Canada: Nervous laughter over
U.S. campaign
There was a time when
we Canadians experienced U.S. election campaigns in the same way that a
grandmother experienced bingo: The only reason we watched was to hear our
numbers called out. Free trade, acid rain, softwood lumber, NORAD, border
security. These were the entries on our game sheet -- the only ones we cared
about.
All that has changed
over the last decade: Thanks to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)
and other free trade mechanisms, most of the bilateral issues between Canada
and the United States have been resolved. Fear of the American colossus, once
the great neurosis of Canadian public life, is now very much in decline.
In fact, the sense of
intimidation that we once felt has been turned on its head: Many Canadians now
observe America's political spectacle with a sense of smugness. The unhinged
rhetorical fusillades and open conspiracism of Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, in
particular, have become a form of ironic reality show entertainment. "I
would build a great wall" and all the rest are laugh lines in the Canadian
media.
But it is nervous laughter
they elicit. We wonder: How could this great nation to our south -- a beacon of
liberty, and the West's great protector -- have become a place where popular
presidential candidates jabber about banning Muslims, or casually propose
"carpet bombing" Middle Eastern population centers?
Dig beneath the
spasms of insecurity, fear and smugness that Canada's intellectual class has
exhibited toward the United States, and you find an underlying attitude of
warmth among ordinary people. Most of us travel to America, at least
occasionally, for vacations and work. We talk to Americans every day on
Facebook and Twitter, watch the same TV shows, follow the same sports.
America is a friend,
in other words. Even left-leaning Canadians politicians such as Justin Trudeau
will tell you as much.
But the face that
this friend has shown us during the current presidential campaign -- of naked
religious bigotry, of race paranoia, of curdled nostalgia for mythologized
"greatness" -- is not a face we recognize or appreciate. And once the
voting is done on November 8, we hope it is a face that Americans never show to
the world again.
South Africa: It's Trump this and
Trump that
Donald Trump? After
Barack Obama? For those South Africans paying attention at this point in the
U.S. presidential race, the primary campaign has prompted furrowed eyebrows.
Indeed, the word "incredulous" best describes the response here to
Trump's howl-a-minute, holler-a-minute, horror-a-minute bid to become the
Republican nominee.
When Obama was
running for the White House, it felt like a home race -- and then a home run --
for many South Africans. We were transfixed, as was most of sub-Saharan Africa,
at the sight of this young, lanky, beautiful, clever, black man stepping up to
take one of the most powerful jobs in the world. And then there was Michelle
Obama. And Malia. And Sasha. It was black can-do in a perfect package.
Obama's campaign of
hope and change energized us, and biographies flew up the bestseller lists
here. Of course, Obama's message of hope and change have grayed at the temples,
just like his hair has. True, he has managed to put in place a system that is
transforming health care, and under his administration's watch, sexual
orientation is now just that -- a sexual orientation, not some kind of
abomination in the eyes of the law. True, he didn't manage to close Gitmo, or
end the conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq, but his presidency has still been
transformative.
Now the same country
that elected Obama seems to be toying with the idea of electing a comb-over
king who doesn't seem to like Muslims and Mexicans very
much, leaving some here to wonder what he feels about black Americans and
Africans.
I realize that Trump
isn't the only one running for president, but as in the United States, he has
dominated the coverage of the race, and the other candidates have simply not
found space in South Africa's coverage of the primaries, outside of small,
intellectual circles. It is Trump this and Trump that, outdoing himself again
and again with his bigotry.
Even the fact that
the United States might elect its first woman president in the shape of Hillary
Clinton has not yet become a talking point, although here sub-Saharan Africa
has already bested the United States -- Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf has been
president of Liberia since 2006.
So the focus has been
on Trump, who unfortunately has run an insular campaign. If asked about his
African foreign policy, I fear it would sound something like this: "Kenya?
Isn't that the place where Obama was born?"
