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Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner greet President Barack Obama after the president delivered his State of the Union address on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday. At a State Department press conference Thursday, Clinton announced that she would be stepping down from the 'high wire of American politics.' (Evan Vucci/AP)

Hillary Clinton to step down from 'high wire' of US diplomacy

By Scott Baldauf, Staff writer / 01.27.12

No matter what happens in the 2012 US presidential elections, Hillary Clinton will not be America’s chief diplomat for much longer.

At a State Department press conference yesterday, she announced that she would be stepping down from the “high wire of American politics” after 20 years, as first lady, as a senator from New York, and finally as US Secretary of State. At the press conference, she told reporters that “it would be a good idea to find out how tired I really am.”

Diplomacy is a largely thankless task in America. In France, diplomats are practically rock stars, and the actions and speeches of senior French diplomats abroad are noted closely as to whether they match the standards of French diplomats of the past. Not so in the US. Newspapers like the New York Times may have front-page articles about the US secretary of State’s latest foreign trip to Myanmar, for instance, but the vast majority of Americans are blissfully unaware of what their government is doing overseas.  

Ms. Clinton inherited a job when American diplomacy was every bit as messy as the city of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Many nations that initially felt sympathy for the US after the Sept. 11 attacks had grown quickly tired of American statements such as, “You’re either with us or against us.” Changing the tone of American foreign policy meant bringing back a level of trust, and to do that meant thousands of foreign trips.

Here’s the US State Department's interactive map showing Hillary Clinton’s hundreds of foreign and domestic trips.

Rumors have been flying around for weeks that Hillary Clinton was planning to bow out.

Chris McGreal, the Guardian’s man in Washington, quoted a keen diplomacy-watcher, John Norris of the Center for American Progress, as saying that Clinton’s legacy abroad will be her dogged attempts to reverse hostility.

"I have a hard time thinking of a secretary of state in recent memory who inherited a portfolio that was more of a mess. She had wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a very troubled relationship with Pakistan, and a full-blown economic crisis on her watch," he said.

"Her ability to reconstruct the United States as a player on the multilateral stage is some of the most important and least acknowledged work. If you look at the broad architecture of US foreign policy, she really has done a pretty remarkable job of helping us emerge from what was something of a smouldering train wreck when she took office."

Distrust still lingers, of course, just as American troops linger in an Afghanistan that remains desperately poor and insecure after 10 years of US involvement. Several governments still view the US as a unilateral force of nature on the United Nations Security Council, pushing through its call for the right to protect Libyan civilians with NATO air strikes against the Qaddafi regime, for instance. Now president of the UN Security Council, South Africa seems to view its job as America’s Nay-Sayer.

In his speech before the UN General Assembly this month, South African President Jacob Zuma slammed the UN Security Council initiative – which South Africa voted for – for NATO airstrikes to protect Libyan civilian populations. The UN moved too quickly toward war, ignoring African Union efforts to negotiate a “peaceful” settlement between Muammar Qaddafi and the rebels.

“The consequences of the actions that were carried out in Libya in the name of the United Nations Security Council have spilled over into other countries in the region,” Mr. Zuma told the UN meeting. He did not mention the US by name in his speech, but he warned that outsiders must not see the African continent as a “playground” for rivals battling for resources and influence.

The historical judgment of the Obama administration’s foreign policy, and Hillary Clinton’s management of it, will only focus in part on how well it cleaned up the messes of previous administrations. The larger question is how it handled major events that occurred on its watch. Obama himself attempted to get a jump on shaping his legacy, by reading off a list of foreign policy achievements during his recent state of the union speech. In the past year alone, the US had eliminated its greatest individual enemy – Osama Bin Laden – had adapted  quickly to the Arab uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, and directly confronted the Iranian regime over what is believed to be its nuclear weapons program.

But history is not written in the heat of a 24-hour news cycle. It is written when the dust settles and the effects are seen more clearly. That verdict won't be written until long after Hillary Clinton has left the building. 

IN PICTURES: Hillary Clinton through the years

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Indian police and army soldiers march towards India Gate on Rajpath during the main Republic Day parade on Rajpath, in New Delhi, Thursday. India is marking it's 62nd Republic Day with military parades across the country. (Kevin Frayer/AP)

Religious slights are the buzz as India marks Republic Day

By Scott Baldauf, Staff writer / 01.26.12

No one likes to have their religion slighted. This is especially true in India, where there are thousands of gods, and tensions are close to the surface when it comes to ill-considered comments about religion.

