TWTW: The World This Week / Episode #30
America's challenges: the Middle East, a bank collapse.…springtime in Kyiv, thaw across the Channel…inspiration from Shanghai…finally, Spanish cartoonist Kap on unanimity on high in Beijing.
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
Whither the United States in the Middle East?
"Long an object of aversion in Teheran, now the United States finds its role of guarantor of regional security questioned in Riyadh," Le Monde proclaimed on Saturday. It is perhaps the single most disquieting feature of an extraordinary agreement announced suddenly on Friday between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which agreed under the auspices of Chinese mediation, to resume diplomatic and a host of other relations that had been severed for seven years amid a hostility between the two conflicting branches of Islam—Sunni and Shiite—dating back a millennium.
Not a single American face is visible in a remarkable photo with the Bedouin robes of the Saudis on the left, a turbaned ayatollah and his advisors on the right, presided over by a lineup of Chinese leaders against the far wall led by the nation's leading diplomat, Wang Yi in front of flags of the three nations.
In Singapore, Straits Times correspondent Natasha Ann Zachariah quoted "former United States ambassador to Russia, China and Singapore Jon M. Huntsman Jr calling the lack of dialogue and interaction between the US and China an unacceptable crisis, as both countries share plenty of areas where they can find common ground and build a relationship of trust. Said Mr. Huntsman: 'While diplomats are doing their work of interacting, problem-solving and talking—even though sometimes, talking doesn’t yield immediate results—at least you’re there at the table.’ His comments echoed [Singapore] Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong’s call for countries to work together and find common ground."
Inherent Dangers
On Saturday, my latest column for CNN Opinion published:
China’s new role: relationship coach on the world stage..
It was the handshake heard round the world. Indeed, the agreement between long-time foes Saudi Arabia and Iran to bury the hatchet and re-establish diplomatic relations after years of confrontation and religious hostility, must inevitably take a back seat to the venue and the peacemaker who brokered this landmark pact…..
China has secured its status as a close friend and reliable partner to two of the world’s leading oil producers. Iran is also prospectively then world’s newest nuclear-armed power, while the US has faithfully guaranteed Saudi Arabia’s security for generations. Until now.
London's Economist was prepared to go even further. "America and China are preparing for a war over Taiwan," the magazine headlined as a "Storm warning." Then it elaborated: "It would spread far across the region, with devastating consequences for the world." The magazine's reporter rode along with a U.S. military exercise on Okinawa called Darkside, observing: "Ignore the polite abstractions. The marines are training for a war with China, probably precipitated by an invasion of Taiwan."
Okinawa, the Economist pointed out, "is just 370 miles from Taiwan." And it quoted "Lieutenant-Colonel Jason Copeland, Darkside's commanding officer, [saying] the hardest part would be dealing with 'an adversary that's coming at you in mass.'"
Financial crisis contagion?
Media around the world fear the prospects of a new banking contagion with its origins in the United States. As the French daily Le Monde observed on its front page, "The fear of a financial crisis is rising in the United States….The closing of the Silicon Valley Bank marks the largest bank failure since 2008." The story from Marc Angrand in Paris and Arnaud Leparmentier in New York went on to point out that "In Europe, the fall of SVB also touched off on March 10 a movement lower of bank shares…investors aware, also in Europe, of the risks rising interest rates pose for Europe's banking sector as well.”
In Germany, the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung asked on page 1, "Biggest US bank failure since 2008: What matters now?" Then it answered its question, that SVB's failure, is "not just a harbinger of worse thing, [Europeans questioning] how crisis-proof the German and European financial institutions actually are." Closer to home, on the German bourse, "bank prices collapsed on Friday, with Deutsche Bank being hit particularly hard with a price drop of 7.8 percent."
In the great Swiss banking center of Zurich, the daily Neue Zürcher Zeitung reporter Christoph Eisenring suggested on its front page: "A small bank panic: It is also the result of the far too lax monetary policy of the US Federal Reserve. It's good that the US didn't just bail out Silicon Valley Bank. Otherwise, after the first mistake of a long-too-loose monetary policy, one would commit a second: Nonchalance towards risks would become a principle."
