TWTW: The World This Week / Episode #5
Brits look at America, Putin seeks friends from the Bund to the Rialto, Poland prays for King Charles, Ukraine tells Germany ‘with friends like these,’ and in Zululand a different royal transition
This weekly feature for Andelman Unleashed, explores how the media of other nations see the United States, and how they’re viewing the rest of the world.
How Others See America
The nation’s narrative
“It is easy to weave an exaggerated narrative—positive or negative—about Joe Biden’s management of the economy,” Britain’s leading news magazine The Economist writes. “Critics can point to the surge in inflation, now running at 8.5%, nearly a four-decade high. Supporters of the president prefer to dwell on America’s full throttled rebound from its covid downturn, especially the creation of millions of new jobs since he took office. America’s economic fortunes will play a big role in determining the outcome of the mid-term elections in November. How much credit or blame does Mr. Biden deserve? His influence should not be overstated. America is far from alone in experiencing both stubbornly high inflation and a big bounce-back in growth.”
But win or lose, their extraordinary election modeling shows, stunningly, that “The Democrats are likely to keep their majority in the Senate.” The Economist’s model shows the “Democrats win majority in 83 out of 100 simulations. Predicted to win 48-55 seats” while the “Republicans win majority in [just] 17 out of 100 simulations, predicted to win 45-52 seats.”
And then there’s crime…
The same magazine, The Economist, on the theory of one hand giveth, the other taketh away, unloads a massive Special Report “Violent crime in America,” and its author, Daniel Knowles (in a rare, bylined piece) cannot resist “looking at what can be done.”
The Economist’s Knowles begins, “In a modest apartment just off the freeway in Creve Coeur, a suburb of St Louis, [where] An’namarie Baker is packing up her son’s possessions. Three weeks earlier, at 3am on July 3rd, Damion was murdered in a litter-strewn car park south of the Busch Stadium, where the Cardinals play baseball.” He was a victim of the “highest murder rate of any big city in America,” St. Louis being passed in lethality only by big cities in Mexico, Venezuela, and South Africa.
Dousing animosity?
The Straits-Times of Singapore finds its veteran Washington correspondent Nirmal Ghosh worrying that “Biden’s appeal to douse animosity among Americans [is being] lost in political din as midterm election hots up.” Riffing on the president’s remarks at his United We Stand summit at the White House Ghosh fears that “amid deep and increasingly toxic political and ideological division, Biden's appeal to the better nature of Americans….is unlikely to cut much ice.”
How Others See the World
Russia seeking friends…. anywhere
The French daily Le Monde headlines, “China to the rescue of the Russian economy, cautious and (self-) interested support.” Writer Nathalie Guibert goes on to point out, “Trade between the two countries has grown strongly since January, particularly in the field of energy. The fear of sanctions, however, convinced the main Chinese banks to limit their financing for the purchase of Russian goods.” The photo Le Monde chooses shows the two, standing side by side after their summit meeting at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. Neither seems especially happy to see the other, but they have little real choice than to appear side by side, two autocrats each with mildly congruent agendas.
Italy’s neighbors: what, we worried?
With barely a week until Italians vote to elect, polls all but unanimously suggest a far-right government with innumerable Putin sympathizers among its senior members is the likely outcome. Switzerland’s top daily, Zurich-based Neue Zürcher Zeitung, reports that “Giorgia Meloni is also said to be in Moscow’s pay….Washington launches a rumor, but provides no evidence for the time being. The main target is the right-wing politician Giorgia Meloni, the likely future head of government in Italy.” NZZ’s Rome correspondent Andres Wysling continues, “The sympathies of the Lega and Berlusconi were known, but now the ‘constant refrain’ is that the Fratelli d’Italia [led by the likely next prime minister of Italy Meloni] also received some help.”
For a comprehensive reports chronicling the whole trajectory of the campaign, do follow Andelman Unleashed’s “Italy Votes” series through the September 25 election and its aftermath.
Don’t get cocky about Putin….
