TWTW: The World This Week / Episode #40
Biden’s commitment to Asia…Xi makes his rounds…so does Zelelensky…and MBS….even Syria’s Assad back from purgatory…Wagner’s African riches…Coldplay’s scalpers…and an Aussi cartoonist views America
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.
How others see America
What commitment to Asia?
As you read this, President Biden is preparing to race home from Japan and the G7 summit in Hiroshima, cutting short a planned swing across the Pacific and, as many in the region are even now suggesting, handing Chinese leader Xi Jinping a diplomatic victory. Biden’s shortened Asia trip sparks concerns about US commitment to the region, its efforts to counter China, and America’s broad commitment. As Hong Kong South China Morning Post writers Maria Siow and Su-Lin Tan in Singapore and Shi Jiangtao in Hong Kong put it, “The US president’s truncated visit is an ‘unwelcome reminder’ that Washington’s pledges to the region are at the mercy of ‘increasingly fickle politics on the US home front,’ [since] Washington’s domestic preoccupations will hinder its regional engagement.”
Instead, an abbreviated version of the Quad summit between Biden, Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese, Japan's Fumio Kishida, and Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, that had been scheduled for Australia, was cobbled together on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Hiroshima, Japan. Still, the Hindustan Times observed, “The officials have said that Quad is not a gang up of democratic powers against Beijing, but it is about mutual economic, technological and security cooperation in the Indo-Pacific. However, the belligerence of China in the Indo-Pacific is one of the foundation pillars of the Quad.”
Biden was also planning to meet all three quad leaders individually on the sidelines of the G7 sessions. As a sop, incidentally, Papua New Guinea (one of Biden’s two annulled stops) will be getting Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and the Australian prime minister a state dinner at the White House. After dinner Saturday, a rump session of the Quad was shoehorned into Hiroshima. At the top of all these discussions, however, was Ukraine especially with the omnipresent President Volodymyr Zelensky set to address the full G7 Sunday.
Moreover, the leaders, as Joseph Sarcina observed in the Milan-base daily Corriere della Serra, “recognize only the ‘Zelensky plan’ as the basis for a ‘lasting peace’. The leaders fully accept the position of the Ukrainian president who, a few days ago, dismissed both the Chinese proposal and the Vatican's availability [for negotiations]. In concrete terms: no territorial renunciation and no ceasefire. We continue to fight.” At the same time, the communique, Sarcina notes, “bears the fingerprints of Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. The Americans have asked for and obtained the green light from the G7 for new restrictions on exports to Russia of materials that can be used in warfare.”
On the other hand …
Not to be outdone, while the G7 nations were staging their own get-together, Xi Jinping summoned his own gaggle of presidents to the city of Xian in far northwestern China—Kazakhstan’s Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, Tajikistan’s Emomali Rahmon, Kyrgyzstan’s Sadyr Japarov, Uzbekistan’s Shavkat Mirziyoyev and Turkmenistan’s Serdar Berdimuhamedov.
They gathered, as the party organ People’s Daily reported, “at the historical starting point of the ancient Silk Road, to attend the milestone China-Central Asia Summit,” but basically to pay court to Xi Jinping, or as the paper elaborated, “respect each other, enjoyed good neighborliness, work in partnership for mutual benefits, and continuously make historic strides.” Whatever it takes.
How others see the World
Zelensky…world traveler
While the world is still awaiting the long-anticipated launch of Ukraine’s Spring offensive against its Russian invaders, President Volodymyr Zelensky isn’t standing still. Fresh from his triumphant swing a week earlier through Italy, Germany, France, and Britain that netted him, it would appear, long-desired F-16 jets and tanks from western arsenals, this time he was off to the G7 to press for even more help and a much-desired new round of ever-tightening sanctions on Russia. Zelensky’s arrival was well-timed. As The Times of London reported, “President Biden said that Washington would also support a plan to train Ukrainian pilots on F-16s fighter jets. Zelensky hailed the ‘historic decision’ by the US. ‘This will greatly enhance our army in the sky. I count on discussing the practical implementation of this decision at the G7 summit,’” he said.
Leaving no stone unturned, before heading to Asia, Zelensky paid a lightning visit to Jeddah for the summit of the Arab League.
As the Saudi-based daily Arab News reported, the Ukraine leader “stepped off the French government aircraft that flew him from Poland,” then told the delegates, ‘What is happening in our country is a war, not just a conflict, Ukraine is forced to continue fighting….I am sure we can all be united in saving people from the cages of Russian prisons,’ he said, speaking in English. ‘We will not submit to any foreign country or colonizers. Our goal is to protect the Ukrainian people. Ukraine did not choose war and did not engage in any hostilities inside the territory of other countries,’ he added.”
More drama in Jeddah
Meanwhile, Saudi leader Mohammed bin Salman appeared to be playing his own game, giving a profligate-son-returns welcome to Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad, for, as German news agency Deutsche Welle put it, “his first summit since the 22-member league suspended his country over the brutal crackdown on protesters that led to civil war in 2011.”
