TWTW: The World This Week / Episode #25
A view of America’s middle class…Putin recalls Stalingrad…a weather balloon…and remember the U-2?...how a burnt Koran could torpedo NATO…and a cartoon from Stellina on Taiwan
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….Plus our new feature: Unleashed Voices.
Coming to you this week from New Orleans, Louisiana [NOLA].
How others see America
Beware that precious Middle Class
A broad swath of the world is coming to grips with a reprise on what should be an oft-repeated but still no less frightening reality that whither goes the American economy, so goes their own. So, this week, London’s Economist is focusing on a vast swath of the American populace that could well prove determinant economically, socially, and eventually politically: “It is often seen as an axiomatic truth about the pernicious effect of rising prices. the lowest earners suffer the most. The calculation is straightforward. Those on low incomes must spend a greater share of their earnings on food and rent, so when the prices for those items soar, they have less left over for everything else. The rich and the middle class, by contrast, are better insulated. This pattern has been observed over many decades, in many countries. But America’s current bout of inflation may be an exception to the rule: middle-income earners, not the poorest, appear to have borne the brunt of it.”
And the magazine concludes, with quote a clear nudge at Federal Reserve chairman Jay Powell, “Even as the Fed relaxes, real rates rise.”
But in Italy, which seems rapidly to be returning to its role as one of Europe’s economic and fiscal basket cases, readers woke up to New York correspondent Massimo Gaggi toasting, in Milan daily Corriere della Sera, “The boom in new jobs in the US.” Then Gaggi elaborated, “Joe Biden celebrates: accused for months by the right of being responsible for the rise in inflation and, therefore, for the recession that will need to be provoked to shut it down, the president can now argue that his economic recipe works.”
But columnist Marie Charrel, writing in the French daily, Le Monde, sees the glass more half empty: “The happy globalization of the 1990s is well and truly over, and the economic elite is now plagued by doubt….The United States has declared technological war on China by drastically limiting its exports of electronic chips to the Middle Kingdom. It is investing heavily to develop its own semiconductor industry. Caught between these two political regimes that everyone opposes, Europe wants to strengthen its autonomy by relocating certain strategic industries to its soil.”
Then there’s the balloon….
Lots of ink has been spilled since the perhaps errant, likely purposeful Chinese floater was outed over Montana. But few writers were closer to the real stakes than the three correspondents for Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post. After Secretary of State Antony Blinken cancelled his prospective visit to Beijing over China’s ill-timed overflight, Orange Wang and Robert Delaney in Washington and Kushboo Razdan in New York observed, “The purpose of the trip was expected to be to build guardrails for Washington-Beijing relations and prevent tensions from veering into a conflict.”
The SCMP, incidentally, seemed quite happy to publish presidential hopeful Nikki Healey’s tweet….leaving less and less doubt about her ultimate aspirations….
And then there was the U-2
On Friday, as the errant balloon drifted over Kansas, my own thoughts were drawn back to another weather-related excuse…Francis Gary Powers and the U-2 over Russia, a spy mission overflying the Soviet Union, which President Eisenhower first described as weather surveillance, with his pilot befuddled from a snag in his oxygen line. I elaborated on this analogy and other fallout in my column for CNN Opinion:
“A spy plane and a balloon. How diplomacy can go way off course”
How Others See the World
Stalingrad redux
It was one of the bloodiest battles in the history of warfare. Some 2 million died during the five-month siege of Stalingrad, and it remains a vivid memory today of the sacrifices the Russian people made to save their homeland from enslavement by Nazi Germany in the depths of the Second World War. This week, Vladimir Putin evoked his nation’s still emotional memory on the 80th anniversary of this toxic event, seeking to turn his blood-drenched invasion of Ukraine into some badge of honor. Le Monde’s Moscow correspondent Bernard Vitkine observed, “Even with an anachronism, the statement is perfectly clear: ‘Incredible but true, German Leopard tanks are once again threatening us on Ukrainian soil.’ It does not matter if the commissioning of the Leopard tank dates back [no further than] 1965…for Vladimir Putin, the Ukrainian army is indeed the heir of the Wehrmacht, and contemporary Germany is hardly better than its Nazi version.”