….is the headline on my NBC News/Think column where I write “A host of countries are prepared to offer their good will, manufacturing muscle or markets to the Putin war machine.” Then, I continue: “Russian President Vladimir Putin might be losing on the battlefield, at least for the moment, but it’s a mistake to count out the master of the Kremlin. Instead, quietly, Putin is succeeding in assembling a coalition of the autocratic. Who is in Putin’s ‘axis of evil,’ as President George W. Bush famously called a similar collection? An unlikely but utterly pernicious group straddling continents and political systems. All are worried to varying degrees about the trajectory the war in Ukraine is setting for their economy and their role in the geopolitical landscape, but they are still fully prepared to profit from it in the meantime. From more traditionally autocratic leaders — China’s Xi Jinping, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and the ayatollahs of Iran — to leaders of illiberal democracies in India, Turkey and Hungary, a host of countries are prepared to offer their good will, manufacturing muscle or markets to the Putin war machine.”
As one astute reader observed, “EXCELLENT article on the growing Putin coalition. First comprehensive article I have read on the subject.”
Hail to the King
Most major media around the world are still focused on the pomp and all the circumstances surrounding the transition from Queen Elizabeth II to King Charles III. As Poland’s Gazeta Wyborcza observed, devoting its entire front page to the new king in full royal military regalia: “God, protect the king, from challenges that can overthrow monarchies.”
But Germany’s top daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (known popularly as FAZ) is focusing on what “is not the only concern in Great Britain. A tandem of rapidly rising prices and high inflation is forcing many Britons to act: heat little in winter or boycott paying their energy bills.” Reporter Carlota Brandis continues “a national campaign called Don’t Pay UK is calling on all Brits to boycott heating and electricity bills from October 1st.” Another challenge for Charles III, not to mention Britain’s new prime minister, Liz Truss.
Ukraine needs YOU
Poland’s daily Gazeta Wyborcza publishes a ringing appeal from the nation’s former prime minister to the people of Germany. Donald Tusk understands the kind of language that should make its neighbor and one time invader sit up and take notice: “If the sense of guilt and responsibility for World War II is to oblige the Germans to anything, it is primarily to unequivocally and fully committed on the side of Ukraine in the fight against the aggressor,” Tusk begins. Yet the assist to the Ukrainian war effort so far and Germany’s attitude, do not help at the “level expected by Ukrainians.”
Media in other countries are being even more specific in their criticisms of Germany’s reluctance to make good on its pledges to the Ukraine government.
Britain’s Financial Times is not the only newspaper headlining the “pressure [piling] in German chancellor Olaf Scholz to rethink his resistance to sending tanks to Kyiv, with even his own coalition partners calling the policy into question. Correspondent Guy Chazin in Berlin notes that Scholz “has stopped short of proving battle tanks.” He observes that Ukraine’s success in the northeast “has prompted calls for a change of policy.”
China’s debtors under pressure
For decades, China has been lending money all over the world, but especially in Africa where it has accumulated more debtors than any other nation. Now, those ducks may be coming home to roost. Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post is headlining, “Zambian debt negotiations hit potential sticking point over treatment of Chinese lender.”
SCMP’s Jevans Nyabiage reports, “Beijing is expected to push the IMF to allow China Development Bank to be treated like other commercial lenders rather than a state-backed one. [But] the issue is likely to set a precedent for other indebted nations and Beijing is unlikely to want to face a series of demands to cancel debts outright…..in a way that could set a precedent for other heavily indebted nation as such as Sri Lanka and Ethiopia.” Which could mean big bucks at a time the Chinese economy is flailing.
Finally, a different royal transition
The world is enthralled by the peaceful, while colorful and dramatic, transition of the British throne after 70 years in the hands of a single monarch. In Africa, however, where two recent elections for national leadership—in Kenya and Angola—had to be decided by courts in their respective nations, the battle for the crown of the Zulu nation looks to be heading for the same place—the judiciary.
Zimasa Matiwane reports in South Africa’s The Sunday Times, that the “battle for the Zulu throne could reach [a] boiling point next weekend at the reed dance ceremony as supporters of King Misuzulu kaZwelithini’s opponent, Prince Simakade, have vowed that their preferred king is the only one who will preside over the event at the Enyokeni palace in Nongoma.” With the spiritual, if not full secular, rule over 11 million subjects at stake, the battle now seems be moving from “the marble palace on the hills of Nongoma, a small town in the southeastern province of KwaZulu-Natal, the Zulu heartland,” as France 24 describes it, to a court room in Johannesburg. So, making good on our pledge at Andelman Unleashed to chronicle every leadership contest everywhere in the world this year …. Stand by.
Interesting piece, thank you!