World

The United States only has one president at a time. Until January 20, that’s Joe Biden. But President-elect Donald Trump and his skeleton foreign policy team are waiting in the wings, plotting policy behind the scenes on issues — Ukraine, Gaza, Iran, Middle East peace — that have stymied the Biden administration for the last year. In fact, Trump is already influencing the respective calculations of allies, partners and adversaries before he even steps foot in the Oval Office. And Biden’s advisors seem perfectly fine with it. Trump fancies himself as a master negotiator, somebody who’s inherently skilled at poking, pressuring and sweet-talking the opposite side of the table until he gets what he wants.

I represented the United States at the sixth Youth and Democracy in the Americas Summit at the Organization of American States, or OAS, last month. Most Latin Americans know this organization well, though most here in the US don’t. It is the premier regional political forum, the region’s European Union, a sort of mini-UN. When tyrants steal elections and jail journalists, the OAS becomes the center of the spectacle.  It has a reputation for defending liberty. But when it comes to China, matters get murky. So much so that the organization is willing to censor American voices that tell the truth about China’s regional ambitions. The appointment of Florida senator Marco Rubio as secretary of state may augur a new era of US focus on its hemispheric neighbors.

By the summer of 2024, Kyivans could joke that there was no way the Russian army could take their city now — they’d never get through the downtown traffic. The simple normality of urban congestion, crawling through grand boulevards in the shadows of buildings that, with fresh coats of paint, would suggest a Wes Anderson vision of Mitteleuropa, could lull a visitor into thinking he could be in any capital on the old Orient Express route. So, too, would the world-class Fenix restaurant, run by a celebrity chef and festooned with Chihuly-inspired decor. It was between the salmon tartare eclair and the rabbit ravioli that I heard for the first time, face-to-face, what it’s like to be persecuted for worshipping God in the wrong way.

On the back of President Trump’s victory November 5, the end of the election season will open an interesting eleven-week window. President Biden will assume lame-duck status and be freed from any concern that a more aggressive posture toward Russia might hurt Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign. Biden might also be considering the implication of handing over Ukraine policy to an individual who has repeatedly signaled his pro-Putin views. Both of these factors argue for Biden breaking from his self-imposed restrictions and supporting Ukraine striking targets in Russian territory during this lame-duck period. Imagine a moderately successful Ukraine attack now, after the November 5 election, on a moderately relevant target, such as a railroad terminal fifty miles inside of Russia.

Claudia Sheinbaum was sworn in as Mexico’s new president in Mexico City’s San Lázaro Legislative Palace this Tuesday. In her inauguration, she underscored the historic significance of electing the first woman president, while promising to adhere closely to her predecessor’s political agenda.  Wearing her presidential sash, she began her speech by thanking foreign dignitaries, but she saved the most thanks to former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), whose coattails she rode into the National Palace.

Viral footage showing armed Venezuelan gang members taking over an apartment complex in a Denver suburb has shocked thousands, especially after Mayor Mike Coffman of Aurora, Colorado joined Fox News’s Sandra Smith on Thursday to explain how failed border policies are affecting his city — which is around 700 miles away from the US-Mexico border. In the interview, Coffman confirmed that at least two apartment buildings in Aurora were taken by what some suspect are members of the notorious Tren de Aragua gang.  All of this is not quite surprising for those who are familiar with Venezuela. “Invasiones” (invasions, as Venezuelans call it) have been a recurrent phenomenon throughout the oil-rich South American country in the last twenty years.

The massive prisoner swap which led to Russia’s release of prisoners Evan Gershkovich, Paul Whelan and Vladimir Kara-Murza, among many others, is the greatest gift their families and loved ones could ever hope for — in several cases, it is a lifesaving development. But it also serves as an indication of just how much the practice has become a weapon of the world’s great powers. For my family, the news is deeply personal. Vladimir, a longtime dissident imprisoned for the crime of speaking out against the war in Ukraine in remarks to the state legislature of Arizona, was a pallbearer along with me for my father-in-law, John McCain. My wife joined with his, Evgenia, to speak to a bicameral congressional committee earlier this year to advocate for his release.

Nicolás Maduro’s rival Edmundo González and opposition leader María Corina Machado told reporters at around 6:30 p.m. Monday that with more than 70 percent of votes counted, González is more than doubling Maduro’s votes. During the press conference, both candidates emphasized peaceful protests, especially as thousands began taking to the streets the day before, when the country’s electoral council declared that Maduro had won with 51 percent of the vote. They called on voters to gather at 11 a.m. Tuesday. “I speak to you with the calmness of the truth,” González said to his cheering supporters from outside his campaign’s headquarters in Caracas. “We have in our hands the tally sheets that demonstrate our categorical and mathematically irreversible victory.

Sunday night was a long one in Venezuela. At midnight, the much anticipated yet dubious results came in for the South American country's election. The head of the National Electoral Council, Elvis Amoroso — a close ally of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro who has served as a deputy for his party — said that with 80 percent of ballots counted, Maduro had won with 51 percent of the vote. His rival, Maria Corina Machado’s replacement, Edmundo González, ended with 44 percent. The opposition has a different story. “Venezuela has a new president and his name is Edmundo González Urrutia. We won! And everyone knows it,” Machado said from a press conference following some silence after Maduro’s announced win.

At 3:45 a.m., the sun was not yet out in the Venezuelan valley of Caracas, but Andrés, a twenty-two-year old who lives in the outskirts, woke up and with the Gloria Al Bravo Pueblo national anthem at maximum volume, roused his family too. From deep in the valley, Natalia showed up to the polls at 7 a.m. She then headed back to pick her elderly parents; “they can skip the line now,” she tells me.  Like them, thousands of others got up Sunday morning with a mission: make the Venezuelan presidential election — the most consequential one in twenty-five-years — fraud-proof. The logic: the world has to see what Venezuelans see, eyes don’t lie.  “It's 5 a.m. and we have work!,” said the face of the opposition, María Corina Machado.

Venezuelans will gear up to vote in what has devolved into an unfair and unfree presidential election Sunday — one that nonetheless offers its citzens the best chance in a decade to get rid of the twenty-five-year-old Chavista regime that brought the oil-rich nation to its knees. Nicolás Maduro, the man who, among other things, caused a forty-two-place drop in Venezuela’s Press Freedom Index in ten years, will be facing Edmundo González. González, a little known diplomat who served in Algeria and Argentina, became the opposition’s unitary candidate after the government banned María Corina Machado from running. Though “inabilitated,” as Venezuelans put it, this election continues to be a Maduro versus Machado match.

Two Russian ships docked Tuesday in Venezuela’s La Guaira port, twenty miles away from Caracas. The stop comes after military exercises were conducted in the Atlantic, with four vessels stopping in Havana late last month. This is all part of a decades-long “look-at-us” operation, also known as a “show the flag” move, as Russia’s defense ministry puts it. While Russia’s presence in Cuba and Venezuela is not a new phenomenon, conflict in the East has only accelerated their muscle-flexing in the West. These movements mark Russia’s first extensive military exercises in the hemisphere in five years, as well as their first deployment of a nuclear submarine in close proximity to the US since the Cold War.