REX TILLERSON DID CORRECTLY CALL THE PRESIDENT AS HE SAW HIM

 EUROPE LOOKS AT TRUMP AS “A LATE ROMAN EMPEROR”

….Paris headlines considers that Trump is “Tearing America apart”

 

Many foreign observers confused by Trump’s strong showing despite his mishandling of the pandemic…?

 

As expected. Paris Le Monde headlines have US as a “Democracy in Danger,” and that the US Presidential Election has left many foreign observers totally bewildered.

However, the stock markets around the world did hold up, despite the looming and potentially prolonged legal battle over the results of the US presidential election. But President Trump’s premature victory claim and unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud have been met with deep global unease. 

However, as expected, there was more than a little glee from America’s traditional adversaries such as Russia and Iran.

Here are some of the latest developments:

• Asian and European markets shrugged off the uncertainty to record decent gains, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 reaching a nine-month high and indexes across Europe rising.
• Asian and European stock markets do see America’s global image as taking yet another battering, especially among its allies around the globe.
• One German newspaper likened the US president to a Roman emperor contemptuous of his citizens.

In Japan, America’s closest ally in Asia and a country whose postwar constitution was largely written by Americans, the slow vote count dominated television news and made for painful watching for many.

The Mainichi newspaper said the events even called into question “the intrinsic value of democracy,” adding that “responsibility for fanning the divide and amplifying the confusion lies with Mr. Trump.”

The National, one of the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) state-owned English-language dailies, lamented the political divisions in the United States along with the coronavirus pandemic, economic crisis and now the elections. “At a time when the nation should be pulling together with what the British would call Blitz Spirit, the streets of many cities have been the setting for what appear to be the beginnings of civil strife,” it wrote in an editorial.

Another UAE paper, the Gulf News, carried a political cartoon showing a figure representing America headed into a dark tunnel labeled “constitutional crisis.”

After Trump falsely declared victory before the votes were counted on election night, he spent much of Wednesday leveling allegations of electoral fraud, of course without any evidence. His campaign has since announced bogus legal challenges to determine which votes will count. Days of court battles and political uncertainty lie ahead, and many fear major violence.

For many around the world, America is no longer the democratic role model.

US leaders’ preaching about global human rights and democracy, when the country’s political system is so affected by money and divisiveness, and Trump's foreign policy record being so marked by support for dictators and its own economic interests.  This has always carried more than a whiff of hypocrisy for many observers.

Despite this, the idea of American democracy, albeit an imperfect one, is still something that could inspire.

“America has represented optimism, looking forward and ideas,” said Tatsuhiko Yoshizaki, chief economist at the Sojitz Research Institute in Tokyo. “And yet, over the past four years, we have come to see the dark side in the United States.”

The same feeling was echoed in Europe, where Germany’s left-leaning Der Spiegel newsweekly compared Trump to that “late Roman emperor” who has “set a historic standard for voter contempt.” One of the paper’s conservative competitors, Die Welt, chose a similar comparison.

France, though, offered a hopeful assessment, saying the United States’ strong democratic values would ensure the correct results. “I have faith in US institutions validating the results of the election,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told Europe 1 radio.

In Britain, some commentators responded with fury, with the left-leaning Daily Mirror calling Trump “a liar and a cheat until the bitter end,” while other papers turned to humor, especially over the slow pace of counting votes. The front page of the Metro newspaper read, in mocking Trump’s slogan: “Make America Wait Again.”

Governments across Asia have largely refrained from meaningful comment, preferring to wait until one candidate has conceded defeat.

But their newspapers and analysts were not so considerate.

Trump’s speech prematurely declaring victory as ballots were still being counted sparked alarm in India, the world’s most populous democracy.

Trump’s comments marked a “distinctly authoritarian turn” that overshadowed a “relatively peaceful election exercise in the world’s oldest democracy,” wrote the Hindu newspaper in an editorial. Trump’s statement amounted to a demand that legally cast ballots not be counted, which would imply an “unprecedented attempt at mass voter suppression,” it wrote.

Anand Mahindra, a prominent industrialist in India, remarked Thursday that while the electoral process “has been a unifying force” in his country, the US electoral system has had the opposite impact in America and is “deepening” its polarization.

To some in Asia, the US divisions served as a warning. In Indonesia, social media was going crazy with Trump’s false declaration of early victory, a move reminiscent of the Indonesian presidential hopeful, who lost last year’s election but continued to claim victory and encouraged his supporters to protest.  He is now the Indonesian Defense Minister.

In South Korea, a major US ally, the division on display in the United States held up a painful mirror to its own democracy, which has also become extremely polarized.

“The chaos in the so-called advanced democracy of the United States sparks concerns that we are not much different,” the Seoul Shinmun newspaper wrote in an editorial, calling on South Koreans to keep their own leaders accountable.

There was less appetite to draw similar parallels in some other countries, such as New Zealand.  Trump had been guilty of a “chronic mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic.”  This was according to an editorial on the New Zealand Stuff news site.

But most of the US adversaries are sensing the conflict as an opportunity.

In China, a number of publications used the election to crow about the shortcomings of the American system.

American-style democracy is now a “joke” with clear “double standards,” said an editorial in the Ta Kung Pao newspaper in Hong Kong, controlled by China’s liaison office in the city.

“One can feel the anxiety for potential chaos seeing metal fences and security being hastily installed around the White House,” the editorial said. “The American election has become a global joke.”

Still, China’s vice foreign minister, Le Yucheng, voiced hopes on Thursday about repairing their relations after the election. “I hope the new US administration will meet China halfway,” Le said, according to NBC, despite the “disagreements between China and the US.

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to hold “an international telephone conversation” tomorrow.  But the Tass news agency cited Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying that it was unclear with whom Putin would speak…?

International concerns over any negative economic ripple effects of the election, however, were not reflected by the world markets.

Indeed, the sense that a win for Joe Biden, which looked more possible after he clinched Wisconsin and Michigan, this might offer a respite in the bitter contest between Beijing and Washington.

It should become more calm around the world, if and when, the election is finally confirmed to be a Biden win.

Copyright G. Ater 2020