TWTW: The World This Week / Episode #67
Gratitude…America's biggest dangers…COP28 with any hope?...Oil war looms in Guyana…Journos under siege…Moldova next in Putin's gunsights…Toys for Ukraine's children…And cartoonist Brandan on Netanyahu
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.
UPDATING…with Venezuela president Nicolas Maduro’s overwhelming win in a series of referendums that could start his nation down a slippery slope toward war with neighboring, oil-rich Guyana in a Latin replay of Russia and Ukraine.
Now back in America for three months, we begin with a tribute to….
Heather Cox Richardson
…with gratitude
The extraordinary historian, trained in the same crucible of the Harvard Department of History as I, if a half century later ….. has done Andelman Unleashed an enormous service, remarking on two of our offerings in her Letters from an American.
Doing so, she unleashed a tsunami of new subscribers, new members of our Unleashed family from every continent and time zone, increasing our reach and visibility by 65% in 36 tumultuous hours.
Her link was to my own CNN Opinion column, a tribute to Joe Biden, his foreign policy and his vision of the world. And then there was the footnote link to our Unleashed conversation with Latvia’s newly-minted president, Edgars Rinkēvičs.
And now, onward to …..
How others see America
With what sort of government?
The world is beginning to wake up to the looming and very real prospect of a second and potentially far more virulent Trump presidency. But essentially there's the prospect of America as a loser.
"If Donald Trump wins next year's US presidential election, it would be a 'catastrophe' for Europe, Germany’s defense minister said Tuesday." The report, from Turkey's Anadolu Ajansi, quotes Boris Pistorius saying, "'Whoever comes to the White House, one case would be a catastrophe, the other case would be much better,' while commenting on the impact of the 2024 US presidential election on transatlantic ties." A rare and candid assessment from a leading European defense official.
The Economist, itself all too often a harbinger of doom, suggested last month as Unleashed pointed out, "Donald Trump poses the biggest danger to the world in 2024." Now, this week, the magazine is pivoting to another horrific reality: "Putin seems to be winning the war in Ukraine—for now." But rather than like many in Washington, Britain's leading magazine lays the blame squarely and closer to its own home: "His biggest asset is Europe's lack of strategic vision.”
Say what? In this respect at least, they're kinda way out on a strategic limb. In part they've crawled out there because Ukraine has all but fallen off the front pages to deep within the world's papers…in part because quite simply there are more people dying in the Middle East. And Biden, refraining from the tendency of all too many of his predecessors of ping-ponging from crisis to crisis is being quite level-headed in seeking to bring order to any number of chaotic crises.
Among the most perceptive foreign correspondents covering Washington these days, Le Monde's Piotr Smolar, wrote on that paper's front page, "The Biden administration is seeking to convince the government of Benjamin Netanyahu to recalibrate its military operation in the Gaza Strip." Smolar continued:
Embrace diplomacy: this is how Joe Biden's strategy with Israel has been described in the United States since the Hamas attack on October 7. Compassion and support would be the prerequisites for providing the Jewish state with solid advice in the deployment of its military response in Gaza. But in reality, over the weeks, as the toll of Palestinian deaths and destruction took on unprecedented proportions, the White House attempted to rebalance its commitment. It took up the humanitarian issue, invoked the laws of war, and held up the nebulous prospect of a rehabilitation of the two-state solution.
How others see the World
From Cop-21 to Cop-28….
….was one place where Biden did not stick his oar directly, refraining from joining any number of his fellow world leaders in the Persian Gulf sheikdom of Dubai and where little (sadly) has changed, for the better over the years. Our world has never been hotter, parts of it never poorer. And yet the talking about all of this only get bigger. I was at the first such major gathering of world leaders, COP-21—held over 12 days in December 2015 at Le Bourget field outside Paris, where, in 1927, Charles Lindbergh had landed the Spirit of Saint Louis for the first transatlantic crossing by air.
There were 38,000 delegates for COP-21, a seminal event that produced no treaty but immense hope for the future of the world and mankind. Sadly, all too few of these goals have been met.