Britain: America should elect a
Brit
British understanding
of the U.S. election is, as always, prejudiced. Sympathy is overwhelmingly with
Hillary Clinton because we know very little about her, she isn't a Republican,
she's a woman, and we like Bill Clinton. Sexual misdemeanor rarely kills a
political reputation in Britain. We're obsessed with money: Overcharge the
taxpayers for official use of stationery and you risk assassination.
News coverage is
dominated by Donald Trump. He reminds us of Gordon Gekko, but without the sex
appeal. Britons find having money embarrassing and boasting about it nauseating
-- and The Donald makes matters worse by challenging our multicultural
sensitivities. Trump has been criticized by the Prime Minister, and members
of Parliament debated banning him from Britain.
The debate was widely
mocked. It was an illiberal excuse to virtue signal, and some MPs appeared to
forget that Trump has invested generously in our country. A lone, brave MP
admitted that many of his constituents share Trump's views. No one pointed out
that Britain might just as easily ban President Barack Obama on the grounds
that his administration has deported record numbers of illegal immigrants, or
that UK citizens have been denied entry to the United States apparently on the
basis that they are Muslim.
The ideal president
for the Brits would be religiously agnostic, Keynesian and wary of intervention
in foreign wars. In other words, we'd like America to elect a Brit. Assuming
this does not happen, attention is falling on Bernie Sanders. Britain's Labour
Party, the official opposition, last year elected a radical socialist in a
grassroots democratic revolution -- and we see parallels with Sanders.
(Although Sanders is, by comparison, a centrist).
Finally, the big
issues for Britain are the war in Syria, the problem of integrating Muslim
migrants and a promised referendum on our membership of the EU. The Brits would
most like to know what the U.S. plan is for the Middle East. Across Europe, the
lack of American leadership on foreign affairs is noted and regretted. Our own
leaders have failed to fill the vacuum. The result: the bodies of refugee
children washing up on European beaches. America desperately needs to talk
about this.
Tim Stanley is a
columnist with The Daily Telegraph.
Venezuela: Time for a thaw in
ties
So, here we are in
the midst of the U.S. presidential campaign. Meanwhile, relations between
Venezuela and the United States have been on hold, with neither country having
appointed an ambassador to the other since 2010. Yet despite the
"anti-Yankee" narrative of the late former President Hugo Chavez,
this is by no means a relationship of equal weight.
While the United
States seems to be in the headlines in Venezuela every other day, Venezuela
hasn't been discussed in the current presidential campaign, not even after the
country's opposition took control of the country's National Assembly after
16 years in the wilderness. (Of course it's not just Venezuela that has been
overlooked -- Mauricio Macri's election in Argentina hasn't been talked about,
either -- so much for the influence of Latin America's misnamed
"progressive left").
And maybe it's better
that way. Everybody -- even The Donald -- knows current Venezuelan President
Nicolas Maduro is not Chavez. But what is remaining of "Chavismo"
should be left to focus on domestic affairs. Indeed, judging by the very real
problems facing the country, the U.S. candidates shouldn't give Venezuela's
government an opportunity to distract the attention from these problems. So,
please, don't mention Venezuela.
What are the problems
that Venezuela should be left alone to wrestle with?
Well, this oil-rich
country is experiencing the worst crisis in its modern history -- the IMF expects the country's inflation rate to hit 720% this year,
even as it grapples with food and medicine shortages. Meanwhile, the price of oil --
the government's main source of income -- has tumbled to below $30 a barrel.
With this in mind, Venezuelans aren't currently worried or even thinking about
the American presidential race at this point -- they have bigger problems right
now, problems that are closer and feel much more real.
This doesn't stop
some elements of Chavismo from still blaming the United States -- Democrats and
Republicans -- for their misfortune. And the Venezuelan government has accused Washington of inciting conflict so it can take
control of the largest oil reserves in the world. This even as at it continues
to sell oil to the United States, which means by its own logic it is filling
the tank of its imagined invader.
The truth is, though,
that while oil imports from Venezuela represent only about 9%
of American needs, the United States remains the biggest buyer of
Venezuelan oil exports. Do the math and you can see why the government's
rhetoric is divorced from economic reality.
