Pangloss @ UN

A little help from my friends

The big story of the week, unless you count Charlton Heston receiving the Charlton Heston award, was Dubya’s visit to the UN.

The Prez is almost a regular these days.

Amazingly, Bush’s speech, a cunning mixture of defiance and pleading, sparked off a round of diplomacy among what David Brooks of the New York Times calls “the world’s Walter Mitty Metternichs”.

Bush is not famed for sparking off rounds of diplomacy – not ones in which he’s involved, anyway.

Nevertheless, to continue with the literary analogy, the NYT described the eagerly awaited speech as “a Panglossian report on how well things are going in Iraq”.

The consensus of opinion suggests the speech was aimed primarily at a domestic audience fearful of the Vietnam syndrome and looking to elect themselves a President next November.

The address won Bush a mere twenty seconds of applause from a hostile audience. Dominique de Villepin was later seen gloating in the gentleman’s lounge – “When I speak, I get the most clap.”

The President bombs again.

Poor jokes aside, Bush’s oral sexing-up followed a speech by Kofi Annan in which the UN Secretary-General “stingingly denounced” (International Herald Tribune) the Bush doctrine of pre-emption.

Annan remains deeply unimpressed by Washington’s enthusiasm for striking first. Pre-emption, he says, could lead to “a proliferation of the unilateral and lawless use of force” which “represents a fundamental challenge to the principles on which, however imperfectly, world peace and stability have rested for the last fifty years.”

Unsurprisingly, Annan also favours preserving the UN, which, he acknowledges, has “come to a fork in the road”. Time, he says, to reform, and to redesign the Security Council. “The United Nations is by no means a perfect instrument,” he concluded, “but it is a precious one.”

This all came in the same week the UN decided to withdraw its remaining personnel from Iraq, and the US set a six-month deadline for the Iraqi Governing Council to come up with a workable constitution.

Ah, the best of all possible worlds.

Bush was unmoved by Annan’s anger. Let Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) get into the wrong hands, he said, and they will “bring sudden disaster and suffering on a scale we could scarcely imagine.” This is a “peril that cannot be ignored or wished away.”

In other words, good intentions and wishful thinking get you killed. Time to destroy, or be destroyed.

Bush wants the proliferation of WMDs to be criminalized. If the UN agrees, the US Navy will have a green light to go after all those North Korean and Yemeni vessels loaded with missiles and headed who knows where?

As for Iraq, “Every young country needs the help of friends,” Bush said. “Iraq needs and desires our aid, and all nations of good will should step forward and provide that support.”

Unfortunately for Dubya, these “nations of good will” are not exactly queuing up, eager to come to America’s rescue.

With India, Pakistan, Turkey and South Korea all but ruled out because of domestic concerns of one kind or another, the US is running low on supportive allies (even Britain seems to have dropped its shoulder-to-shoulder a couple of degrees).

But it is the US-French rift that continues to occupy centre-stage. France, friend of the UN, wants the US to immediately shirk its responsibilities, get out the country, and leave the UN to clear up the mess. The US, foe of the UN, wants to take responsibility for the mess it caused, rebuild the country, and oversee the transition to democracy before it cedes control to the UN and the Iraqi people.

It gets confusing.

Even weirder, Bush claimed in his speech that the US invaded Iraq in part to uphold the credibility of the UN.

Chirac remains sceptical. “In an open world, no-one can live in isolation,” he said, “no-one can act alone in the name of all, and no-one can accept the anarchy of a society without rules.”

By the reckoning of the French President, “there is no alternative to the United Nations” with its French vetoes. “We [the French] very much want the Americans to succeed,” Chirac told reporters to widespread whooping, “and we are trying to make a contribution to their thinking.”

You’ve certainly done that, Monsieur Chirac.

Poison cure

So, guess who steps up and offers the US some much needed support?

Answer: Germany.

That’s right, Germany. Land of Gertie Schröder, where elections are won by playing the anti-American card, and where Dubya is persona non grata.

While Chirac got busy demanding the immediate transfer of sovereignty from American occupiers to the Iraqi Governing Council, Schröder met Wednesday with Bush for forty eventful minutes and came away convinced that “differences have been left behind”.