Last week, author Salman Rushdie canceled his much anticipated visit to India’s biggest literary festival because of reported threats of assassination. Many Muslims regard his 1988 novel, "Satanic Verses," to be blasphemous, and some Muslim clerics threatened massive protests if Mr. Rushdie showed up at the festival in Jaipur. A handful of authors attempted to read the book – which is banned in India – on Rushdie’s behalf in a form of protest, but organizers stopped them.

Just the day before, American late night talk show host Jay Leno managed to offend India’s Sikh community with a satirical sketch, involving the Sikh faith’s holiest shrine, the Golden Temple. In a video showing the homes of the GOP presidential candidates, Leno showed a photo of the Golden Temple, calling it “Mitt Romney’s summer home on Lake Winnipesaukee.” 

But that wasn’t all.

On Jan. 25, a Chicago-based sports commentator offended Hindus in his post-game description of a hockey match between the Chicago Blackhawks and the Nashville Predators. Sportscasters are famous for stretching metaphors to the breaking point, but the Chicago commentator was quoted by Indian websites as saying the Predators were “swallowing up space like some weird Hindu god."

The objection is to the word “weird,” which a Nevada-based Hindu community leader Rajan Zed – president of the Universal Society of Hindus – said was hurtful to the feelings of the world’s 1 billion Hindu people.

Offending all three of the main faiths of the world’s second largest country is quite a feat. In hockey games this is called a hat trick.

Sacred cows 

What outsiders generally don't quite grasp about India is that sacredness is woven into almost every act of every day. Unlike post-religious societies, where Westerners may attend church once a week (or once a year), many Indians are constantly aware of their religious duties at work, at play, at meal times. I can't tell you how many times I've sat in the back of a taxi cab, in fear, as a Delhi taxi driver takes his hands off the wheel and puts them together in a sign of respect as he passes a holy shrine.

Americans speak of sacred cows as an abstract metaphor; but for Hindus, they are a living symbol of motherhood, and a very real and tangible piece of a greater cosmic whole. 

Unlike some Western Christians, who have come to see the Bible as a book of good behaviors, wrapped around a few ancient fables, many Hindus regard their own sacred scriptures, such as the Vedas and the Bhagavad Gita, as literal truth. Sikhs see the Golden Temple as a sacred space in which men and women from all classes and religions can worship God equally. When Prime Minister Indira Gandhi sent tanks in to the temple grounds to go after a violent separatist group in 1984, destroying parts of the temple and killing more than 500 people, it kicked up immense controversy. She was later killed by her own Sikh bodyguards. 

What politics have to do with it 

Education has rubbed off the sharper corners of bigotry that many Indians may have once had for each other's faiths, but it has done very little to weaken Indian reverence for their own faith. So when Indians say they are offended by a certain statement, they generally mean it. 

Even so, such offense is often overstated by Indian politicians, for their own political agendas. 

It’s important to note that this is an election year in India. Even though India's Constitution – enacted 62 years ago and celebrated today on Republic Day – enshrines secular values and religious freedom, in practice India is a nation where different religious communities live with their own, vote for their own, and protect their own interests, sometimes ahead of national interests. 

The break down

Islam is the second-most practiced religion in India after Hinduism, but at 13.4 percent of the population, it's still a minority group looked upon with suspicion and treated as one would treat an enemy. A constant theme at Delhi dinner parties, is conversation on the penchant for Indian Muslims to root for Pakistan during cricket matches. Indian Muslims frequently seek protection under the Indian Constitution, which prohibits the abuse of any religion.

The large but disparate Hindu majority often feels threatened by smaller and better organized minorities, and is quick to take offense when the ancient faith of Hinduism is disparaged by outsiders. (Many British colonial administrators showed favoritism for Muslim princes, because at least they found the Islamic faith more comprehensible than Hinduism.)

