my CBS profile, introduced by anchor Mort Dean….

The Script:

They call this la France profonde, deep France, the French version of Middle America. It's also Le Pen country. Jean-Marie Le Pen, the first new face on France's national scene in a decade, a politician of the right…an ardent admirer of Ronald Reagan. His rise in the polls has been astonishing. From a handful, a year ago, now a quarter of the French electorate say they sympathize with what he stands for. His convictions, he says, run to free enterprise and less government. [Screaming to his throng]: "I prefer French to foreigners, French to Europeans, Europeans to westerners, westerners to the rest of the world."

The target of his attacks is France's growing immigrant community. In a nation of high unemployment and economic malaise, immigrants are often blamed by the average Frenchman for seizing jobs and for drugs, violence, and a deteriorating standard of life. It's to this perception of a nation awash with Africans and Arabs that Le Pen appeals.

LE PEN [interview]: We don't want to see this European continent submerged, because this submergence is to the detriment of our people and also to the detriment of the Third World, which needs a Europe that is powerful, intelligent, generous. When the goose that lays the golden egg is killed, you don't get any more eggs.

Somehow wherever Le Pen goes, violence is not far behind. There is a range of extremist groups and individuals who march with Le Pen. Some want to return to the French monarchy, others with leather jackets and ready fists, want to return to their concept of law and order at any cost.

MICHEL PINTON [UDF/center right party head]: There is hatred, among Le Pen followers against immigrants in France, which could be the wellspring of something very dangerous.

Le Pen is keenly sensitive about his image. Years ago, he shed his sinister-looking eyepatch, changed his hair color, and cleaned up his language. Still when satirized on French television this year, Le Pen came off as a vampire—with Nazi overtones. Infuriated, he took the puppet's creator, Stéphane Collaro, to court. The court ordered a change. Now, Le Pen appears as a little Breton peasant girl, with a vicious overbite.

Politically, no one's really figured out Le Pen. He'll tell you he's from the same school as Margaret Thatcher or Ronald Reagan. His critics warn he's a racist, even a fascist. Whatever he is, there's no French politician today whose strength is rising like Jean-Marie Le Pen's.

Further reflections…

I will add only that my final interview with Le Pen took place at his sprawling suburban home in St. Cloud. At the very end, as the crew was packing up the gear, he and I were chatting and a 12-year-old with blond pigtails dashed into the room and threw herself on her father. Le Pen, beaming, turned to me and said, "I’d like you to meet the first female president of France, eventually, my daughter, Marine." Not yet, but quite possibly her time has still not passed.

Other battlegrounds

There are other politico-military challenges awaiting Donald Trump in barely a week's time. Wasn't Gaza and the return of Israeli hostages by the time of his first day in power near the top of Trump's global agenda? Well, at home in Israel, Prime Minister Netanyahu doesn't seem even to be waiting around, as Haaretz military analyst Amos Harel reported:

This has been a week of escalation. But not in the Gaza Strip, though soldiers continue to die there in the name of a goal that hasn't been clear for a long time; not in Lebanon, where Israel is threatening to remain beyond the 60 days agreed on in the cease-fire deal; and not even in Iran, despite headlines about increasingly close American-Israeli coordination on the possibility of attacking its nuclear facilities.

Rather, the main escalation, and the one that really worries the political and defense establishment, was the one between the prime and defense ministers, on one hand, and the Israel Defense Forces chief of staff on the other.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz want to accelerate the departure (or even dismissal) of IDF Chief of Staff Herzl Halevi so they can portray him as solely to blame for the failures that led to Hamas' massacre in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, and whitewash Netanyahu’s own role. At the same time, they are waging a holding action against the appointment of a state commission of inquiry

At the same time, separately, Haaretz reported:

Defense Minister Israel Katz instructed the IDF to present him with a plan for a "decisive victory" over Hamas in Gaza in case the group does not release the hostages by the time U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated on January 20, his office said.

· The statement said Israel "must not be dragged into a war of attrition in Gaza," adding that Katz told the IDF to "identify the issues that might complicate" eradicating Hamas, "such as humanitarian aid and other matters," and to allow the government "to make the necessary decisions."