As Deutsche Welle continued, “Assad's return to the league marks a symbolic victory for Damascus as it moves to normalize ties with countries in the region again….The Syrian civil war has killed nearly half a million people since March 2011 and displaced nearly 14 million people, or half of the country's pre-war population.”
Wonder where Wagner gets its dough?
The Times of London seems to have found the answer. A “diamond-rich African country is a Zombie host for Wagner Group,” writes correspondent Anthony Loyd from Bangui, capital of the Central African Republic, “In the five years since President Touadéra signed a bilateral military co-operation agreement with Moscow and received guns and mercenaries in return to back up his crumbling army, the impoverished country has been penetrated at every level—cultural, military, political, economic—by a combined Russian military and influence operation led by the Wagner Group.”
Using an upgraded version of counter-insurgency doctrine involving timber, blood, hearts, and mines, and about 1,800 Wagner fighters,” Loyd continued, “the model has been so effective in its takeover of the CAR that the country has become a zombie host barely capable of making its own decisions without consulting Russian mercenary chiefs.”
When the French withdrew the last of its military forces last December, Wagner moved in. “The last remaining French targets were quickly dispensed with. As for the French brewer Castel, The Times report continued, Wagner took out “one of the last remaining large French businesses in the CAR, [replacing it on] the local market with a new brand of beer, Africa Ti L’Or, brewed in Bangui by a company owned by Russia’s cultural attaché in the country, Dmitry Sytyi, sanctioned by the EU this year for his alleged Wagner links.”
“On March 7 Castel’s premises in Bangui, already subjected to mysterious drone overflights, were petrol-bombed….Castel officials say they are certain the arsonists were Wagner men.”
All in all, sounds like a future model for Ukraine, if things go very badly there.
An Unleashed Quote
From Ambrose Bierce, an American short story writer, journalist, poet, and Civil War veteran, whose book, The Devils Dictionary, was named one of the “100 Greatest Masterpieces of American Literature,” this masterpiece of a quote, as deeply and sadly relevant today as when his dictionary was first published in 1911:
“War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography.”
In his Devils Dictionary, he also, quite relevantly defined “boundary”:
“An imaginary line between two nations, separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary rights of the other.”
Of course, it should be noted, imaginary is invariably in the eyes of the beholder.
Elections 2023: Greece Round 1, then Turkey Round 2
Greece is holding its national parliamentary elections on Sunday but with few illusions as to the outcome. While the latest poll suggests that as many a 91% of eligible voters will go vote, it appears equally likely that with at least a dozen contenders, no party will win much more than 31% of the seats in the 300-seat parliament.
The ruling center-right New Democracy party of prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis still appears to hold an edge over the leftist Syriza party led by former prime minister Alexis Tsipras. A runoff is likely in July.
Turkey has one more week left before the second and decisive run-off for that nation’s president, but pundits notwithstanding, it appears as though little can stand in the way of right-wing demagogue Recep Tayyip Erdogan winning another five years of leadership at the helm of his seriously damaged nation.
If there ever was any doubt about the ability of Erdogan to eke out a second-round victory—the first time a contest went to a runoff since his national political career began 20 years ago—it was this photo published Friday of Erdogan with a firm grip on the hand of the runner up in the first round. Sinan Ogan’s rightist political views appear to resonate more clearly with Erdogan than with left-of-center challenger Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. Ogan registered just 5.17% of the vote in round one. But with Erdogan at 49.5% and at Kılıçdaroğlu 44.9%, barely a fraction of Ogan’s votes tilting to Erdogan would make renew the incumbent for five more fractious years.
More ticket wars?
Think Taylor Swift fans in America are the only ones with a lock on ticket wars? Guess again. As Hariz Baharudin and Amanda Lee report from Jakarta for Singapore’s Straits Times, “The chance to see Coldplay perform in Indonesia and Malaysia for the first time, in November, has ignited a ticket war as fierce demand has led to tickets for the British band’s concerts being resold for six times the original price.
The rock band announced in May that they would be playing their first concert in Indonesia—on Nov 15 at Jakarta’s Gelora Bung Karno Main Stadium. Pre-sale tickets…sold out within 30 minutes….Many [fans] took to social media complaining about queueing in an online waiting room with 500,000 ahead of them.” Some Indonesians are trying to turn a quick dollar at massively inflated resale prices—60 million Rupiah ($4,000), quintuple their face value, and this in a country where the average monthly salary is $925.
Finally, there’s …. Moir
Sometimes, we need our best friends to hold up the most effective mirror to our failings. This time, it’s the brilliant Australian cartoonist Alan Moir who re-imagines the American eagle grasping assault rifles in its talons in lieu of olive branches, the red-white-and-blue emblem of the NRA emblazoned between his spread wings.
For nearly 40 years, Alan Moir, a native of New Zealand, has served as the editorial cartoonist of the Sydney Morning Herald. Six-time winner of the Australian Editorial Cartoonist of the Year award, his work is held in a host of collections including the nation libraries and museums of both Australia and New Zealand and the private collection of former UN Secretary General Kofi Anan.
Here's how Moir sees himself:
Looks like the G-7ers are still socially distancing.
Thank you!