Sikhs, meanwhile, are a much smaller group, concentrated in the border state of Punjab, and after an ugly separatist movement tipped the country toward war and succeeded in assassinating Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, today’s Sikh leaders are trying to find a place for themselves in a newly globalized India. Within India, Sikhs are also often the butt of ethnic jokes, so it’s not a surprise if they take Leno’s joke as yet another slight.

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Actor Rajai Sandouka-Karim and the rooster he plays on ‘Sesame Street.’ (Daniella Cheslow)

Why the US won't fund Palestinian 'Sesame Street'

By Daniella Cheslow, Correspondent / 01.26.12

• A local, slice-of-life story from a Monitor correspondent.

Daoud Kuttab usually produces a Palestinian version of “Sesame Street” that teaches children how to count. But lately he has had to focus on his own bottom line. Three months after an American funding freeze, his show is so behind schedule that the writers’ workshop rooms are empty, the editing studios are dark, and the Muppets have left the West Bank for repairs.

Think you know the Middle East? Take our geography quiz.

Mr. Kuttab says that in October he was expecting to receive $2.5 million from the US Agency for International Development for the next three years. But Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R) of Florida froze $192 million in congressional funding to USAID’s programs in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in retaliation for the Palestinian bid for statehood at the United Nations, which the United States opposed.

Each season, Kuttab works with teachers and child psychologists to craft 26 episodes around themes of tolerance, sharing, and friendship. Kuttab said that even if money is restored he will not manage to produce any new episodes in 2012.

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French actor Jean Dujardin addresses reporters during an interview with the Associated Press in Paris, Tuesday, Jan. 24. The movie, 'The Artist', in which Jean Dujardin plays the main role, received 10 Academy Award nominations. (Remy de la Mauviniere/AP)

From locksmith to limelight: Dujardin, star of 'The Artist,' adored in France

By Robert Marquand, Staff writer / 01.26.12

Move over Gérard Depardieu. France has a new face on the global silver screen.

Jean Dujardin, who manages to be both suave and folksy – in a French sort of way – is a 2012 "Best Actor" Oscar nominee for his role in “The Artist,” a black and white “silent” throwback to the 1920s, with swing-era jazz and plenty of playful nostalgia.

Mr. Dujardin, unknown abroad until now, is loved in France as an unsnobby comic who rose from a working class Paris suburb, a one-time locksmith who was told his face was too rotund for the camera.

“I adore him …he is a born clown,” says Christine Bertholts, a legal secretary in Paris, in a typical comment. “And those eyebrows!”  

While France has produced several female Oscar winners, Dujardin, will be the first French male to take home the prize if he gets the nod on Feb. 26. 

Dujardin plays George Valentin, a silent star with a pencil-thin moustache who can’t or won’t make the transition to talkies and goes into a funk, but is saved by his adorable dog and a woman he generously helps when he’s riding high.

The French actor learned to tap dance for the part, and says his favorite American actor is Paul Newman. He is up against George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Demian Bichir, and Gary Oldman for the Oscar.  

The Artist is nominated for 10 Oscars, including Best Picture. It just won three Golden Globe awards – including best actor in a comedy for Dujardin – throwing film-crazy France into a small state of euphoria. In interviews after the ceremony, French radio hosts had fun with an Anglo version of Dujardin’s last name, asking if they were speaking with “Jean of the Garden.”

"When I started [as an actor],” Dujardin said after winning the Golden Globe, “An agent told me, ‘You won’t make films, your face is too expressive…’It's not my fault,’ I told him, ‘My eyebrows act independently!’"

France's main Hollywood presence for years has been Mr. Depardiu, who earned a 1990 Academy Award nomination for Green Card, but did not win. Le Point, a French news magazine, said of Dujardin, “He may even de-throne Depardieu in the Anglo-Saxon heart.”

"We thought it would be a film for festivals, a film that critics could like, but we weren’t counting on this!" French daily Figaro quoted director Michel Hazanavicius saying about its commercial and critical success.

It's a good thing "The Artist" is a silent film. Dujardin speaks little English and says he’s not preparing for work outside of France.

“He’s just a regular guy,” says Remi, a young financier who works near the Arc de Triomphe. “He doesn’t care about the show-biz world or the paparazzi and all that. The public has seen him grow and we can identify with him. He is one of us.”

