Opinions #50/24

Like the frogs in Aesop’s fable, the national leaders of many countries are getting restless. They know they are running out of time and that the one who will set them straight is coming soon. Starting next January 20. That’s when it will be understood what the chosen one, and not by Zeus, as in the fable, but by seventy-seven million American voters, really wants to do. Everyone is looking at Donald Trump. Some with hope, some with fear, many with interested curiosity. The most contradictory intentions are attributed to the re-elected president, unpredictable by definition after his first four years in the White House, followed by four tumultuous years in opposition. Attack Iran, but also resume dialog with Tehran. Ditch Zelensky, but also strengthen him ahead of talks with Putin. To get rid of Syria or not. Give Netanyahu carte blanche or call him to order. Multiply the duties on Chinese and Mexican goods or just revise them. And so on. That is, to speculate on things said during the campaign that are still up in the air. Or on the forward rushes of real or presumed advisors. Everyone is looking at the ballon d’essay the tycoon has put into orbit during this long transition period. The anachronistic duration still allows a president like Biden to be deemed incapable of sustaining a campaign to head the world’s leading power. And not for normal administration. Biden signed on to important and serious decisions when the intendance was already emptying his drawers. For example, he authorized Kiev to use US long-range missiles on Russian territory. And while staying abroad, he continued to deceive Zelensky by sending him invitation to Ukraine join NATO. At home, he then became the protagonist of the most shameful decision of all: to use a presidential pardon (as a former president in fieri) to overturn the sentence intended for his son Hunter, who risked 17 years in prison for using his father’s influence to secure assignments around the world, starting with Ukraine, which earned him 11 million dollars. That’s how things are when morality is fluid. And when morality is so malleable and interest-driven, terrorists can be quickly forgiven if they serve the higher cause. Specifically, the Syrian thugs led by jihadist leader al-Jawlani, formerly ISIS, formerly al Qaeda, formerly al Nusra, can legitimately hope that he and his gang will be struck off the list of terrorist organizations compiled by the United States and the European Union. The first days of coming to power in Damascus without massacres and with many assurances of introducing non-fundamentalist Sharia (Islamic law) were enough for some British talking crickets to already start speaking about restoring their reputations. Those who slaughtered, beheaded, caged, and burned alive the “infidels” they encountered on the road can be treated differently now that, together with Assad’s armed opponents, they have brought an end to his decades-long regime. So yesterday’s terrorists become today’s guerrillas, and it’s all about changing definitions. Let’s see what Trump decides is the mantra being chased from one Chancellery to another. Meanwhile, like Aesop’s frogs, they stir in the pond. Each one of us in our own. Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili lost her supporting majority in last month’s political election, but chooses not to recognize the result (which international observers consider generally correct), campaigning in the streets and proclaiming herself the only legitimate institution in the country, denying the newly elected parliament the right to appoint her successor. In Germany, CDU chancellor candidate Friedrich Merz, a member of Merkel’s former party, plays to increase tensions with Moscow by announcing the delivery of deadly Taurus missiles to Ukraine. In Brussels, the President of the Council, the newly installed Portuguese socialist António Costa, does not hesitate to make the harshest statements against Russia. And so on, announcing, in the great chaos waiting for organization that at this stage is the Euro-Atlantic West: a world of values that seemed irrevocably attractive to the rest of the nations. Except that just a few days ago, it turned out that wasn’t quite true. It seemed like a prank worthy of Orson Wells, with South Korea issuing a desperate cry for the containment of communism. A pale gentleman who looked like Yoon Suk Yeol appeared on the TV. It took a few minutes to realize if this was the first major mockery of artificial intelligence: instead, it turned out to be him, the president of South Korea, in power for two years. Convinced as we were that after the fall of the Berlin Wall there was no longer any ideological alternative to “our principles and values”, we instead found ourselves listening to the heartfelt appeal of a friendly leader, head of one of Washington’s most trusted countries, a pillar of American strategy in the Indo-Pacific. Yoon has revealed to us that at the beginning of the first quarter of the 21st century, communism, in its most paroxysmal and paradoxical interpretation, the parareligious interpretation of Pyongyang and the three Kims who endogamously handed power to each other, risks being attractive to the ultra-capitalists of the South, the industrious ants who, between coup d’état and controlled democracy, have transformed a disfigured country into an industrial powerhouse and economic semipower over the past forty years. “We must protect our country from communist forces, eliminate communist elements in parliament”, was Yoon’s premise. Who immediately thereafter declared “martial law emergency.” Like his country’s worst moments, like any modern African putchist. He, the leader (he too without a majority in parliament) of a country pampered by Biden in an anti-Chinese function, chosen to host the ‘Summit for Democracy’ eight months ago, who resorts to the institutional Armageddon dear to the putschists. Only to bow out and retreat in the face of opposition party reactions and street protests. So, this is how things are going in anticipation of Trump taking office at the White House. We look ahead as Francisco Borba Ribeiro Neto tries to survey the horizon of South America on impact of Trump 2. And we look back wistfully, as Massimo Nava does when analyzing Angela Merkel’s autobiography. A key figure on the international stage who, three years after leaving the stage, seems unable to emerge from embarrassed restraint.