TWTW: The World This Week / Episode #26
A balloon’s-eye view from Europe and beyond … a State of the Union … Zelensky's plea … an exciting live event … Turkey’s travails and Erdogan’s challenge … finally, a cartoon from Kotkot
This weekly feature for Andelman Unleashed, explores how the media of other nations are reporting and commenting on the United States, and how they are viewing the rest of the world. And of course, we continue our coverage of every national election….
How others see America
First there’s the balloon
We began last week with one balloon and now there are two, not to mention a flotilla the world had never noticed in the past. So, the concern now is that there is yet another destabilizing reality to cope with in the universe of such forces with the two superpowers, America and China, on some sort of collision course. That’s the view, shared in some respect or another, by a broad swath of media and diplomatic circles around the world. But no better expressed perhaps by columnist Omar Kharoum writing in the Algerian daily El Watan-dz. “Geostrategic struggles divert chances for peace. Dangerous hotbeds of tension [exist] in the world.
In Germany, the Munich-based daily Süddeutsche Zeitung’s George Cadeggianini, whose day job is to edit the children’s pages, observed, “How to get the already battered relations between the USA and China back on track will probably be a balancing act. Or better: a balloon act.” And he took his readers back to “the ancient spy balloon tactic [that] was first used in the American Civil War some 160 years ago. They have a number of advantages over satellites: they're cheap, almost invisible to radar, and both closer and longer. Experts like to compare this to a soccer game: with a lot of luck, a satellite can deliver the picture of the shot on goal, while a balloon delivers the entire half-time—including sound.”
Not surprisingly, Chen Weihua, EU bureau chief for People’s Daily, the organ of the Chinese Communist Party, had his own spin: “Balloon case demonstrates US hysteria vis-à-vis China. The Joe Biden administration's handling of the Chinese balloon case last week was meant to showcase the United States' strategic strength amid fierce attacks by Republicans and the low approval ratings of US officials. But instead, it has shown to the world how immature and irresponsible—indeed hysterical—the US has been in dealing with the case.”
At the same time, Kremlin mouthpiece Russia Today took no time lining up alongside China, commentator Timur Fomenko offering his own conspiracy theory: “Washington is warning its partners about the ‘danger’ of Beijing’s supposed surveillance craft to manufacture consent for more sanctions.”
More broadly, the State of the Union
Many foreign commentators paid close attention to how little attention Biden gave to the balloon, or indeed anything else beyond America’s shores. But in The Times of London, Washington correspondent Hugh Tomlinson, who arrived there two years ago after six years in New Delhi and a decade in the Middle East, focused on “a lively, sometimes combative speech that brought jeers from some on the opposition benches. Biden hailed the accomplishments of his first two years in office and challenged Republicans to work with him to unite the country, rebuild the economy and restore pride to millions of ordinary Americans. Biden, 80, is yet to formally announce that he is running again next year but the speech left no doubt that he will seek a second term in the White House.”
Still, it was quite clear to Tomlinson that despite “furious shouts from the opposition bench,” Biden was intent on “laying out a blueprint for his re-election campaign in 2024,” even to the length of “road testing slogans.” To illustrate the reality of such an effort, The Times appended a most telling chart showing the approval trajectory of other presidents during their terms of office, with Biden pretty squarely in the middle.
A Podcast or Two
On Friday, Andelman Unleashed was invited to appear on Omkar Nikam’s groundbreaking Space, Defence, & Security podcast out of Strasbourg, France. As Nikam observed, “we dissect the latest landscape of international relations, decentralization of global power, and its impact.”
Here’s a link to Episode #1 // Here’s a link to Episode #2
How Others See the World
Zelensky travels west
Talking about power, “Nothing concrete for Zelensky in Brussels,” was the sad little frontpage headline on Friday in the French daily Le Monde as Zelensky was winding up what had debuted as a powerful trip to western Europe—the second time he’s ventured outside his war-torn nation since the start of hostilities nearly a year ago.
A triumphant speech to the House of Commons in London was followed by dinner at the Elysée Palace in Paris with President Emmanuel Macron and German chancellor Olof Scholz who’d flown in from Berlin for the celebratory occasion. But then, as Le Monde’s Philippe Jacqué and Virginie Malingre in Brussels with deputy chief of the international service Philippe Ricard reported, “At the Council of Europe, the Ukrainian president did not win any guarantee of the transfer of airplanes,” meaning specifically the F-16 jet fighters that Zelinsky said were central to winning the war, even containing Russian advances. “The Ukrainian president was received as a hero, but obtained no promises….”