Dujardin made a rare-for-France crossover from TV to film. His ability to reprise and mimic the foibles and quirks of the average French guy earned him a place in the public’s heart. Some of his characters are modeled on friends he met in Army barracks when he served in the military.

He starred in an unusual TV series, “A Guy, a Girl” – some 500 micro-sketches of seven minutes each – that garnered attention in the late 1990s. The two characters, Loulou (guy) and Chouchou (girl), often compete or are mean but in the end stay together, seen as a parody of relationships with a French touch.

Dujardin and "A Guy, a Girl" lead actress Alexandra Lamy became a real life couple, sending buzz about them into the French stratosphere. They are now “Jeanlexandra,” a transatlantic equivalent of “Brangelina” (Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie).

“We have been lucky to be able to watch the love grow between Jean Dujardin and Alexandra Lamy over the years,” said Ms. Bertholts, the legal secretary. “It's like watching friends of yours get together after years of friendship.”

In 2005, Dujardin broke through in film, playing a clueless sun-bleached surf bum in the film “Brice de Nice.” His character, after whom the movie is named, sees himself as a character in the film Point Break, but never quite gets that there are no big waves on France’s calm Mediterranean coast.

Dujardin also spoofs James Bond spy films, conjuring a cross between Peter Sellers's character Inspector Clouseau and Mike Meyers's Austin Powers in “OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies” and “OSS 117: Lost in Rio.”

“It’s quite funny that a man who produced a film like Brice de Nice could actually win an Oscar – I mean it’s really far from anything you could call ‘major cinema,’” said a French student out for a stroll in Paris.

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Workmen stand on scaffolding as they work on the construction of a building in central Beijing January 17. (David Gray/REUTERS)

Good Reads: America's decline, China's rise, the way forward

By Scott Baldauf, Staff Writer / 01.26.12

Most adult Americans today grew up with their feet on the terra firma of American superiority.

Faced with a cold war rival, the Soviet Union, Americans confidently paid taxes and sent their sons off to war in Korea, Vietnam, and oddly, Grenada, in order to keep communism at bay. From Washington, President Reagan proclaimed that it was “morning in America,” which was great if you were a morning person, and Americans took the metaphor to heart. Intuitively, they knew that a free-market democracy would win against a soul-crushing authoritarian form of communism.

But now in the early part of the 21^st century, that terra firma has begun to shift underfoot. Intellectuals from developing countries have argued that democracy is not always suited for all cultures, particularly those with poor education systems. Terrorist groups have attacked America’s symbols of prosperity and strength – the Pentagon, the World Trade Center – and even America’s friends have begun to doubt that America has the mettle to carry on. The global economic crisis rounded out a very tough decade, and on the stage that America once dominated, a few new players emerged. They were familiar faces: America’s old rivals, Russia and China, who have devised hybrid models of capitalism very different from America’s that seem to function better, at least for now.

Now, it’s estimated that within the next 6 years, China may overtake America as the largest economic power in the world.

The changing global mood has created an entirely new genre of American journalism. Call it “Decline Watch.” The writers tend to be economists – the same profession that made us believe in the superiority of American capitalism, and in the logic of tearing down borders to create a unified European economy – and their arguments are persuasive, if a little self-defeating.

Consider Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher’s piece in the New York Times this week, called “How the US Lost Out on iPhone Work.” The reasons why Apple and every other American corporation with access to a travel agent have relocated their manufacturing to China go far beyond mere cheap wages, the authors write.

And they’re right. As the Atlantic magazine’s Jordan Weissmann notes in a blog, China has an education system that produces 600,000 engineers a year, compared with the US’s 70,000. China has an industrial policy that subsidizes the building of factories at home and the sale of products abroad.

Here’s a point in the New York Times piece that took my breath away.

Another critical advantage for Apple was that China provided engineers at a scale the United States could not match. Apple’s executives had estimated that about 8,700 industrial engineers were needed to oversee and guide the 200,000 assembly-line workers eventually involved in manufacturing iPhones. The company’s analysts had forecast it would take as long as nine months to find that many qualified engineers in the United States.

In China, it took 15 days.

China’s rise is hardly news. Starting in the late 1980s, it was seen as a positive factor, with the growing number of foreign owned factories in China helping to ease the country into a global free market. Chinese prosperity was a win-win scenario for American businesses, since it created new markets for American products and expertise.