Germany is keen to improve its “poisoned” relations with Washington. Chirac insisted later that there is “not a shadow of a difference of view between the positions of Germany and France” over the Iraq issue, but the Diary, for one, begs to differ.

They called it a “breakfast summit”. The meeting at the Waldorf Astoria was designed to end the “ice age” in German-US relations. Bush, in need of friends right now, will take what he can get.

Bush and Schröder hadn’t talked formally for more than a year.

Schröder promised Bush “humanitarian, technical and economic assistance” as well as German help in training Iraqi security forces. Though there was no offer of troops.

“We have had differences,” Bush said, “and they are over and we’re going to work together.”

“It is very important,” Schröder said, “not just for Iraq, but for the whole of the region, for Germany and therefore for the whole of Europe ... We would like to come in and help with the resources that we do have.”

Just don’t mention Don Rumsfeld.

Confident Czechs?

In fact, it’s been an interesting week in Germany.

By and large, it seems the press has taken kindly to Schröder’s patch-up with Bush. But the voters ... Well, they’ve got other concerns.

Foreign policy. Domestic policy. What’s the difference these days?

In the Bavarian state election on the weekend, Schröder’s SPD suffered a “bitter defeat”, as Edmund Stoiber’s CSU won 60.7% of the vote to the SPD’s 19.6%. It was the SPD’s worst result in the state since World War II.

“The reason is clear,” Schröder said. “We are in the midst of a difficult reform phase. People are afraid of change.”

Not so in the Czech Republic, it would seem.

This week, the Czech government survived a vote of no confidence in parliament over its plans to implement ... well, a difficult phase of reform.

While Schröder goes after those costly social programmes and sclerotic labour laws, the Social Democrats of Vladimir Spidla plan to cut pensions and sickness benefits in preparation for the Czech adoption of the euro.

Public approval for Spidla’s government, says the BBC, has dropped from 72% to 27%.

How neat – though, not a great vote of confidence.

Religious rights

Meanwhile, in another issue of pan-European interest, Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court ruled this week that an Afghan-born teacher Fereshta Ludin cannot be forbidden from wearing a head scarf in a public school in Stuttgart.

The court said there was no law banning the wearing of the head scarf, but legislators were free to pass such a law. States including Bavaria, Lower Saxony, and Hesse, have all said they will pass such a law.

The issue of whether Islamic minorities should be allowed to express their religious identity in secular public institutions is emerging across Europe, most notably in France.

Die Zeit called the judges “cowardly”.

(Source: New York Times)

Bolsheviks and babes

Finally, time for another quick glance at Silvio Berlusconi, scourge of German sensibilities.

This week, Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi spoke at a business bash at the New York Stock Exchange.

Here’s what he had to say:

“Italy is now a great country to invest in ... today we have fewer communists and those who are still there deny having been one ... Another reason to invest in Italy is that we have beautiful secretaries ... superb girls.”

Enough said.

Quotes of the week

“After careful thought and in full awareness of the issues, I consider there is no reason to ask any Commissioner to assume the political responsibility and resign.”
European Commission President Romano Prodi on the alleged fraud at Eurostat.

“Our planet is not balanced. Too few control too much, and too many have too little to hope for. Too much turmoil, too many wars. Too much suffering.”
James Wolfensohn, President of the World Bank

“There is a saying: the hungry dog and the dog that is full, they cannot play successfully.”
Joseph Sanusi, Governor of the Nigerian central bank.

“The war has created far many more problems than those it intended to solve.”
Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri on the war in Iraq.

“I was amazed and outraged to hear about this. They censored my book, just like they tried to censor me.”
Senator Hillary Clinton on hearing that the Chinese publisher of her autobiography had edited out reference to Harry Wu the human rights activist imprisoned by the Chinese authorities.

“Bush today is declaring war on Islam. He has to understand that those who have faith are not afraid of threats, and that Islam is stronger than Bush ... Resistance and holy war are the only choices for victory.”
Sheik Ahmed Yassin, spiritual leader of Hamas.

Contact the Diary Editor: Dominic.Hilton@openDemocracy.net