Now today, some 70,000 delegates have converged on Dubai, itself a glittering jewel of high-tech carve out of the desert of the United Arab Emirates with profits from oil and gas drilling.
Among those who did show up this time was an army of oil and gas industry officials doing their best to preserve what is left of their purchase on the world’s energy needs. Exxon Mobile chairman Darren Woods, in his first visit to a climate summit, was just one of some 50 such leaders to show up. He promptly sat down with reporter Aime Williams of London's Financial Times:
UN climate talks on how to limit global warming have focused on renewable energy for too long, according to the chief executive of ExxonMobil, the biggest western oil supermajor…Darren Woods said that talks on the energy transition had concentrated on “the electron solution,” while neglecting the role to be played by hydrogen, biofuels and carbon capture. “The transition is not limited to just wind, solar and EVs,” said Woods. “Carbon capture is going to play a role. We’re good at that. We know how to do it, we can contribute.
The FT concluded that his "presence has prompted climate experts to criticise the industry’s continued efforts to delay action and its oversized influence at the UN summit."
We'll leave day-to-day commentary on these two weeks in Dubai to experts, especially David Callaway and his Callaway Climate Insights where he's already listed "three surprises investors should watch for at COP28."
Still, a lot of background work has been done on just what may be at stake. David McNair, executive director for global policy of the One Campaign, “a global movement campaigning to end extreme poverty and preventable disease by 2030," with whom we last visited in August, says now that their new research has effectively punctured a big announcement expected from the world's wealthiest countries in Dubai:
With leaders expected to formally announce they met the $100 billion annual target for financing climate action in developing countries in 2022, ONE has warned this is unlikely to be a true reflection of what countries spent. Rich countries are massively over reporting the climate finance they are providing to vulnerable countries to the tune of $343 billion over eight years. [ONE's research] shows in granular detail how lack of transparency is undermining the global fight against climate change.
And because there are no audits or clear guidelines on what they can and can’t report, some [countries] are counting coal plants, migration, and anti-terror funding, hotel chains and airports as climate finance.
Another oil mess
Exxon's CEO may be trying to tame runaway climate fever in Dubai, but he's got a real-life threat to one of his big oil fields half a world away. What London's Guardian calls a "despotic" Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela's oil-rich ruler, has decided to go after oil reserves of his neighbor—Guyana. And on Sunday, Venezuelan voters are going to the polls to affirm, if Maduro has his way, and he rarely doesn't, a path toward seizing at least two-thirds of the territory of its neighbor, Guyana, and its not inconsiderable oil reserves. It was a move that some observers were likening to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. As the Caracas daily El Diario put it:
Venezuela and Guyana are currently facing a tense moment in their diplomatic relations. The dispute over the Essequibo territory in the International Court of Justice (ICJ), as well as the consultative referendum called by the Nicolás Maduro regime, have fueled hostilities between both countries, to the point that the court itself urged them to avoid actions that could aggravate the conflict.
Although both countries have separately reiterated their interest in resolving the conflict peacefully and diplomatically, each has made provisions in the event of an escalation of hostilities. On the one hand, Venezuela has accelerated the construction of military infrastructure on the Essequibo border, such as a new base on the island of Anacoco, as well as landing strips. For its part, Guyana has entered into talks with countries such as Canada, Brazil and the United States to train its troops and strengthen its military cooperation.
While Guyana produces barely a third of Venezuela's 704,000 barrels per day of crude oil, and Venezuela does appear to be sitting on the world's largest known reserve—some 300 billion barrels—Guyana, with a population of just 804,000 or 2% of the population of neighboring Venezuela, clearly generates per capita far more oil wealth. Equally rankling to Maduro—the tough sanctions that the U.S. has used to bar all imports from Venezuela. Moreover, last month, the Biden administration agreed to lift sanctions until the next presidential elections in 2024 in a hardly-masked efforts to boost the fortunes of Maduro’s opposition.