Now the win-win scenario has turned into a zero-sum game, writes Gideon Rachman this week in Foreign Policy. In an uncertain economic climate, it is harder for two rival economic powers to prosper. Instead, the growth in China’s economy comes primarily through sucking away jobs and revenue from the US and Europe.

This, Rachman predicts, will inevitably lead to tension, and perhaps conflict.

Yet, as an alternative, China’s authoritarian father-knows-best model isn’t all that great either. Chinese leaders – all of them members of the ruling Communist Party of China – are able to make bold decisions because no dissenting views are allowed. But to dissent is human, and the growing number of protests across China, over rising prices and unsustainable wages, are an indication that Chinese leaders may not be able to take the patience of the Chinese people for granted.

For comfort, Western liberals tend to point to leading Chinese dissidents, such as Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, who are pressing China’s leadership to loosen their grip on power. But the end-goal for Chinese dissidents isn’t necessarily a Jeffersonian democracy.

In a new book of essays, reviewed by Simon Leys of the New York Review of Books, Mr. Liu suggests that his goal may be neither American democracy nor Chinese authoritarianism, but rather a new hybrid still to be discovered.

I now realize that Western civilization, while it can be useful in reforming China in its present stage, cannot save humanity in an overall sense.

If we stand back from Western civilization for a moment, we can see that it possesses all the flaws of humanity in general….

If I, as a person who has lived under China’s autocratic system for more than thirty years, want to reflect on the fate of humanity or how to be an authentic person, I have no choice but to carry out two critiques simultaneously. I must:

1. Use Western civilization as a tool to critique China.

2. Use my own creativity to critique the West.

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This December 2011 file photo shows WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as he pauses as he makes a statement to media gathered outside the High Court in London. Starting in March, Mr. Assange will host his own show on Russia Today. (Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP/File)

Russia gives WikiLeaks' Julian Assange a TV platform

By Fred Weir, Correspondent / 01.25.12

WikiLeaks founder and controversy magnet Julian Assange has been driven off the Internet, deprived of funding and placed under house arrest. Now he will get his chance to strike back, courtesy of the Kremlin.

Starting in March, Mr. Assange will host a 10-part series of interview programs with "key political players, thinkers and revolutionaries" on Russia Today (RT), a state-funded English-language satellite news network which claims to reach more than 85 million viewers in the US alone.

According to a statement on his website, the new Assange series will explore the "upheavals and revolutions" that are shaking the Middle East and expose how "the deterioration of the rule of law has demonstrated the bankruptcy of once leading political institutions and ideologies" in the West.

Entitled "The World Tomorrow," the show will be filmed by an RT satellite crew at Ellingham Hall, the remote manor house 130 miles north of London. It's the same place Assange has been under house arrest since December 2010 awaiting a Supreme Court decision on his extradition to Sweden to face sexual assault allegations.

There is no word on which "key personalities" Assange will get to interview, but at least one British newspaper, The Guardian, has published its own wish list of people it would like to see go head-to-head with him, including former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, and US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

"Through this series I will explore the possibilities for our future in conversations with those who are shaping it," Assange said in his statement. "Are we heading towards utopia, or dystopia and how we can set our paths? This is an exciting opportunity to discuss the vision of my guests in a new style of show that examines their philosophies and struggles in a deeper and clearer way than has been done before."

The network says the series could reach as many as 600 million viewers worldwide.

The six-year-old Russia Today, which seems far better funded than most media these days, has battled accusations that it is a Kremlin vanity project since its inception.

The station tends to tiptoe gingerly around the controversies of Russian politics, but aggressively applies its own slogan – "Question More" – in its coverage of Western affairs and particularly the global role of the US.

In 2010 it opened a full-time US TV channel, RT America, which produces independent content on US politics and economics from what it calls an alternative – critics say anti-American – point of view.

Hiring Assange would seem a perfect fit for RT. Worries that WikiLeaks might dump a lot of embarrassing material about the Russian government into Internet never panned out.

However, the thousands of US diplomatic cables that it did release proved to be the gift-that-keeps-on-giving for critics and rivals of Washington, including the Kremlin.