Cuba, which blames
the infamous U.S. embargo for all its problems, has managed to restore
diplomatic relations with the United States after some 50 years. I can only
hope that whoever is elected in November, relations between Washington and
Caracas improve -- and that we don't risk our own five decades of estrangement.
Israel: Will next president
protect 'unbreakable bond'?
In my Jerusalem
neighborhood café one cold morning in January, a colleague and I randomly asked
three Israelis who they would like to be the next president of the United
States. As you might expect, we got three very different answers. "I like
Bernie Sanders," said the young man as he made my coffee. "The things
he says make sense." The proprietor, preparing a cheese sandwich,
disagreed. "Donald Trump is not afraid to say what a lot of people are
thinking." A woman sitting in the café said she had no strong feelings
about the subject. "I don't support any candidate," she said. "It's
not our election."
I don't pretend to
speak for all or even some Israelis. My gut feeling, though, is that many have
a visceral mistrust of U.S. President Barack Obama, especially after he focused
his energy on a deal with Iran, Israel's archenemy. At the same time, no one really
knows if Trump or Sanders or Hillary Clinton, for that matter, would be any
better for Israel than Obama, who maintained a high level of U.S. aid to Israel
and even quipped that he had been called America's first Jewish president. As
Israel reels from a tsunami of terrorism amid a moribund peace process with the
Palestinians, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Ben Carsen and Jeb Bush have been much
more outspoken in their support for the Jewish state, but this has not
resonated with the Israeli public or in the media.
Israelis want a U.S.
president who will both say and do the right things, while not allowing any
"daylight" in Jerusalem's "unbreakable bond" with
Washington. In this respect, they might deep down hope for the victory of
either one of the frontrunners, Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, because they
might ultimately have Israel's back. For better or worse, Clinton and Trump may
also be the only two candidates that most Israelis can easily identify. Except
perhaps for Sanders or Michael Bloomberg, one of whom really could be America's
first Jewish president.
Iran: Why Iranians want a
Democrat
It's probably too
early for the Iranian public to decide on its preferred U.S. presidential
candidate. At this point most Iranians just don't know enough about the
individual contenders. But they do know the differences between the parties --
and what that could mean for ties between the two nations.
Iranians are hoping
to see relations improve based on recent diplomatic achievements, while the implementation
of the nuclear deal and the recent prisoner swap raised hopes that a
Democratic president will follow in President Barack Obama's footsteps.
"The
continuation of Obama's policy is what Iranians are interested to
continue," one prominent Iranian political figure told me. She also told
me that she believes reformists and ordinary Iranians want a Democrat to win in
November, no matter who comes out on top in the primaries.
This isn't surprising
-- the majority of Iranians view the diplomacy pursued by
President Obama and the moderate government of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani
with approval, and they support the continuing progress. Direct contacts
between Tehran and the United States after more than three decades of being on
hold are a unique experience for many Iranians, who believe the Democrats offer
the best chance of this continuing.
In contrast, the idea
of a Republican victory in November conjures images of George W. Bush's
presidency and his "Axis of Evil" speech. The hostility such rhetoric
stoked against the Islamic Republic empowered Iran's conservatives, troubled
reformists and journalists, and helped undermine the reform-minded presidency
of Mohammad Khatami a decade ago.
As a result, many
Iranians see conservative Republicans much like they do extremists in Iran --
as determined to shatter current progress if they take power. One need only
look at the disdain they have shown for the nuclear deal -- and the threats by
some to tear up the agreement.
But there is a
certain irony in the tough line being taken by the Republican candidates --
electing a conservative Republican could also have an impact on the next
presidential election in Iran, and not in the way they might be hoping. The
fact is that extreme talk fuels animosity in Iran -- and increases the chances
of Tehran's hardliners seizing power. And that is presumably not what they
intend.
Camelia Entekhabifard
is an Iranian-American journalist and author of "Save Yourself By Telling
the Truth."
Japan: Candidates should drop
fear-mongering
Last week, I was
covering a Bernie Sanders rally in Iowa, and asked a 77-year-old man for his
thoughts on the presidential race. After an initial visible look of panic
passed over his face, we started talking, and I explained that I am a
correspondent for a Japanese newspaper. When he heard that, he gave me a big a
smile and started telling me how much he loved his Toyota, which he said he had
been driving for decades.
