Extract from ABC News
Analysis
A stomping victory by the ruling coalition government of Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has opened the way for a major geo-strategic realignment in the Asia-Pacific region. (Reuters: David Mareuil)
At a time when so much of the global conversation is about the rapid decline of democracy, it is striking what a huge impact elections — and looming elections — are having on world events just now.
Overshadowed this week, as so often happens these days by news from Washington or the Middle East, was an election result in Japan with huge ramifications for the region, and Australia.
There's also been a landmark parliamentary election result in Bangladesh, after months of instability, as well as significant recent elections as far afield as Moldova and Portugal — either overcoming Russian interference or seeing off threatened incursions by the European far right.
And a complex web of looming poll battles in the United States, Israel, Ukraine and the UK, are exerting their influence over current events.
The Bangladesh Nationalist Party has won a landmark parliamentary election. (Reuters: Mohammad Ponir Hossain)
Japan's stance on Taiwan
The parliamentary dominance won this week by Japan's first female prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, raises the spectre of a big shift in the regional power balance, just as the clock starts ticking closer to the time many analysts believe China may seek to move on Taiwan.
Takaichi has suggested, since becoming prime minister last October, that Japan may get involved if there is a Chinese military blockade of Taiwan. China has made clear its displeasure. Takaichi has not only not backed down but framed her election win as popular endorsement of her position.
It raises fascinating questions about how north Asia — Japan and South Korea — might now collectively position themselves in the near future, and what knock on effects that might have more broadly.
Beyond the spectre of any looming confrontation over Taiwan, Takaichi has also already begun escalating spending on defence, even broaching the idea of Japan having nuclear weapons, and she also wants Japan to have a greater role in global defence exports.
She is doing this amid the great unravelling — world leaders repositioning themselves to a world that is not led by the United States — however hard it may be to ignore the world's biggest superpower.
Just as there is now uncertainty in the Asia-Pacific about US commitment to the region, and by contrast a fair bit of certainty in Europe about where it stands with the US, America's role in the Middle East seems particularly convoluted.
Netanyahu meets with Trump
This week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Donald Trump in the White House. It was a meeting taking place amid a lot of conflicting time pressures and it was strikingly absent of the usual pomp and circumstance.
There was no ceremonial welcome or "gaggle" — that moment when reporters are briefly allowed into the Oval Office for a picture of two leaders together and to shout questions.
The Israeli PM said the meeting had been brought forward a week because of planned US-Iran negotiations.
But it also meant Netanyahu was foregoing any attempt to attend the first meeting of Trump's Board of Peace in Washington next week.
And it also meant he would not be attending the annual conference of the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) — a pro-Israel lobby group which has reportedly collected an unprecedented amount of money to invest in this year's US mid-term elections. Netanyahu will reportedly attend the AIPAC conference virtually instead.
There was speculation as to whether the strange nature of the meeting reflected some plotting between the two close powers ahead of a possible US strike on Iran next week, or — as appeared more possible from public comments afterwards — a difference between the two leaders about whether the US should be negotiating with Iran at all.
Either way, it is all important in the context of looming Israeli political developments.
This week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Donald Trump in the White House. (AP: Alex Brandon )
An election looms in Israel
A general election is not due in Israel until October. But there is a budget crisis in play right now which may bring forward an election to as early as May.
Ultra-Orthodox members of Netanyahu's parliamentary Coalition are threatening to block the national budget unless the government agrees to legislation to formalise exemptions from military service for ultra-Orthodox men. The deadline for the budget stand-off is March 31.
Netanyahu's hold on parliamentary power is weak. Polling numbers do not suggest a clear path to power after the election.
His culpability in the security breakdown which allowed the massacre of Israelis on October 7 is being questioned during an inquiry.
The government's shaky political situation at home can be seen to explain much of recent events in Israel — from the government's announcement this week of an aggressive escalation in powers to control the West Bank, as well as the posturing with Trump.
The even more aggressive push into the West Bank and expansion of illegal settlements in the Palestinian territory was seen as a clear attempt to lock in the government's far right support.
Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced the moves, saying, "we will continue to kill the idea of a Palestinian state".
But Trump has repeatedly made clear he does not support an annexation of the West Bank and this might explain why the announcement of the new moves in Israel were notably lacking a firm timeline.
Netanyahu's regional strongman persona suffers if the US does not strike Iran.
But the US president has moved from last month threatening an imminent strike from his vast Armada to rejecting immediate action and instead pushing for negotiations.
This gives Netanyahu all the more reason to push the West Bank expansion to shore up his credentials.
His closeness to Trump is also seen as a political plus so it is also worth noting that this week the US president was invited to come to Israel on the nation's Independence Day in late April — potentially only a month from polling day — to personally receive the Israel Prize. He is the first foreign leader and the first non-Israeli citizen or resident to receive the prize.
All in all, pundits in Israel see the signs increasingly pointing to an early poll, and to the government taking actions to maximise its position ahead of that election.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said elections would only occur once there were security guarantees and a ceasefire with Russia in place. (AP Photo: Danylo Antoniuk)
Meanwhile in Ukraine
The spectre of elections even arose in Ukraine this week, with reports that preparations for elections — not held since war broke out — had been underway for some time under pressure from the United States.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hosed down that idea, saying elections would only occur once there were security guarantees and a ceasefire with Russia in place.
It could well be that the US mid-terms end up being the decisive ones for Ukraine's future, given the perception in Washington that Trump wants to see an end to the war he said would end within 24 hours of him returning to the White House, before Americans go to the polls in November.
Elections are even tempering the fallout from the Epstein files.
The crisis surrounding the future of UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer over his appointment of disgraced Epstein associate Peter Mandelson has been diffused for now. That's partly because, well, there really isn't a good alternative and partly because of elections. First up there's a by-election in a couple of weeks' time. And then in May, there are significant votes for local councils and national parliaments in Scotland and Wales.
So amid all the warfare — military and political — and the trashing of institutions abroad in the world, it seems the raw allure of bums on seats still remains a force to be reckoned with.
Laura Tingle is the ABC's Global Affairs Editor.
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