So prospects of conflict are starting to trickle down, as one oil driller heading back to Guyana who we met at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport told us, "I didn’t hear about this until I arrived, there’s not a whole lot of obvious tension here at the moment although our local employees are talking about it." He's pinning his hopes on a World Court ruling in favor of Guyana "so that'll help."
Of course, Maduro is spinning it quite differently. And if the vote goes his way on Sunday, all bets are off. Come back here for updates, the results, and the consequences.
UPDATE: As Guyana’s Stabroek News announced this morning:
While Guyanese held unprecedented gatherings all across the country to emphasise that Essequibo was an indivisible part of its territory, Venezuelans yesterday approved a referendum called by the government of President Nicolás Maduro to claim sovereignty over the mineral rich region, Caracas’ electoral authority announced.
Accompanying, this front page photo of defiance:
The 95% win for Maduro on all five questions on the ballot was overshadowed, as El Diario of Caracas reported, barely half the eligible voters bothered to cast their ballots at all. Moreover, the paper pointed out, “The US warns that it is willing to reinstate sanctions in Venezuela…”
The Guardian of London elaborated:
Venezuelan voters were asked whether they support establishing a state in the disputed territory, known as Essequibo, granting citizenship to current and future residents and rejecting the jurisdiction of the United Nations’ top court in settling the disagreement between the South American countries.
“It has been a total success for our country, for our democracy,” Maduro told supporters gathered in Caracas, the capital, after the results were announced, before highlighting the “very important level of participation of the people” in the referendum.
Back to the future
The war is on again in Israel and Gaza. And this time there appears to be no stopping the bloodshed. So, The Economist is suggesting its own, quite rational plan of action, even if somewhat improbable in the execution. Basically, it breaks down this way:
The dilemma facing America, Israel’s staunchest ally: for how long should it endorse the war? And how should it try to shape what happens next? These are not abstract questions….
America should press ahead with its efforts to shape how Israel conducts the war, influence its post-war planning, and steer its politics towards two-states. Mr Biden must be clear that his support for action in southern Gaza is contingent on Israel adopting new tactics, using less armour and bombardment and more infantry, even if that risks more Israeli military casualties….
Last, America should insist that Israel articulate a long-term plan. In the coming weeks we will explore how a new two-state solution might work. But the ingredients are an interim authority in Gaza, with a role for Israel’s friendly Arab neighbours; a new government in Israel and new, moderate Palestinian leaders; and a resumption of negotiations.
Journalists under siege
Through Saturday, 43 journalists and media workers have been killed in the Gaza war according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Meanwhile a Russian court has extended to the end of January the detention of Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich and still with no trial in view on the charge of espionage for simply doing his job as a reporter. On Monday, he ‘celebrated’ his 250th day of imprisonment. Now, fears are being raised in Hong Kong about a journalist for the South China Morning Post who's failed to return to Hong Kong from a reporting trip to Beijing.
Kyodo News reported that "friends of Minnie Chan…were concerned she was under investigation." Chan was reporting on the Xiangshan Security Forum. Among the most plugged-in journalists to Chinese security issues, the SCMP claimed on Friday that she was "just taking personal time in Beijing."
In March, Andelman Unleashed ran these excerpts from one of her reports on PLA-US force exercises in the region:
The competition between China and the US in the Asia-Pacific region has seen the two powers scale up military exercises with their regional counterparts in a bid to discourage each other from using force….
Joint exercises with countries in the region had become common practice for the PLA and US forces, as a way to indicate their deterrent capabilities. "A team of 200 People’s Liberation Army troops from the Southern Theatre Command naval base in Zhanjiang, Guangdong province, will take part in Golden Dragon 2023, 20 days of drills with Cambodia from March 20. At the same time, the US and the Philippines announced their biggest ever annual war games will be held from April 11 to 18, with 17,600 personnel from both sides taking part, including around 12,000 Americans."
Ukraine: who let the dog(s) in?