That sort of warm
reaction was a big contrast from the mood during my days as a student around 25
years ago, when I lived in Des Moines, Iowa. Back then, a trade dispute defined
relations between the United States and Japan -- and not in a good way.
Just consider a New
York Times article from July 1990, which cited a recent poll asking about
potential threats to the United States. It found 58% of Americans saw Japan's
economic power as a bigger threat to the United States than the Soviet Union's
military power.
That's quite a
statistic. Of course, fast forward to today, and the idea that Japanese
economic might somehow endangers Americans is almost laughable after two
decades of deflation in Japan. But that earlier poll came at a time when
Japanese-manufactured cars were being vandalized on the streets of Detroit, and
anti-Japanese rhetoric was seen as a vote-winner. Indeed,
"Japan-bashing" was a central theme of Dick Gephardt's presidential
bid in 1988.
Few people remember
such details in this forward-looking great nation. But I have been reminded of
these types of attitudes -- and how divisive they can be -- when I hear
Republican candidate Donald Trump on the campaign trail.
As he launched his
campaign last summer, Trump said countries like China, Japan and Mexico are
"killing us" economically. "Our country is in serious
trouble," he said. "We don't have victories anymore. We used to have
victories, but we don't have them."
I'm not going to
argue with this diagnosis -- plenty of people already have. But what is troubling is the way Trump and other
candidates have tried to stoke people's fears about other nations and their
people as a way of collecting votes. Trump may be the most explicit and
controversial in doing so, but he is by no means the only one, at either end of
the political spectrum, to suggest that America should be scared.
If I am back in Iowa
in another 25 years, I am pretty confident that many of the fears expressed by
the public -- and being preyed upon by candidates -- will seem like a distant
memory. But in the meantime, I wonder how much damage is being done.
Koya Ozeki is the
Washington correspondent for the Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan's largest newspaper.
Russia: Why the Kremlin wants
Trump
If you ask the
average Russian who is running for president in America, you'll most likely get
raised eyebrows instead of an answer. But one does not have to be a prophet to
predict that if Donald Trump wins Iowa, Russian TV will be overjoyed.
The once seemingly
endless debate among the Russian establishment over whether a Democratic or
Republican president would be better has long seemed pointless. After all,
Russia seemed to be getting along with George W. Bush -- who once saw Vladimir
Putin's soul in his eyes -- before an awkward confrontation as Russia invaded
the Georgian provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in August 2008. And
although Barack Obama "reset" ties with Russia, his administration's
policy was thwarted with the annexation of Crimea and Russian military
engagement in Ukraine.
President Putin
likely knows he will never be regarded as a legitimate partner by any
mainstream president of the United States. So it's now all about Trump, who
challenges not a political camp, but the core of the U.S. system itself. It was
not by accident that Putin endorsed him last December, and the official Russian
media has taken the same line since then. Edouard Limonov, once a rebellious
Russian writer, put it bluntly in the pro-Kremlin Izvestia daily: "We prefer
Trump because he accepts Russia as the state of the tough men."
Ultimately, the
Kremlin takes a two-pronged approach to the United States. Tactically, Russian
authoritarianism presents itself as not all that different from Western liberal
democracies. The argument goes that both kinds of regimes are flawed, with
their strings pulled by forces from behind the curtain. Indeed, Putin is always
keen to emphasize flaws in the American democracy, usually pointing out that
George H.W. Bush won the presidency in 2000 despite losing the popular vote. In
doing so, he seems to be sending a message to his nation that rigged elections
in Russia are somehow a similar phenomenon.
Strategically,
though, relations with the West are seen as a zero-sum game, and anything that
can be seen as an American failure -- whether on the battlefields of Syria or
in domestic electoral politics -- is seen as a reason to celebrate in Moscow.