· Katz emphasized that "a political solution for Gaza is not relevant…because no Arab nation or other authority will take responsibility for managing the Strip's civilian life as long as Hamas has not been completely crushed."

A later Haaretz report detailed the opposition’s perspective:

• Qatari newspaper Al-Araby Al-Jadeed reported that a Hamas source said the group proposed to postpone decisions on disputed points of the deal with Israel to future stages of the agreement, in order to conclude agreed-upon parts of the deal without interruption. The source also said Egypt agreed to Israel's demands on IDF deployment along the Philadelphi corridor, and approved postponing talks on a complete withdrawal from the area until after the first stage of the deal.
  

• Hamas spokesperson Jihad Taha also told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed that the outcome of the ongoing negotiations is "in Israel's hands," and that the group is awaiting a response. He added that Hamas is seeking a complete end to all hostilities.

And then that other war Trump's pledge to end?

Frustration and determination appear to be spreading in equal measure in Moscow these days as the Biden era draws to a close and the war in Ukraine drags on and on. The Institute for the Study of War reports:

· Russian elites and high-ranking security officials are reportedly frustrated with Russian President Vladimir Putin's efforts to wage a full-scale war in Ukraine with half measures and are increasingly concerned with Putin's timeline to end the war.

· High-ranking Russian security officials appear to be assessing that Russia needs to intensify its war in Ukraine rather than seek an exit via negotiations.

· Russian elites' reported diagnosis of the main problem with Russia's conduct of the war is inaccurate, as Russia's failure to restore maneuver to the battlefield—not a shortage of manpower—is the main factor causing Russia's relatively slow rate of advance.

· [The Russian opposition news service in exile] Meduza's report indicates that Russia's security elite—like Putin himself—is uninterested in a negotiated and peaceful resolution to the war in the near future.

· Russian officials continue to indicate that the Kremlin intends to further militarize the Russian government and Russian society in the long term.

Two sources close to the presidential administration noted that the Russian government currently lacks a clear vision for post-war Russia and that an end to the war could be "critical" for the presidential administration if the administration cannot identify a clear narrative and political framework for Russian society after the war. A source in the Russian presidential administration told Meduza that Russian elites, primarily high-ranking security officials, are increasingly frustrated with not having "enough" manpower and materiel to conduct the war and assess that Putin needs to conduct "mobilization" and completely transition Russian society and the Russian economy to a wartime footing.

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And then there's the greenback

Its value soaring, the Euro's value plunging, it's a priceless moment, at least until Trump tariffs kick in, for anyone wanting to buy anything from the Eurozone using dollars. As Euronews reported:

As the euro struggles near its lowest levels in over two years, the looming shadow of renewed Trump tariffs, diverging monetary policies, and transatlantic geopolitical shifts raises a tantalizing question: will the euro drop below parity with the dollar in the coming months?

The parity question: How close are we?

The euro fell to 1.022 on January 10, hitting lows last seen in October 2022, as stronger-than-expected US employment growth in December bolstered the dollar amid expectations of tight Federal Reserve policies. This positions the euro perilously close to parity, a psychologically significant threshold.

These levels mirror those of summer 2022, when the euro not only hit but also broke below parity, plunging as low as $0.95 by September.

Back then, an aggressive start to the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes, the European Central Bank’s (ECB) delayed response, and a European natural gas crisis created a perfect storm for the currency.

Could a similar set of pressures push the euro below parity once again in early 2025? Despite the euro's significant weakening since Donald Trump’s election victory in November 2024, the full impact of his administration’s economic policies may yet unfold.

Among Trump’s key priorities are sweeping tariff hike—up to 60% on Chinese goods and 10-20% on imports from elsewhere, including Europe— coupled with tax cuts for US corporations and individuals. Moreover, Trump’s demands for increased European NATO spending and his skepticism of transatlantic commitments have created new geopolitical tensions.

All these policies could harm the euro.

What’s new on ‘paid’?

And now, for our most highly valued, but lightly paid members, we'll conclude with a look at the world's largest banana exporter [hint: it’s Ecuador] and just what can happen when geopolitics gets in the way of the breakfast table….

Not to mention a link to the Unleashed Audio version of this week's TWTW. And we'll wind up with a bonus gallery from cartoonists around the world on events today and the transition to 2025….