In the Asian banking center of Singapore, The Straits Times quoted ING economist Robert Carnell saying, “I think there is speculation that there are wider problems within the US banking system, or there is that potential, and that has caused a rethink of Fed policy. "The thinking is that if what the Fed is doing is causing this distress, then perhaps it won’t be doing that much more."
How others see the World
It’s springtime in Ukraine?
The BBC reported that in Ukraine "the winter was very hard, but it was now over, declared President Volodymyr Zelensky." Correspondents Paul Kirby and Paul Adams observed: "Ukrainians are enjoying the onset of spring….Ukraine still had heat and the country was unbreakable, was the message." Then came an overnight barrage of missiles. "But as resident Eugene Herasymchuk wrapped up his day at work on a sunny spring day, he was confident for the future." The BBC reporters' conclusion: "A combination of an unusually mild winter and sheer hard work means Ukraine has moved back from the brink and the sense of optimism is palpable."
Trams are running in Dnipro and the streetlights are back as life appears more normal
Also moving back from the brink….
….it seems are relations between France and England. At loggerheads ever since Brexit reared its ugly head, Emmanuel Macron gave a friendly welcome, with full palatial honors, to his new British counterpart, Rishi Sunak, the French president even graciously holding an umbrella for the prime minister in the courtyard of the Élysée. An "entente renewed" was the Le Monde headline, the paper's London and Élysée correspondents, Cécile Ducourtieux and Philippe Ricard observing that the two "showed their desire to put an end to the disputes that have pitted the two countries against each other since Brexit."
Le Monde was quick to note that "placed between parentheses" was the stab in the back by Boris Johnson and the Joe Biden, stealing away a lucrative contract to supply submarines for the Australian navy. "A hazard of the calendar," the paper described pointedly, Sunak's next stop in the United States "at the beginning of next week [where] with the American president, Joe Biden, and the Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, the details of this agreement will be set forth."
Indeed, the British press, led by the Financial Times was truly prepared to bury the hatchet and not in any Frenchman's cranium. "A welcome Anglo-French rapprochement," the FT's editorial board commented hopefully, adding, "The Paris summit could provide a template for a broader UK reset with European partners."
And then, there's inspiration from Shanghai
"‘One key at a time’….a cleaner at a university in China discovered an out-of-tune piano at the art centre where she works and started teaching herself," wrote Liya Su, reporting from Shanghai for Hong Kong's South China Morning Post. "She recently gave a performance as a pianist on mainland TV, which has since gone viral on Chinese social media."
"In the viral video of her performance," Liya continued, "Xing Guoqin is shown wearing an evening dress next to a white piano on a stage before the scene shifts to the university art centre, where she is shown in her cleaning uniform scrubbing the floor. Xing said she had never played a piano until she started working as a cleaner at the university eight years ago. Xing said she was captivated by the sound of the many piano lessons and concerts taking place at the art centre. 'How wonderful it would be if I knew how to play it,' she thought to herself at the time." Mainland Chinese love these kinds of stories, Liya concluded. "Late last year, a Chinese woman who lost both legs became an internet sensation after mastering the art of dancing with prosthetic legs while wearing high heels."
Finally, there’s …. Kap
It's not often that we do a repeat from the same cartoonist, but the extraordinary Spanish artist, Kap, has managed to capture this week the flavor of the annual parliamentary session in Beijing that with no dissent, has just rubber-stamped Xi Jinping for an unprecedented third term as Chinese president. Kap devotes much of his attention to censorship in every form and at every level.
Jaume Capdevila, who draws under the name Kap, is a Spanish cartoonist best known for his cartoons that appear in La Vanguardia and in El Mundo Deportivo as well as this one published on the front page of Paris’s Le Monde. His cartoons appear also in the pages of other Spanish and international magazines including Siné Mensuel and Courrier International. He has published ten collections of his work in book form. He is a member of the extraordinary collective Cartooning for Peace.
Here's how Kap sees himself:
Great stuff. But I hope that spring is really coming to Ukraine, metaphorically as well as seasonally. It has been a very tough slog in the trenches. But if Ukraine's soldiers can hold out until bigger weapons arrive, then spring could become a time for real advances.
Ever glad to overhear Le Monde