“Throughout the celebrations,” Vitkine continued, “the Russian president drew a parallel: ‘Today we see sadly that Nazi ideology—in modern form—is once again creating direct threats to the security of our country, and that we are once again compelled to repel the aggression of the collective West.’ [Putin] spoke for the first time about the deliveries of heavy armor announced in recent weeks by several Western countries, including the German Leopard 2s. And, unsurprisingly, he brandished a threat: ‘We will not send our tanks to their borders, but we have [a response] and it will not be limited to armored vehicles.’ Asked a little later if this should be seen as a new allusion to nuclear weapons, the Kremlin spokesman contented himself with warning that Moscow will use ‘its full potential.’”
A logistical nightmare
All those armaments promised to Ukraine would be of little use if they didn’t find their way to Ukraine’s stalwart war fighters on the front lines, facing down the Russian invaders. The leading Swiss daily Neue Zürcher Zeitung sent Julia Monn and Andreas Rüesch to the International Donor Coordination Center (IDCC). “For the first time on this foggy gray day in late fall,” they reported, “its command has allowed two media representatives access to the ‘brains’ of the operation at Clay Kaserne. The fact that the choice fell on representatives of neutral Switzerland, of all countries, is not without a certain irony.”
Then they continued, “Guided missiles from the U.K., howitzers from the U.S., tanks from Germany, artillery ammunition from the Czech Republic, and much more….The coordination of all these deliveries requires a well-oiled system. Its control center is located far away from the eastern Ukrainian battlefields – but it is one of the most important sites in this war, the outcome of which depends crucially on which side has superior weapons and supplies. In a hall the size of a gym at Clay Kaserne…the most important combat tool is the computer….Huge screens provide information on what material is on its way to the war zone by rail, truck, plane or ship….[Ukraine] recently requested the delivery of 105-millimeter howitzers. That was only the beginning….The wires in the logistics center ran hot until it was clear: The UK will donate the howitzers, New Zealand will provide training and spare parts, while the U.S. will supply ammunition and arrange transport to the Ukrainian border. ‘We operate like a dating agency,’ the local officers tell us.” A dating agency that leads to an unceasing supply of marriages.
A burnt Koran and NATO’s future
The Economist of London uncovered a stunning story of how the very future direction of the NATO alliance may be held hostage by the Kremlin: “Nobody knows what prompted Rasmus Paludan to burn a copy of the Koran in front of the Turkish embassy in Stockholm on January 21st. Mr Paludan, an attention-hogging far-right Danish politician, had torched Korans before, but his choice of location was significant: Turkey is holding up the applications of Sweden and Finland to join NATO….
“Mr Paludan’s demonstration permit was paid for by a Swedish journalist who once worked for a Kremlin propaganda channel, though the journalist denies any current connection to Russia. The Koran-burning led to anti-Swedish demonstrations across the Muslim world. Two days later Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s president, suspended his talks on NATO accession with both countries.
Unleashed Voices
On Wednesday, Andelman Unleashed will publish the final installment of a compelling two-part memoir by our debut writer for our “Unleashed Voices” feature. Our voice is Audrey Topping, the extraordinary photo-journalist widow of Seymour Topping, longtime managing editor of The New York Times.
Andelman Unleashed is privileged to publish her memoir of the secret mission to North Vietnam of her father, Canadian ambassador Chester Ronning and his effort to bring an early end to the war in Vietnam in 1966. Be sure to subscribe (free!) so as not to miss this remarkable work.
And finally, there’s …. Stellina
The brilliant Taiwanese cartoonist, who draws under the name Stellina, imagines America’s new map as mass shootings spread across United States—a nation on whose stability and constancy her own nation depends, possibly, for its very survival in the face of the most bellicose comments and activities in decades across the narrow straits that separate her beloved Taiwan from its mighty challenger, mainland China.
Stellina Chen, based in Taipei, Taiwan, deals with both local politics and international issues, as she puts it “lately lampooning the latest developments in cross-strait relations, particularly Xi Jinping’s gain in strength.” Her work appears frequently in The News Lens/International, Courrier International, Le Monde and France 24 in France, and Le Temps in Switzerland. She is also a member of the extraordinary collective Cartooning for Peace.
Here's how Stellina sees herself:
Excellent, as always. Now that we shot down the Chinese balloon the key task is to unearth its technical capacities and reverse engineer whatever electronic devices are inside. Then Secretary Blinken can go to Beijing for full discussions with Xi Jinping and others about spycraft. There is a second balloon somewhere over South America, too. What is its purpose?