"We liked a lot of the WikiLeaks revelations. It was very much in sync with what Russia Today has been reporting about the Arab Spring, and about the duplicitous policies of the US and its allies all along," says Peter Lavelle, a senior journalist with RT and host of its Cross Talk public affairs program.

"I think the Russian government will be pleased [to see Assange working on RT]. It's a soft power coup for Russia," he adds.

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Slave port unearthed in Brazil

By Taylor Barnes, Correspondent / 01.25.12

• A local, slice-of-life story from a Monitor correspondent.

Not far from here at least 500,000 Africans took their first steps into slavery in colonial Brazil, which took in far more slaves than the United States and where now half of its 200 million citizens claim African descent.

The “Cais do Valongo” – the Valongo Wharf – was the busiest of all slave ports in the Americas and has been buried for almost two centuries under subsequent infrastructure projects and dirt.

That is, until developers seeking to turn Rio’s shabby port neighborhood into a posh tourist center allowed teams of archaeologists to check out what was being unearthed.

“We knew we had found the wharf,” says archaeologist Tania Andrade Lima, showing a ramp made up of knobbly, uneven stones used by slaves. It lay beneath a layer of smoother cobblestones from a dock installed later for the arrival of a Portuguese royal.

Ms. Lima and other community leaders are creating a walking tour that will include the wharf, a nearby cemetery for Africans who died soon after their arrival, and a holding pen called the “Lazareto,” derived from Jesus’ parable about a beggar named Lazarus, where newly arrived Africans were checked for diseases.

The wharf alone is nearly 22,000 square feet. “This gives a dimension to how huge the influx of slaves was,” says Lima.

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President Obama gestures during his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday night. (Jason Reed/Reuters)

State of the Union speech, as heard by China, India, France, Israel...

By Scott Baldauf, Staff Writer / 01.25.12

When journalists from around the world report on a speech by a sitting US president – such as President Obama’s state of the union speech last night – they do so with their own particular reading public in mind. The effect, for a global reader, can be confusing. Did Mr. Obama really say all of this in one speech?

For Chinese readers, Obama is reported to have boasted that the US is not, repeat not, declining.

For Indian readers, Obama promised to take on China and other nations that were engaged in theft of US intellectual property.

For Israelis, Obama promised an “ironclad” commitment to the state of Israel, as well as promises to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

For South Africans, Obama gave a feisty speech, but was largely ignored by a Republican Congress who headed for the exits.

For the French, Obama was announcing his roadmap for reelection, while for the British he gave a populist speech promising a fairer America.

From a closer reading of his one hour and six minute speech, Mr. Obama does appear to have said all of these things, and a few more. But the fact that the press in each country has its own idea of what is newsworthy in a state of the union should not be surprising. It speaks volumes about how US foreign and economic policy affects that country, for better or worse.

China’s interest in America’s future makes sense. China is the US’s second-largest trading partner, and America’s ability to kickstart its economy is crucial for China’s own prosperity. US economic weakness is bad for Chinese business.

Small wonder, then, that the China Daily – Beijing’s main English-language newspaper – focused its attention on Obama’s confident statement, “The renewal of American leadership can be felt across the globe."

"Anyone who tells you otherwise, anyone who tells you that America is in decline or that our influence has waned, doesn't know what they're talking about," he said in his prime-time address.

Indian papers, meanwhile, saw in Obama’s tough words against intellectual piracy a reflection of its own rivalry with China. Both India and China have emerged as new economic and manufacturing bases, as more established economic powers in Europe and the America’s have slowed down. Both India and China have been competing for business and for resources in Africa, and both see themselves as the voice of the world’s impoverished, symbolized in their membership in the BRICS group of new economic powers (including Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa).

But for India and China, power is a zero-sum game, and India revels in any sign of trouble for China.

That’s why an Indian newspaper like the Hindustan Times focuses on the China section of Obama’s speech:

"I will go anywhere in the world to open new markets for American products," [Obama] said. "And I will not stand by when our competitors don't play by the rules.  We've brought trade cases against China at nearly twice the rate as the last administration -- and it's made a difference."

"It's not right when another country lets our movies, music, and software be pirated. It's not fair when foreign manufacturers have a leg up on ours only because they're heavily subsidized."

