RTN -Congratulations have been pouring in for President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris from leaders around the world -- but not all have been forthcoming in acknowledging the projected victors of the 2020 US presidential election.
Among
the notable holdouts are the strongmen who President Donald Trump has
cozied up to and heaped praise upon over the last four years. Trump's
affinity for authoritarian leaders across the globe has been one of the
few constants during his chaotic time in office.
In
staying silent, these leaders have spoken volumes about the types of
relationships they anticipate having with the new administration.
Russian President Vladimir Putin
In
2016, the Kremlin congratulated President Donald Trump within hours of
the race being called -- but Russian President Vladimir Putin has not
extended the same message to Biden. On Monday, Kremlin spokesperson
Dmitry Peskov said Moscow would wait for official election results
before commenting on the outcome.
Over
the course of his presidency, Trump broke with longstanding US policy
in his repeated praise of Putin, stoking suspicion over his campaign's
possible connection to Russian meddling in the election. The same cozy
relationship cannot be expected from Biden, who has vowed to treat
foreign interference "as an adversarial act."
"Biden
will work hard with partners and allies to push back on whatever Russia
is up to, whether it's trying to assassinate Russian citizens overseas,
or kill their own opposition leaders like the alleged attempt with [Alexey] Navalny
in Siberia, or activities in Syria, Crimea, etc.," said Karin von
Hippel, director-general of the Royal United Services Institute. "So I
do think he [Putin] knows that there will be much more of an effort to
try to contain Russia."
Trump and Putin chat at the APEC Summit in Danang, Vietnam, in 2017.
Biden
will mark a significant step change for Russia, which has had a free
hand for some years now -- including at the end of President Barack
Obama's years in office -- von Hippel, a former nonpolitical senior
adviser at the State Department under the Obama administration, added.
In late October, Biden called
Russia "the main threat" to US national security during an interview
with 60 Minutes on CBS. Kremlin spokesman Peskov responded by saying
that Russia didn't agree with Biden's remarks, and such rhetoric
amplified "hatred towards the Russian Federation."
In
the run-up to the election, the two countries did not reach a deal to
extend a key arms reduction treaty, New START -- signed by Presidents
Obama and Dmitry Medvedev in 2010 -- which the Trump administration was
pushing for ahead of election day.
Putin previously indicated that he sees strategic treaties as one of the potential points for cooperation with Biden.
Chinese President Xi Jinping
Even after his rancorous rhetoric against China as a candidate in the 2016 race, then-President-elect Trump was congratulated on his win by President Xi Jinping, who called for a "sound" and "stable" Sino-US relationship moving forward.
And while Trump and Xi did briefly forge an unlikely friendship
over sorbet at the US President's Mar-a-Lago resort, relations between
the two countries have deteriorated amid stark divisions over trade,
technology, human rights, accusations of Chinese expansionism and --
most recently -- blame over the Covid-19 pandemic.
But even against this backdrop, Xi has not been quick to welcome a Biden presidency. The Chinese government on Monday sidestepped questions
on when it would congratulate Biden on his election victory, with a
Foreign Ministry spokesman saying only that China would act in
"accordance with international practice."
It's
not hard to see why Beijing is hesitant. Biden has boasted of his
ability to take on China in contrast to Trump, denouncing the outgoing
President for initially embracing Xi. Beijing may not feel obliged to
compromise with the US under a new administration, especially as the
risk of unpredictable action is considerably lower. But a degree of
consistency could also be to Beijing's benefit, von Hippel said.
"Even
though Biden will be tough on China, and will work with partners and
allies to have a concerted China policy, his platform says we will work
with China on areas where there's mutual interest, whether that's
climate change or North Korea. And then they'll push back in other
areas. So it'll be more nuanced, but I think it'll be better for China
because it won't be so erratic and ad hoc like Trump was," said von
Hippel.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan
As
a candidate, Trump praised Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for
his handling of a failed coup attempt despite a major crackdown on
perceived opposition figures. As President, Trump trumpeted a
controversial referendum win for Erdogan that saw the Turkish leader gain far-reaching and unchecked powers.
In
short, with Trump in office, Erdogan has largely been given carte
blanche to do what he wants. That will be a very different story with
Biden, who Erdogan has not yet acknowledged as President-elect.
Trump and Erdogan take part in a joint press conference at the White House in 2019.
Speaking last year on a special episode of The New York Times' "The Weekly,"
Biden said he was "worried" about Turkey and would be taking "a very
different approach" to relations with the country, including supporting
opposition leadership and the Kurds.
Trump's retreat from the region -- including a sudden withdrawal from Syria
that left erstwhile anti-ISIS allies the Syrian Kurds exposed to a
Turkish advance -- emboldened Erdogan. The Turkish leader has since risked the wrath of the NATO alliance by buying Russian weapons, and backed attacks on US and European interests in the Middle East.
Biden has said Erdogan has "to pay a price" for those actions, including whether the US will continue to sell weapons to him.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro
President
Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, often known as "the Trump of the Tropics" for
his shared brand of populist politics, has also kept quiet on Trump's
loss.
Bolsonaro and his children
-- who, like Trump's, play an active role in politics -- had been
hopeful about Trump's re-election bid. His son, Congressman Eduardo
Bolsonaro, who wore a "Trump 2020" cap on a trip to Washington as an envoy for his father, questioned Biden's votes and the integrity of the US election on Twitter last week.
Like
Trump, Bolsonaro has campaigned and run on polarization, stirring
controversy by making misogynistic, racist and homophobic remarks. He
has also repeatedly downplayed the Covid-19 pandemic, even as Brazil
suffered one of the world's deadliest outbreaks.
With
Trump's departure, Bolsonaro loses a diplomatic ally and finds himself
facing a US President with a renewed focus on human rights and the environment.
"Will
this herald the beginning of the end of other populist leaders? A part
of the reason that it may do that is because so many of these populist
leaders like Bolsonaro in particular ... are in denial about the
pandemic and they really demonstrated to their own people, in many ways
as Trump has, that they don't actually care about them," von Hippel
said.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador
Mexican
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador made a carefully worded statement
on the US election in which he did not address Biden as the winner and
instead said he needed to wait until legal challenges to the
vote-counting concluded.
"We are
going to wait for all the legal issues to be resolved. We do not want to
be reckless. We do not want to act lightly. We want to be respectful of
the self-determination of the people and of their rights," López
Obrador said on state television Saturday.
Trump and López Obrador address the media at the White House in July.
López
Obrador has forged a close relationship with the US President over the
last few years, even in the face of Trump's economic bullying and racist
rhetoric. The two men, both populists who've built political brands on a
cult of personality, met in July to celebrate the implementation of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement trade deal.
López
Obrador's reluctance to congratulate Biden may be down to that
friendship. The move could also be interpreted as a continuation of a
foreign policy tradition of actively avoiding commenting on the affairs
of other countries.
The Mexican
President added in Saturday's televised statement: "We have a very good
relationship with both of the candidates. President Trump has been very
respectful with us and we have reached some good accords. We thank him
because he has not been a meddler and he has respected us. And the same
thing with the candidate Biden. I've known him for more than 10 years."
Source : CNN
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