TWTW: The World This Week / Episode #86

Trump on trial…Elections 2024: Korea…Iran attacks & then?...Russia's malignant offensive… Migrants in Europe…and already the Olympics…Cartooning for Peace imagines AI

This weekly feature for Andelman Unleashed, continues on its mission 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.

Coming to you this week from back in America.

How others see America

America has come under the looking glass of the world this week for a range of stunning decisions—or their absence—that is making the global media and those who are paying close attention question the very viability of the American experiment. Let alone whether America can ever be Great Again.

The global, Paris-based cooperative Cartooning for Peace set the tone with its roundup of artists commenting on the global theme of the week. Today, it's: "Abortion at the heart of the US presidential election." Or as they point out in their "weekly editorial":

With seven months to go before the elections, Donald Trump has alienated a section of his ultra-conservative electorate by changing his position on the right to abortion, a major issue in this campaign.

During his presidential term, [Trump] was behind the repeal in 2022 of the constitutional right to abortion (the Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe vs Wade ruling), leaving the States to legislate on this issue. Since then, around twenty states have already restricted or banned access to abortion. But on Monday 8 April, Trump declared that he was not considering a federal ban on this right if he won the November elections.

Hoping to win over more moderate Republicans, women and young people, he has also provoked the anger of the most radical Republicans and the “MAGAs” who have made this “pro-life” battle a priority, alongside immigration and crime. A political calculation that could cost him dearly?

But the banner headline on Le Monde's weekend front page is "Trump faces justice, an historic premiere," devoting three full pages to its explanations and some historical roots:

As its chief US correspondent, Piotr Smolar, reported:

For three years, a host of appeals, delaying tactics and outraged press releases from Donald Trump sought to delay the deadline. So many months lost, and detours taken by justice, sometimes fueling the feeling of special treatment granted to the former leader. However, on Monday, the unimaginable will happen: the 45th president of the United States will sit in the dock in a New York court, like an ordinary citizen, as part of a criminal trial….Confusion has long been his primary strategy, he, the supposedly persecuted, who compares himself to Nelson Mandela, detained for 27 years, and to the Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny, who died in prison.

A sidebar delves back into the case of the last American president who sought to buy the silence of a mistress—Warren Harding, more than a century ago, when as correspondent Arnaud Leparmentier points out, the same "Republican party sought to muzzle" Harding's girlfriend.

For that matter, the leading Polish paper, Wyborcza, sent correspondent Maciej Czarnecki across America on a De Tocqueville-like quest of the real American voter and reported to his readers:

I was struck by how many Americans turn up their noses at a repeat of the 2020 duel. Formally, neither Biden nor Trump has received their party's nomination yet, but they are on a fast track to it. American voters didn't want a repeat of the Biden-Trump fight, but they will get it. All because of extreme polarization.

The offensive of MAGA (Make America Great Again) forces has orphaned millions of Eisenhower and McCain voters who do not understand what happened to their group. And why is it represented by a defendant in four criminal trials, a narcissistic and unbalanced storyteller who lost to his rival by over 7 million votes four years ago and then tried to prevent the transfer of power.

Avowed believers aside, neither Trump nor Biden will wow the crowds. The winner will be the one who simply demobilizes voters less.

Elections 2024:  Korea

Korea is heading into uncharted territory as the nation's voters delivered a stinging rebuke to President Yoon Suk Yeol's People Power party, confirming the opposition Democratic Party in its control of the National Assembly, and by extension the prime minister and his cabinet, leaving Yoon as isolated for his final three years in office as he has been for the past two.

As Nikkei Asia reported:

The Democrats will control 175 seats, versus 108 for Yoon's party. The Democrats held a total of 154 seats in the 300-seat unicameral legislature before the election, more than the 114 held by the PPP.