In South Africa, where the two main parties seem to have given up on speaking with each other, and instead bellow at their own constituencies, newspapers focused on the partisan divide in the US. The New Age, a newspaper that is openly close with the ruling African National Congress, headlined their story "Feisty Obama speech gets icy Republican reception."

For French papers, US political rhetoric is a mystery that must be studied for hidden meanings. Like Rene Magritte’s painting of a pipe, entitled “This is not a pipe,” American political promises are statements that must be seen as more than they appear to be.

The Paris-based newspaper, Le Monde, is perhaps the most straightforward, in an article entitled “Barack Obama presents the roadmap for reelection.”

Faced with a Congress, where his Republican opponents are in a strong position, and nine months to seek a second term, Obama assured Americans that the U.S. was “getting stronger,” and he wanted to present plans for "…an economy built to last, where hard work pays off, and responsibility is rewarded." 

British papers saw reflections of their own social and economic struggles, with the left-leaning Guardian focusing on Obama’s description of a country “where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by,” and the more conservative Telegraph highlighted the swift and negative reaction of Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels, who said, “A government as big and bossy as this one is maintained on the backs of the middle class, and those who hope to join it.”

The Jerusalem Post, meanwhile, focused on the portion of Obama’s speech dealing with the Middle East. America’s “ironclad commitment to Israel's security has meant the closest cooperation between our countries in history," the Post quoted Obama as saying. As for Iran, the Post noted that Obama still felt negotiation with the Ahmedinejad government was still worthwhile, but pointed out that Obama had added he would  take "no options off the table" in ensuring the Iran does not create or receive nuclear weapons.

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France's President Nicolas Sarkozy delivers a speech to present his New Year wishes to the world of culture in Marseille, France, Tuesday. (Jean-Paul Pelissier/Reuters)

With reelection prospects dimming, Sarkozy warns his career is 'at the end'

By Robert Marquand, Staff writer / 01.24.12

French President Nicolas Sarkozy is famous for bluntly speaking his mind, and for shining the brightest in the midst of a crisis. But now Mr. Sarkozy faces a crisis that he may not surmount – his reelection – and he is bluntly saying his political career may be over.

The president even told his aides, with a slightly dark Nixonian note, that if he is not reelected in April, “I'll change my life completely, and you won't hear from me again." 

"In any case, I am at the end," Sarkozy said on a trip back from French Guyana Monday night within earshot of reporters who leaked the conversation, despite it being off-the-record. "For the first time in my life I am facing the end of my career." 

France is mired in economic doldrums, capped off with a downgrade of its triple-A credit rating earlier this month. Between that and socialist candidate Francois Hollande, who delivered a tub-thumping speech on Sunday that showed he can move a crowd, Sarkozy faces both a toughening race and poll numbers that may not improve enough by April.

Ironically, Sarkozy has not yet announced whether he will actually run. But his comments Monday suggest he will quit politics only after a political fight. If he doesn't run or runs and does not win, Sarkozy will become the first French president since the 1970s to serve only one term.

In polls this fall, roughly 30 percent of respondents said they would vote for Mr. Hollande in the first round – a strong lead over Sarkozy, with 24 percent. 

Sarkozy could also lose conservative votes to Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Front in the first round of elections, and lose centrists to the now-surging candidacy of Francois Bayrou of Democratic Movement.

Hollande is running as an everyman candidate – “Mr. Normal,” as he calls himself. Sarkozy has sought to dramatize Hollande’s lack of office holding experience and to present himself as the man of experience and gravitas.

Sarkozy won office in 2007 as France’s youngest president, promising change or “rupture” from the past, and has been an indefatigable office holder, sometimes compared to the energizer bunny. He married Carla Bruni, a popular model and singer, recently became a new father, and travels widely in and out of Europe in an effort to restore French pride on the world stage, most notably with his leadership on Libya last spring.

But his personal style as a celebrity-president has been controversial, earning him the title of “President Bling Bling” and partly accounts for an oft-noted visceral dislike of him in France, where his disapproval rating runs close at close to 60 percent.

Dominique Moisi, a leading French intellectual at the French Institute for International Relations this week wrote that euro crisis Europe is in the mood to replace ruling governments. “Mr. Sarkozy seems the ideal prey for a left starved of power after so many years in opposition. The French president is rejected not so much for his performance as for his essence.… He seems to have lost the support of rather too many voters.”

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