Then there's that other war. Some have begun looking ahead and wondering what’s next? Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov didn’t seem to leave much doubt. The next victim is Moldova. That's what he effectively told an OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) ministerial conference where some members wondered why, considering the mission of the group, he was even allowed in the door in the first place. [Click the tweet to hear him and his pernicious language.]
Indeed, the Russian state press agency Tass left no doubt this was the warning that Lavrov, hardly subtle himself, was launching at the session in Skopje, Macedonia.
But the utterly uncowed Moldovan foreign ministry lost no time in responding in no uncertain terms in a "press clarification":
Since the beginning of the brutal invasion of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, in Moldova we have felt the entire arsenal of destabilization attempts that Russia has unleashed against us. Russia's statements, whether today or on previous occasions, are part of the series of hostile actions that the Russian Federation has been trying to implement towards our country over the past 30 years. Fortunately, throughout this time, the partner states in the West have been by our side, helping us to successfully overcome these threats.
Taking into account that Minister Lavrov still arrived at the OSCE ministerial meeting, we hope that our message - clear and sharp - will be understood by him as well: the Republic of Moldova is going, irreversibly, on the European path and today, more than ever, we insist on the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of Russian troops from our territory.
Why are we so interested in Moldova? Perhaps because at the turn of the 19th century my paternal grandmother and grandfather, subject of a draft summons to the Czarist army-effectively a death sentence—were driven from their shtetl in northwestern Bessarabia. Traveling down through the territory called Transnistria and now indeed occupied by Russian troops, they boarded a ship in Odessa, Ukraine, traveled to America and settled in Cambridge where, 40 years later I was born. For more on this, stay tuned to "Unleashed Memoirs" on Andelman Unleashed.
Today, Moldova and Ukraine are still hammering on the West's gates, hoping desperately to gain admission at least to the European Union, if not NATO itself.
As Vera Jourová, vice-president of the EU's Commission in charge of values, told Le Monde, the former Czech minister [who certainly understands that deep yearning, as she was 27 when her nation was liberated from the despotism of Russian communism], "when the European Council meets on December 14 and 15 in Brussels, Ukraine will have fulfilled all the conditions required by the Twenty-Seven so that accession negotiations can begin."
And then there are the children….
There's a British charity that's hoping, especially at this time of year, those under siege in Ukraine will not be forgotten. Circle of Toys has taken as its mission "to encourage people who have used toys in good condition to share them with children whose families cannot afford to buy them."
As Daryna Chepynoga told us:
We want to bring a touch of normalcy to the lives of children and families in Ukraine who are facing the enormous challenges of war. We know that the war in Ukraine is a difficult time for everyone, but we believe that even a small act of kindness can make a big difference.
We have already received over 11,000 applications from needy families. Each of these requests is a sincere desire of a child. And their requests are very simple - educational toys, puzzles, plush toys, anything.
And already they have hordes of "Givers," the first toys already matched with Ukrainian families and beginning to arrive. Alina, age 6, "dreaming of a toy castle…Her dream," her mother said, "has come true."
Finally, there’s Brandan ….
The South African cartoonist Brandan has captured perfectly the price Benjamin Netanyahu hammered down for the hostages Hamas so brutally seized and the Palestinian prisoners Israel is now releasing. The “war economy” that Brandon has drawn so deftly, is particularly poignant this weekend when exchanges have gone silent, and the war begun again.
Our cartoonist, Brandan Reynolds, is one of South Africa's most active and best-known cartoonists. Every day since 2002, one of his drawings has been published in Business Day, hence his view of Israel and Gaza through the prism of a stock exchange. He also works with the weekly Weekend Argus and Rapport, the Sunday newspaper in the Afrikaans language. He lives in Cape Town and is a member of the remarkable Paris-based Cartooning for Peace collective.
Here's how Brandan sees himself:
Thanks Ransom !!
Delighted to hear your thoughts ‘
You know I like to consider Unleashed providing a similar service for the world that Heather does for America … holding up a mirror each week to the World through the prism of history.
" Heather Cox Richardson
…with gratitude" I am most pleased to see this as your reaction Dr. Andelman.