World Review: Trump vs Biden, Germany vs France, Israel vs Hamas

A brief synopsis of this week's show

Each Friday morning, I host a video podcast called “World Review with Ivo Daalder” where three journalists from major news outlets around the world join me in discussing the latest global news stories of the week.

This morning, March 8, I was joined by Anna Sauerbrey of Die Zeit, Matthew Kaminski of Politico, and James Harding of Tortoise Media.

While I encourage you to watch or listen to the episode (and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts!), here are three interesting things I took away from our discussion today:

• This week saw the firing of the starting gun on the US presidential election—still eight months away. Donald Trump swamped the opposition on Super Tuesday and Joe Biden used last night’s State of the Union to show he’s still up for the fight. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is watching anxiously—perhaps more so than any recent presidential election. As Matt argued, we have at least 8 months in which we won’t only have two presidents running against each other but two foreign policies being pursued at the same time. Unlike other challengers, Trump has an outside influence over the Republicans in Congress, many of whom will now do his bidding (as they did by torpedoing the bipartisan Senate border security measures and refusing to vote on Ukraine aid in the House). And while foreign policy usually only has a marginal impact on elections, this time may be different—with young people and muslim Americans deeply upset about the horrible situation in Gaza and a growing part of the Republican Party returning to 1930s-style isolationism.

• The past week saw two clarifying moments in Gaza, which likely will alter the course of how America will approach the conflict. One was the evident failure to get agreement on a ceasefire, despite Biden’s promise a couple of weeks ago that one would be agreed by the beginning of last week. The failure showed that we had been looking at the issue through the wrong lens—at issue wasn’t the terms of the deal but the lack of interest of leaders in Israel and Hamas to end the fighting. “You cannot make peace without peacemakers,” James explained. And he’s right. Netanyahu wants to prosecute the war and isn’t interested in ending the fighting. Hamas wants to survive, and isn’t interested in temporary pauses. The second clarifying moment came with the disastrous aid delivery by Israel that led to the death of more than 100 Palestinians when the trucks were besieged by thousands of hungry people and Israel opened fire. This led to Biden’s announcement that he would begin airdropping aid and build a pier and port to allow aid shipments to be shipped directly from Cyprus. America, evidently, now sees Israel as the largest obstacle to getting aid to Gazans who are reaching the point of starvation by the hundreds of thousands even as it continues to support and arm Israel in its fight against Hamas which has led to the unsustainable humanitarian crisis in the first place.

• And, finally, in Europe there is a growing realization that the war in Ukraine won’t end soon. With the U.S. deadlocked on providing more aid, Europeans are debating what more they can do. French President Macron set off a storm with his suggestions that Europe might consider sending troops, denouncing as “cowards” those who rejected the idea. Rather than uniting Europe in a common response, deep divisions are emerging that will make an effective response more difficult. At bottom, Anna argued, were starkly different approaches towards the conflict. Macron believes in “strategic ambiguity,” leaving Russia guessing as to what Europe is prepared to do and even doing. Raising the possibility of sending troops served that purposes, as does France’s unwillingness to say publicly how much it has provided Ukraine in support. German Chancellor Scholz believes in “strategic clarity,” telling Russia and the world both what German is willing to do (massive amounts of aid and serious rearming) and what it won’t do (send German forces in harms way). Both these approaches may serve each leader’s domestic political needs. But they widen the divisions at a time when unity is more necessary than ever. The only person who benefits from this, of course, is Vladimir Putin

That’s it for my quick takes of this week’s episode here on America Abroad. To get the full flavor, please listen to the episode itself.