Yoon is now likely become the first president in South Korea's democratic history to serve his entire five-year term without ever holding a majority in the body. He narrowly defeated Lee Jae-myung, who leads the Democratic Party, for the presidency, and the two men have carried on a tense rivalry since then. South Korean prosecutors indicted Lee in connection with an investigation into a development project that he pursued as mayor of Seongnam, adjacent to Seoul. Lee has denied wrongdoing and accused the prosecution service of unfairly targeting him.

Still, in the end, there may not be much change, as Victor Cha and Andy Lim reported for CSIS:

South Korea’s foreign policy is likely to stay on its current course because Yoon’s foreign policy is not based on populism. Since the beginning of his presidency, strong opposition from the DP in the legislative body and a relatively low approval rating have not deterred Yoon from reversing the previous government’s foreign policy. Yoon has followed his campaign pledge to strengthen the U.S.-South Korea alliance and take a strong stance on North Korea’s provocations and has also shown that South Korea and the United States are in tight alignment over their regional strategy. Most notably, Yoon has pushed forward to improve South Korea’s strained relationship with Japan despite the risk of political backlash at home.

Expect the opposition party to turn up the volume on its criticism of Yoon’s foreign policy as impractical. 

Indeed, relations between Japan and Korea seem unlikely to improve a whole lot, as the Seoul daily Donga quoted Lee:

This general election is a perfect new Korea-Japan war. There are still too many pro-Japanese remnants in this country that have not been liquidated. In this general election, let us clearly show that we are an independent Korean nation by discarding all candidates whose national identity is questionable.

How others see the World

Iran on the attack

If the world is wondering whether the, largely thwarted, Iranian drone and missile strike on Israel was simply a second act in a larger Middle East war, Teheran has apparently sought to put an end to that thought, at least from its end. Even the reformist news site, Entekhab, led Sunday morning with this report:

America, which announced that it was not aware of the Zionist regime's operation in Damascus, but in fact, that operation was carried out with its green light, and declares that it is not looking for the development of tension in the region, but our information indicates that with all its might in the airspace of Iraq and Jordan, tried to neutralize this operation and failed and the operation reached its goals.

The Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces stated: "We see this operation as a result, and in our opinion it is over and there is no intention to continue it, and if the Zionist regime takes action against us, either on our soil or in the centers belonging to us in Syria, or any other country, our next operation will be bigger."

Entekhab then turned to The New York Times to suggest its hope:

The option of Israel's military response to Iran was abandoned after the call between Biden and Netanyahu on Saturday. The Israeli war cabinet will hold a meeting this afternoon to discuss how to respond to Iran's attack, according to two Israeli officials. 

They said the option of a possible response—a retaliatory strike that some cabinet members had suggested—was dropped after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's phone call with Biden on Saturday.

In Tel Aviv, a not dissimilar reaction from the leading Israeli daily, Haaretz, that has been among the leading opponents of Netanyahu's war in Gaza:

As Amos Harel, the paper's veteran military correspondent, reported:

The extensive Iranian attack on Israel, with hundreds of drones, cruise and ballistic missiles, ended in the early hours of Sunday morning with minimal damage. This was thanks to the incredible operational capabilities shown by the Israeli Air Force in cooperation with the United States and other friendly countries in the Middle East and Europe.

Israel, which is enjoying a rare moment of international support, is now deliberating its response. U.S. President Joe Biden is heavily pressuring Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to refrain from conducting an aerial strike in Iran. Such an attack could lead to an all-out response from Hezbollah and bring the parties closer to a regional war.

Russia's malignant new offensive

Le Monde's fearless Thomas d'Istria, reporting from besieged Kharkiv, finds:

In the city of Kharkiv, plunged into darkness at night, emergency equipment is struggling to cope with power cuts.

For three weeks now, Russian drones and missiles have been systematically targeting Ukraine's energy infrastructure. The latest major attack hit the Kharkiv, Lviv, Odesa, Zaporizhzhia and Kyiv regions in the early hours of Thursday. South of the capital, the bombardments destroyed the Trypillia thermal power plant, the largest in the region, wiping out the production capacity of state-owned company Centrenergo following a previous strike that devastated the Kharkiv plant on March 22.

Kharkiv in the dark

Only 18 of the 42 ballistic and cruise missiles aimed at the territory were intercepted, despite the Ukrainian president's constant warnings in recent days that the country could run out of air defense systems. On Thursday, Volodymyr Zelensky reiterated his desperate appeal to his Western allies to provide him with the means to protect his infrastructure, arguing that otherwise, Russia "has a global license for terror."

Thursday's attack also damaged a thermal power plant and destroyed a transformer substation in the Kharkiv region, already severely weakened by recent bombardments. More than 200,000 residents of the eastern Ukrainian city, located not far from the border with Russia, were left completely without electricity. In early April, Mayor Ihor Terekhov lamented that "almost all" of the region's energy infrastructure had been destroyed.

Migrants, migration, oh dear

Europe has finally dealt with its own migrants' problem. Or has it? Certainly, European Commission President Ursula van der Leyen believes the European Parliament bestowed a great victory on her just as she is about to launch her campaign for a second term.

But not so fast. Dutch cartoonist Joep Bertrams saw it for what it will quite likely turn out to be—a house of cards:

As the inimitable David Carrett and his partner Christian Spillmann reported in their indispensable European Morning News / Il Mattinale Europeo, an Andelman Unleashed partner:

“Today is truly a historic day,” said the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen after the European Parliament gave its final approval to the new Pact on Migration and Asylum. “We have made history,” said the president of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola. The package of ten regulations adopted by the plenary is certainly historic. But in the other sense. The anti-migrant right and far right achieved a double political victory yesterday. The European Union has decided to institutionalize the "Fortress Europe" approach, generalizing the model that had been applied in the islands of Greece after the refugee crisis of 2015-16, in contradiction with its values ​​and fundamental rights….more responsibility for the countries of first entry in exchange for little solidarity.

Indeed, Luxembourg cartoonist Balaban sees UvdL tilting at windmills….

….and especially with the strong hand dealt to the toxic far-right in Europe as election season lies just over the horizon, as Carrett and Spillmann continue:

Viktor Orban [Hungary], Matteo Salvini [Italy], or Marine Le Pen [France] could not hope for better in their cultural war on migrants: their line was ratified by traditional parties. And they couldn't hope for better on an electoral level. The Pact on Migration and Asylum was presented as the electoral barrier to the advance of the far right in view of the European elections of 6-9 June. But polls say that immigration is no longer at the top of citizens' concerns and continue to predict a major advance by the anti-migrant right and the far right in the polls….

Quite frankly, the plan does not seem to deviate much from the plan that many Trump acolytes have seemed to embrace in the U.S.:

The migrants who arrive on a regular basis in EU member countries will be placed in closed centres, which will have a de facto extraterritorial status….Those coming from a country with a high rate of recognition of international protection will be subjected to traditional asylum procedures. The others will be locked up in other centers awaiting repatriation and, if they request international protection, their application will be treated hastily before proceeding with repatriation.

Or as Orban, described by Trump as a paragon of leadership, exulted after the vote:

The Migration Pact is another nail in the coffin of the European Union. Unity is dead, safe borders no longer exist. Hungary will never give in to the mass migratory frenzy.

And then there are the spooks ….

UvdL better be looking over her shoulder as the year progresses and European voters elect their new Parliament. As Deutsche Welle [DW] reported:

Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo announced a probe on Friday into suspected Russian interference in the upcoming European Union elections. De Croo said investigators found that Russian groups are meddling in the elections to promote pro-Russia candidates, in an attempt to weaken European support for Ukraine. 