Meloni’s sour grapes
One person who smarted particularly for being left out of the party was Italy’s new neo-fascist prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, who could not understand how Macron could possibly have left her out of his party at the Elysée, suggesting she could certainly have brought her own variety of bonhomie. As Amy Kazmin in Rome and Leila Abboud in Paris wrote in the Financial Times: “Volodymyr Zelensky’s late-night dinner at the Élysée Palace with the leaders of France and Germany has sparked a fresh tiff between Rome and Paris, with Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni calling the hastily organized soirée ‘inappropriate’.
“Meloni said the event in Paris hosted by Macron—to which she was not invited—undermined European solidarity and appeared to be driven by the French leader’s desire to distract from his domestic political woes including unrest over his proposed pension reforms. ‘I believe our strength on this issue is our unity,’ she said in Brussels where she attended an EU summit with Zelensky on Thursday. ‘I understand the pressures of internal politics . . . but there are times when catering to one’s own domestic opinion risks detriment to the cause. I think this was one of those cases.’”
Reports from the front
With the first anniversary of the Russian invasion looming, the Overseas Press Club of America will be conducting a remarkable live event via zoom at 11 am EST on February 22 with three Ukrainian journalists on the front lines in Odessa, the Donbas and Kyiv.
Each will describe how they function under increasingly dire conditions. The three received grants from the OPC in late 2022 to help them continue to do their essential journalistic work. Andelman Unleashed will be moderating the event which will include Alla Koren, editor of the local newspaper “Time. People. Events” in the town of Sarata in the Odesa region, where she has worked for almost 40 years; Alina Kravchenko of Donbas Online, a regional TV and radio company in the Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine; and Gleb Golovchenko, a leader of the Mykolaiv Press Club and president of the Ukrainian Press Clubs Association and is working to provide humanitarian aid to journalists while producing a video series, "War Heroes of the Mykolaiv Region.”
Do register now to receive a zoom link early on February 22
Turkey’s travails
The horrific tragedy in Turkey and Syria following the series of earthquakes has without question moved the world. What is somewhat less apparent has been the potentially seismic shocks it has sent through the Turkish political system and that could have a regional, even global consequences that will extend long after the immediate catastrophe. Last month, Turkey’s supremely confident president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, decreed he was moving forward by a month—from June to May—his nation’s presidential elections where Erdogan had felt himself assured of winning a new five-year term. He has already been ruling the nation for 20 years. Still, to make certain he is re-upped, Erdogan seemed to be counting on the earlier election date to give less time for his disparate and often feuding competition to coalesce around a strategy or a single candidate. Now, he suddenly finds himself with his back to the wall. As Ulrich von Schwerin reported in the Swiss daily Neue Zürcher Zeitung, “The Turkish opposition blames the Erdogan government for the earthquake disaster. As after earlier earthquakes, a debate has broken out in Turkey as to why the government has not invested more in earthquake safety. In particular, the question arises as to what became of the “earthquake tax”.
Le Monde correspondent Nicolas Bourcier observed that the horrific casualties there “could cost Erdogan his re-election in the next presidential ballot scheduled for mid-May. Erdogan knows it. As he arrived on the scene on Wednesday to visit the disaster area in Kahramanmaraş, a city near the epicenter of the earthquake, the Turkish president presented himself as the father of the nation, the only individual capable of ensuring that the victims receive treatment, and the survivors get shelter. In front of a small group of residents of the partly destroyed city, he promised that social housing would be built for all survivors within a year and announced the distribution of 10,000 Turkish pounds (€494) to every affected family. Erdogan also acknowledged that ‘of course, there (were) shortcomings’ in the first hours following the tragedy saying that ‘it's not possible to be ready for a disaster like this,’ but that ‘things are now back on track.’”
An election pledge
In keeping with our pledge to chronicle every national election in every nation this year, Andelman Unleashed will be keeping a close eye indeed on the campaign and the vote in Turkey. Erdogan’s defeat, of course, could substantially shift the dynamic of NATO, removing a key obstacle to the alliance’s enlargement, paving the way for Finland and Sweden to join. And it could remove from the Kremlin’s leading apologist for the Ukraine invasion who has hardly hesitated to put a thumb on the scales for Russia and its efforts to subvert western sanctions that have crippled its war effort.
Meanwhile, stay tuned on Tuesday for election results from Cyprus, Ecuador, and Monaco.
And finally, there’s …. Kotkot
The brilliant Jordanian cartoonist, Kotkot, calls his view of the catastrophic earthquake in Turkey and Syria “Double Standards,” a reference to the world’s sharply bifurcated reaction to the suffering in the two countries. “Most countries provided aid to Turkey and left Syria alone, due to the international sanctions imposed on it,” the artist points out.
Our cartoonist is Morad Kotkot, born in 1997 in Amman, Jordan. He publishes on his pages on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram in the fields of politics, economy, and society. “In addition to working as a journalist I also specialize in labor issues at a Studies Center,” Kotkot says. He is a member of the Cartoon Movement.
Here's how Kotkot sees himself: