Gustavo de Arístegui: Geopolitical Analysis December 16
- Introduction
- Kast's victory: a more moderate discourse than the dominant narrative tolerates
- US-Ukraine negotiations with Witkoff and Kushner: demanding realism but full of opportunities
- Bondi: Islamic State-inspired jihadist massacre and trip to the Philippines
- AI and terrorism: the Islamic State's dark laboratory
- The US and narco-boats: narco-terrorism treated as a strategic threat
- Spain: scandals, Sanchismo, and the dignity pending some resignations
- Spanish and European security in the face of the resurgence of global jihadism
- China: persistent expansionism and an eye on Ukraine
- Latin America: Chavismo, drug trafficking, and the selective blindness of certain newsrooms
- The cultural battle and language: “militants,” “incidents,” and other euphemisms
- Media Rack
- Editorial Commentary
Introduction
The international chessboard today moves between the realism of tough but hopeful negotiations on Ukraine and the mirage of a supposed “post-war on terror” that is belied by facts in the form of gunfire and malicious code. The Islamic State-inspired jihadist attacks in Bondi, preceded by a trip to the Philippines for training, and the growing use of artificial intelligence by terrorist groups reveal that Islamist radicalism is not a closed chapter, but a constant mutation that Washington's new security doctrine is determined to minimize, prioritizing other “trendy” risks. At the same time, the Trump administration's robust response against drug-trafficking boats linked to Colombian cartels and insurgent groups confirms a hard-line approach which, despite all its legal dilemmas, targets the root of the narco-terrorism that sustains the Chavista regime in Venezuela.
Kast's victory: a more moderate discourse than the dominant narrative tolerates
Facts
José Antonio Kast celebrated his election victory with a more moderate and presidential tone than much of the international press—especially in Europe—had been announcing for weeks with almost apocalyptic glee. Despite the temptation to pigeonhole him as a “Latin MAGA” or “far-right” figure, Kast's message has emphasized governability, institutional stability, and the need to rebuild economic confidence after years of populist drift and street violence in Chile.
Implications
What is relevant is not only the result, but also the contrast between reality and the prejudice of a mainstream media that has for years labeled any firm liberal center-right project as “far right,” while whitewashing or relativizing radical or populist leftists when they are “one of their own.” This double standard, visible in leading newspapers in Europe and the United States, is now being reproduced with Kast, just as it was before with Milei or certain European conservative leaders, who are mechanically associated with Trump or the MAGA phenomenon to avoid discussing their specific programs. In this context, the statesmanlike tone that Kast has sought to project is good news, but not a blank check: true moderation is not proclaimed, it is governed, and it will be measured in responsible policies, respect for the rule of law, and serious economic reform, not in applause or automatic disqualification from ideologized newsrooms that know little about Latin America and view it with recycled colonial clichés.
US-Ukraine negotiations with Witkoff and Kushner: demanding realism but full of opportunities
Facts
Volodymyr Zelensky has met in Berlin with US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to discuss a package of “NATO-style” security guarantees for Ukraine, conceived as the centerpiece of an eventual peace agreement. US and European sources speak of “real progress” and a security framework that Trump would be willing to submit to the Senate for political backing, although the territorial issue and Vladimir Putin's calculations remain major obstacles.
Implications
The fact that Washington is pushing for a robust guarantee scheme for Kiev confirms something essential: despite European fatigue and mistakes, the Atlantic axis has not given up on preventing Russian aggression from being rewarded with conquered territory, even if the final design of any armistice requires very complex balances. The fact that Witkoff and Kushner are at the center of this effort fits in with a pragmatic Trumpist foreign policy, less rhetorical than that of the previous Biden administration and more results-oriented, as long as the red line of not legitimizing the use of force as a means of changing borders is maintained. Peace “at any price” would be a strategic victory for the Kremlin and a devastating message to Beijing in the Taiwan Strait; a firm peace, accompanied by credible military guarantees and the maintenance of selective sanctions until there is effective restitution, can instead become an example of well-understood Atlantic realism.
Bondi: Islamic State-inspired jihadist massacre and trip to the Philippines
Facts
Two attackers—father and son—opened fire on a Hanukkah event at Bondi Beach, Sydney, killing 15 people in the worst mass shooting in nearly three decades in Australia. Police have confirmed that both had traveled to the Philippines a month earlier, that the attack is being investigated as terrorism, and that improvised explosive devices and two homemade Islamic State flags were found in the son's vehicle. Australian security sources suggest that the trip was for military-style training in the southern Philippines, where cells and networks linked to ISIS continue to operate, despite Manila's declaration years ago that the insurgency had ended.
Implications
This attack shatters the comfortable narrative of certain strategists in Washington and Europe, who relegate global jihadism to a “residual” threat while elevating to dogma the absolute priority of climate, disinformation, or domestic extremism, depending on the ideological flavor of the day. The reality is stubborn: the Islamic State has lost its territorial caliphate, but it retains its capacity for inspiration, training, and transnational mobilization, from the Philippines to Africa, through cells or radicalized “lone wolves” in the West. The fact that the target was a Jewish community at a religious celebration adds another layer: jihadist anti-Semitism feeds on the climate of hatred against Israel and Jews that has become normalized on some campuses, social media, and, all too often, on television sets and in newspaper columns, where inflammatory rhetoric is tolerated if it comes wrapped in pseudo-anti-Zionism. Denying that jihadism remains a central threat is not only an analytical error: it is morally irresponsible.
AI and terrorism: the Islamic State's dark laboratory
Facts
Recent reports warn that the Islamic State and other extremist groups are increasingly experimenting with generative artificial intelligence tools, from the production of deepfakes to the automation of propaganda and possible uses in cyberattacks. Pro-ISIS forums have begun to explicitly encourage the incorporation of AI into their operations, highlighting its ease of use and its potential for recruiting, spreading disinformation, and, in the medium term, even assisting in the manufacture of biological or chemical weapons, according to warnings gathered by Western intelligence agencies and organizations such as the US Department of Homeland Security.
Implications
It is difficult to imagine a more disturbing combination than fanatics willing to kill en masse and digital tools capable of manufacturing perfect lies and multiplying them at breakneck speed. The fact that a global agency refers to Islamist terrorist organizations as “militant groups” reveals the extent to which political correctness has contaminated even the language of those who should call things by their proper names: terrorists, not ‘militants’; murders, not “security incidents.” Terminological trivialization is not innocent: if terrorism is no longer named as such, citizens become accustomed to seeing it as background noise, not as an existential challenge to our freedoms. Faced with this drift, the response must be twofold: to reinforce, without naivety, the regulation and control of AI applications in the hands of malicious actors, while at the same time maintaining a clear political and media discourse that does not whitewash or relativize those who use these tools to sow terror.
The US and narco-boats: narco-terrorism treated as a strategic threat
Facts
In recent months, the Trump administration has intensified a campaign of military attacks against vessels suspected of transporting cocaine from Colombia and Venezuela to the United States, linked to cartels and insurgent groups such as the ELN. Several dozen deaths have already been recorded in at least twenty operations in the Caribbean and Pacific, which Washington frames in the context of considering large cartels as terrorist organizations, while in Colombia and other countries the legality of some of these actions and possible civilian casualties are being debated. At the same time, European media outlets are questioning the “legality” of these attacks in terms of international law, while devoting much less space to the victims of cartels and narco-terrorism in the region.
Implications
It is surprising—or perhaps not so much anymore—that part of the press that for years has whitewashed Chavismo as a “Bolivarian project” is now scandalized by the destruction of drug boats that are part of the circulatory system of the immense mafia organization that is today's Caracas regime. The same people who reduce the ELN or the FARC to “armed groups” are quick to criminalize any use of legitimate force against those who traffic tons of cocaine and control territories through terror and corruption. Treating them as “combatants” is not an exaggeration; it is an accurate description of their hybrid nature: they are drug traffickers and terrorists, and they must be confronted as such, with legal scrutiny, yes, but without complexes or irresponsible sentimentality. On this point, Trump's hard-line policy, with all its debatable angles, marks a healthy contrast to years of Western ambiguity regarding the narco-ecosystem that sustains Chavismo and its regional allies.
Spain: scandals, Sanchismo, and the dignity pending some resignations
Facts
The international press is increasingly reporting on the scandals affecting the Socialist Party and Pedro Sánchez's government, from corruption cases to accusations of sexual harassment and prostitution against prominent figures close to the president. Analysts point out that the image of a “feminist government” and champion of regeneration has collapsed in the face of a cascade of allegations and opaque management, while social and political unrest grows and criticism multiplies over a distribution of positions perceived as clientelistic and partisan.
Implications
With everything that is going on, the permanence of certain senior officials in their posts—including ambassadors appointed on the basis of ideological affinity rather than professional merit—has become a political obscenity and an insult to the dignity of public service. The fact that some have “come out of the ideological closet” by proclaiming themselves to be “lifelong” leftists in order to earn a mission leadership position for which they would never have been considered in a system of real merit illustrates the extent to which Sanchismo has turned parts of the administration into partisan spoils of war. This is no longer a matter of ideological disagreement, but of basic decency: in any serious democracy, the accumulation of scandals and contradictions between feminist rhetoric and internal practices would have led to a string of resignations. In Spain, however, too many officials in positions of responsibility seem to have decided that career and privileges outweigh honor.
Spanish and European security in the face of the resurgence of global jihadism
Facts
Recent reports and coverage of ISIS activity in the Philippines, the Middle East, and Africa underscore that the group continues to operate through decentralized networks and franchises, with the capacity to inspire attacks in third countries, as seen in Bondi. At the same time, the security strategies of some European powers and the US increasingly prioritize the fight against internal “extremism,” climate change, and competition between major powers, relegating Islamist terrorism to a secondary level in the hierarchy of threats.
Implications
Europe would be wrong to forget the lessons of Madrid, London, Paris, or Brussels because of a few years of relative calm. Jihadism, as the Philippines, the Sahel, and Australia itself clearly show, has not disappeared: it has mutated, decentralized, and is seeking new tools—from AI to cryptocurrencies—to sustain itself. Ignoring this reality for ideological reasons or because it makes certain discourses on multiculturalism uncomfortable is to give ground to the enemy. Spain, due to its geographical position and its own experience, should be at the forefront of a firm response, coordinated with its Atlantic partners and unapologetic in pointing out the destabilizing role of the Iranian regime and its proxies—Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis—in the jihadist and anti-Western ecosystem.
China: persistent expansionism and an eye on Ukraine
Facts
While media attention is focused on Ukraine and the Middle East, Beijing continues to consolidate its position in the South China Sea, strengthening ties with actors in the Indian and Pacific Oceans—from Sri Lanka to the Maldives—and buying silence and loyalty in Africa and Latin America through debt, infrastructure, and privileged access to strategic raw materials. Think tanks and specialized media outlets point out that the outcome of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict—or lack thereof—will be closely watched by China as a barometer of the West's willingness to defend the status quo in Taiwan and other gray areas.
Implications
If Russia manages to extract significant territorial concessions from Ukraine, the message to Beijing will be unequivocal: with enough patience, limited military pressure, and hybrid warfare, the Western bloc will eventually capitulate. That is why the ongoing negotiations, while necessary, cannot translate into implicit acceptance of conquest by force. Vigilance against Chinese expansionism is not an obsession of hawks: it is simple geopolitical common sense in defense of a rules-based order. Europe, too focused on its domestic debates and the noise of wokism, runs the risk of waking up too late to the fact that, while it flagellates itself, China is buying ports, mines, and strategic sectors across the globe.
Latin America: Chavismo, drug trafficking, and the selective blindness of certain newsrooms
Facts
Venezuela's role as a logistical and political platform for regional drug trafficking and dangerous alliances with Iran and its proxies has been documented by multiple investigations, while Nicolás Maduro's regime clings to power through repression, electoral fraud, and control of strategic resources. However, numerous Western media outlets continue to devote more space to criticizing the security policies of center-right governments than to pointing out with the same forcefulness the narco-dictatorial nature of Caracas or the authoritarian drift of allies such as Nicaragua and Cuba.
Implications
There is an unbearable paradox in seeing editorials inflamed against the “excesses” in the fight against drug trafficking, while aseptic and almost administrative language is used to describe the abuses of regimes that are, literally, mafia organizations with seats in the United Nations. At this point, continuing to refer to Chavismo as the “Bolivarian government” or Cuba as a “revolutionary regime” is not naivety, it is narrative complicity. Anyone who truly cares about human rights in Latin America should applaud, with nuances if desired, any initiative that weakens the narco-terrorist networks that feed the machinery of Caracas, Havana, or Managua. The rest is moralistic rhetoric in the service of the status quo.
The cultural battle and language: “militants,” “incidents,” and other euphemisms
Facts
In recent years, part of the global press has consolidated a use of language that avoids terms such as “terrorist,” “jihadist,” or “radical Islamist” and prefers to speak of “militants,” “extremists,” or even “armed activists” when referring to organizations such as the Islamic State, Al Qaeda, or their franchises. At the same time, certain ideological frameworks—wokism, cultural relativism, a certain identity-based left—have been influencing headlines, approaches, and analysis in a number of influential newsrooms, from New York to London to Paris and Berlin.
Implications
Words are not neutral. When an international agency calls a group that beheads, enslaves, and massacres civilians a “militant organization,” it is contributing—whether it wants to or not—to diluting the seriousness of the phenomenon. And when the focus shifts obsessively to Western shortcomings, while the crimes of dictatorships and terrorist groups are minimized or relativized, a side is being taken in the cultural battle, even if it is sold as “neutrality.” In the face of this trend, it is essential to return to a clear editorial line: unapologetic defense of representative liberal democracy, the rule of law, and the market economy; outright rejection of terror—whatever its source; and zero tolerance for euphemisms that whitewash it.
Media Rack
NYT / Washington Post / CNN / BBC:
Focus on the Ukraine negotiations, with emphasis on the pressure on Zelensky to accept difficult compromises and doubts about Putin's willingness to reach a real agreement.
Extensive coverage of Bondi, highlighting the trip to the Philippines and the anti-Semitic dimension of the attack, but with some caution in terminology when delving into the Islamist ideological component.
WSJ / Financial Times / The Economist:
Realistic reading of the conflict in Ukraine, highlighting the economic cost of a prolonged war and the need for a security framework that deters Russia without disarming Ukraine.
Concern about the systemic risk of AI in the hands of malicious actors, with emphasis on the economic dimension and the vulnerability of critical infrastructure.
Le Monde / Le Figaro / FAZ / Die Welt / Die Zeit / The European mainstream:
Detailed coverage of the talks on Ukraine and the internal European debate on sanctions and military aid, with tougher positions in the conservative German press than in certain French media outlets.
Growing coverage of scandals in Spain, presented as an erosion of the credibility of the Sánchez government and as an example of citizen fatigue in the face of corruption and moral inconsistency.
Reuters / AP / AFP / DPA:
Balanced series of articles on Bondi, the trip to the Philippines, and the trail of the Islamic State, with key details on flags, explosives, and the Mindanao region's links to jihadist networks.
Reports on extremist groups' experimentation with AI, pointing to both the threat of propaganda and disinformation and the still nascent but real risk of support for the manufacture of unconventional weapons.
Ibero-American media (Clarín, El Mercurio, Reforma, etc.):
A nuanced reading of Kast's victory, emphasizing more the public's weariness with insecurity and the economic crisis than the label of “far right” that dominates in Europe.
Attention divided between migratory pressure, endemic corruption, and the destabilizing role of drug trafficking, with constant references to Venezuela as a factor of regional disorder.
Gulf and Arab media (Al-Jazeera, Al-Arabiya, Asharq Al-Awsat, Saudi and Emirati press):
Extensive coverage of the Gaza and Yemen fronts and Iran's role, with significant differences in approach between media outlets aligned with Doha and Tehran and those close to Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, the latter being much more critical of Iranian proxies.
Israeli and Ukrainian press (Haaretz, Jerusalem Post, Kyiv Independent, Ukrinform):
Concerned analysis of the precedent that any agreement with Russia could set for the balance of deterrence against Iran and other revisionist actors.
In the case of Ukraine, insistence that any forced withdrawal from conquered territories would amount to a strategic and morally unacceptable capitulation.
Editorial Commentary
The year 2025 will close its doors not with a whisper, but with the roar of old structures collapsing and new realities imposing themselves. José Antonio Kast's resounding victory in Chile is much more than an election result; it is the vindication of common sense in the face of a decade of ideological delirium. Chileans, subjected to the failed experiment of Octubrismo, insecurity, and economic decline, have opted for order, freedom, and private property with a resounding 58%.
This triumph sends a deafening message to the entire hemisphere: the people do not want woke revolutions that impoverish them or constitutions written from a place of resentment. They want security to work, controlled borders, and a state that is not a spoil for activists. Gabriel Boric and his allies in the Grupo de Puebla have been defeated not by conspiracies, but by the reality of their own incompetence. Chile is back on the path to development, joining Milei's Argentina in an axis of freedom that promises to rebuild prosperity in the Southern Cone. But we must not get carried away; good governance and moderation are demonstrated by governing.
Simultaneously, in the old continent, the veil of moral superiority of the European bureaucracy has been torn. The arrest of Federica Mogherini and the diplomatic collapse of Pedro Sánchez's government in Spain expose the rottenness of a progressive elite that, under the rhetoric of solidarity and multilateralism, has built networks of corruption and patronage. That Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, is forced to sanction Spanish ministers for anti-Semitism is an indelible stain that illustrates the extent to which the Madrid government has lost its moral and strategic compass.
But freedom does not defend itself. The terrorist attack in Sydney and Iran's nuclear race remind us that evil exists and is active. In the face of this, the United States' new stance toward Venezuela's narco-regime — moving from paper sanctions to actual kinetic attacks against the Cartel of the Suns — is the dose of realism that the free world desperately needed. The doctrine of “Peace through Strength” is not an option, it is a necessity for survival.
The world remains a dangerous place, but today, with the rebirth of strong leadership in Latin America and renewed determination in Washington to confront the enemies of freedom, the horizon looks clearer than yesterday. Western innocence is over; the era of responsibility and active defense of our values begins.