"Belgian intelligence services have confirmed the existence of pro-Russian interference networks with activities in several European countries and also here in Belgium," De Croo told reporters. "The objective is to help elect more pro-Russian candidates to the European Parliament and reinforce a certain pro-Russian narrative in that institution. The goal is very clear—weakened European support for Ukraine serves Russia on the battlefield and that is the real aim of what has been uncovered in the last weeks."

De Croo said the Belgian investigation was launched after authorities in the Czech Republic uncovered pro-Russian agents active in Brussels seeking to influence, and even pay, EU lawmakers to support a pro-Moscow agenda.

Oh, and remember the KGB?

Still has long tentacles reaching deep into the past and beyond Russian borders. Latvia's foreign  minister Krišjānis Kariņš, who was on Andelman Unleashed's keynote panel last October at the Riga Global Conference, has been sacked over a scandal involving private jet travel when he'd served as prime minister.

As Latvian journalist Juris Kaža reported in his SubStack page, The view from Riga, Kariņš' most likely replacement is Baiba Braže, "an experienced Latvian professional diplomat."

But that's when things began to go off the rails:

On social media, the first trolls have appeared mudslinging at Braže, claiming her mother Nina was linked to Soviet-era “social organizations” linked to the Latvian KGB. One should note a Latvian saying that the favorite subject for ripping apart by a Latvian is any other Latvian.

Of course, that could suggest one of several options. First and foremost, the FSB is behind these trolls and the Kremlin has noted these disquieting lines in her resume, as Kaža notes:

NATO Assistant Secretary General (2020-2023). Career diplomat, leader, manager with a longstanding expertise in security and defence policy….Skilled in government, International Relations, International Organizations, Policy Analysis, Diplomacy, NATO, European Union.
Previously….Permanent Representative to the Organization of the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

Then there is the possibility that she may have had a vague second-generation tie to the KGB.

Which suggests that whatever version is correct, one item is very clear. Across the Baltics—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, three nations that represent the most proximate first targets for attack after Putin's Russia finishes off Ukraine (if that ever happens)—the very real fear is that the KGB, masquerading today as the FSB, is still everywhere: watching, even manipulating.

Oh and incidentally, London's Financial Times reported "the first permanent foreign posting of German troops in the country’s modern history"….

German defence minister Boris Pistorius hailed a “historic moment” as a vanguard of German troops boarded a military plane for deployment to Lithuania.

Pistorius has called the Lithuania brigade the “flagship” of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Zeitenwende—a geopolitical turning point….Nato’s strategy includes positioning thousands of troops from western states in vulnerable countries bordering Russia.

And then there’s the Olympics…

In Paris, they're coming!  As the leading local daily Le Parisien observed:

Like an air of calm—relative—before the storm, on the Place de la Concorde.  On the largest square in the capital, which will host the 3 x 3 basketball, BMX Freestyle, breaking, and skateboarding events, the major works have already been launched. Three months before the launch of the events, it is the first major Parisian site to wear the colors of the Games.

And so far, so good. “This is only the beginning,” breathes Thierry, who is observing the start of this “great upheaval” from the terrace of the Jeu de Paume, on the Tuileries side. Cyclists also seem—for the moment—to find something to suit them.

The start of a “lengthy project”, “section by section”, before the square is closed to traffic from June 1st. The harmony between pedestrians, cyclists and motorists may not last until then….

Already, the Palais Bourbon just across from the Concorde, home of the French National Assembly, is preparing its welcome for athletes of all stripes….

Photo by Pamela Title

Finally, there’s …. AI

Ever wonder what Artificial Intelligence might look like to some of the world's most imaginative artists. Well, the global, Paris-based collective Cartooning for Peace is about to lift the veil on this. On April 25, it will be unveiling its collection, Intelligence artificielle : Une (r)évolution ? … a collection of 120 of the most original and inventive depictions of AI anywhere on the planet. And, quite in keeping with the theme, the cover cartoon depicting man's 'evolution' … about to be brought to a screeching halt?