And from this
perspective, Vladimir Putin looks at Mr. Trump -- a populist who seems willing
to throw the usual values to the wind -- as his natural ally, and a potential
vehicle for his own global interests. If Trump secures the Republican
nomination, Russian officialdom can be expected to celebrate his victory much
like Napoleon celebrated his triumph in the battle of three emperors at
Austerlitz two centuries ago.
India: Why India is starting to
pay attention
Up until 9 p.m. on
January 25, Donald Trump was largely unknown to probably all but a relative
handful of India's 1.2 billion people -- those who could afford to buy a pad in
his eponymous towers in prosperous western Indian cities; maybe a few more who
caught him on "The Apprentice."
But within less than
an hour on Monday, "Donald who?" turned to "Donald why?" as
Arnab Goswami, the nation's noisiest purveyor of nightly outrage, and his
co-panelists, went full pelt on prime time TV at the Republican hopeful's pointed
reference to a turbaned protester at a rally. That's what it takes -- a
perceived racial slight and a lot of shouting -- to get Indians to realize that
Americans are trying to find a new tenant for 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
So far, it is safe to
assume that most news consumers have no idea who is eyeing the property.
Hillary Clinton, they might know about because of the surname. But Ted Cruz and
Bernie Sanders could be beach bums bouncing alongside Pamela Anderson in
"Baywatch" for all most people know. Not that we are insular or
uninterested, just that no one's caught our fancy yet. It's all a bit of a
white blur.
At Outlook, a
TIME-style weekly news magazine I edit, we twice considered putting the U.S.
elections on the cover in the past year. "Is America ready for a Lady
President?" was our working title until Hillary's emails showed up.
"The All-American Idiot" was another one we mulled when Trump went
ballistic after the Paris attacks.
We didn't go ahead
with either because it seemed too early, and neither candidate had said
anything of note on the only topic that grips Indians, young or old: American
visas. Now that Trump is trying to control the damage his abrasive comments
have made to Indian immigrants, maybe the time is nigh.
So maybe we will dub
Trump "The Over Achiever" if he wins the nomination. After all, we
awarded Barack Obama the opposite label four years ago, before he set out to
prove us spectacularly wrong (and did so well that our prime minister was
impressed enough to call him by his first name 17 times in his monthly radio
address).
Come to think of it,
hopefully we will be proved wrong about this one, too.
Krishna Prasad is
editor of Outlook magazine.
Lebanon: U.S. election far from
local story
The U.S. presidential
election has long ceased to be just a local American story, and with the
campaigns approaching the final stretch as the primaries begin, international
interest in the race to the White House is set to intensify.
It's testimony to the
fact that the United States remains the true global power that people and the
media in most countries will follow the race closer than they follow even some
local stories. This is particularly so in the war-ravaged Middle East.
While the social and
economic agendas of candidates inevitably top the focus of the American public
and media, the main interest in the Middle East is the foreign policy of the
pretenders to the position of most powerful person in the world.
Although Lebanon is a
tiny country, it sits at the heart of the fault line in the Middle East. With
that in mind, Lebanese generally, like many Arabs, will be looking at the
policies of the candidates as they relate to three key issues: Daesh (also
known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS), the regional proxy war
between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
ISIS has emerged as
an extremely serious international terror threat, but it is an existential one
to people in the Middle East, the Muslim majority that opposes it, Christians
and other minorities. The reality is that Lebanon will never feel safe with
ISIS terrorists at its doorstep.
But Washington is
also being looked upon to help ease tensions between regional powerhouses Iran
and Saudi Arabia. And it is in a unique position after the nuclear deal to
check Tehran's interference in the affairs of its Arab neighbors and to use its
historic ties with Riyadh to contain the fires raging in the region.
As for issues
relating to the Palestinians, the Lebanese are looking for a U.S. president who
might nudge Israel into a peace deal that sees the Palestinians establish a
viable state.
Ultimately, Lebanese
will be interested spectators in the U.S. presidential race, and they will
likely feel an affinity with the candidate that offers both leadership and a
clear policy for tackling these vital regional issues.
Nadim Ladki is editor
in chief of Lebanon's Daily Star newspaper.