Arms and legacies

Old Rummy

If only we could learn to talk to each other, huh?

Well, it doesn’t seem to have done much good for US-North Korean relations. Following last month’s six-nation talks about the North Korean nuclear “crisis” (as the Diary, unlike the US, is willing to call it), the two countries seem to be at each other’s throats even more than normal.

This week, North Korea laid into the US foe like never before. The latest target of Pyongyang’s scorn is defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

The official KCNA news agency called Rummy a “politically illiterate old man” who is “cursed and hated worldwide”.

Who says he’s old?

Rummy annoyed North Korea after telling a group of US and South Korean business leaders that he has a night-time satellite picture of the Korean peninsula hanging in his office. It shows a brightly-lit glitzy South Korea, and a North Korea plunged in spooky darkness.

“While the situation in North Korea sometimes looks bleak,” Rummy said, “I’m convinced that one day freedom will come to the people and light up that oppressed land with hope and promise.”

Ouch!

KCNA exploded. It called Rumsfeld “a dangerous international dictator”. The story of the satellite photo should not be believed as it is “not likely at all that he would speak truth as he is obsessed with wantonly harassing peace and security in different parts of the world and igniting wars.”

Hey, save some for later, why don’t you?

No such luck. “[Rumsfeld’s] outbursts cannot be construed otherwise than a desperate shrill cry of a psychopath on his death bed,” the KCNA concluded.

Still hoping for a peaceful century?

(The US women’s soccer team beat North Korea 3-0 this week)

Pitch and Putin

So what about all that weapons proliferation stuff?

Well, President Bush met with President Putin this week, and although they did their usual job of presenting a united(ish) front, there were big differences on the big questions.

Putin pushed the North Korean line of demanding that the US sign a non-aggression pact. “Russia believes ensuring the nuclear non-proliferation regime should be accompanied by North Korea receiving guarantees in the sphere of security,” he told reporters, with Bush at his side. Bush has no intention of doing so.

As for Iran, Putin told Bush he would not terminate Russia’s $800 million commercial nuclear contract with the “axis of evil” member. Bush has been trying to persuade Putin otherwise for over two years now.

Rather, Putin promised to send “a clear but respectful signal to Iran”: don’t go turning that uranium into bombs now, boys.

Iran has until 31 October to open itself to IAEA inspectors and come clean about their nuclear programme, one way or the other.

If Iran is developing itself a bomb or two, you can bet your bottom dollar Russia will have made some new enemies in Washington.

It’ll be just like the old days again!

Iran, meanwhile, is holding firm to the hard line. “Relinquishing peaceful nuclear technology or enriching uranium is not a subject Iran can compromise on,” said Hamid Reza Asefi, a foreign ministry spokesman.

The EU has again threatened Iran that a lucrative trade accord depends on their restoring trust in their nuclear programme.

Iran, again, was unbending. “Iran and the European Union began their political and commercial negotiations based on mutual respect, and just as Iran did not accept preconditions to start the talks, it will certainly not accept preconditions to continue them,” barked Hamid Reza Asefi.

Sale of the century

And while on the subject...

A new Congressional report emerged last week in the US entitled Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, 1995-2002. Its contents revealed that the US led the world last year in total worldwide arms sales, doing 45.5% of arms deals, worth about $13.3 billion. $8.6 billion of sales were to developing nations.

Russia came in second with $5 billion of arms sales to the developing world. France was third with $1 billion.

North Korea, meanwhile, has done some brisk trade with Middle Eastern nations. Remember Yemen, anyone?

In 2002, arms deals with developing nations totalled $17.7 billion.

Take my wife, please

Anyway, while Dubya looked all chummy with Vladimir, his wife, ‘first lady’ Laura Bush, embarked on a one-woman trip around Europe, hoping to patch up relations and, in her own words, “let people around the world know what we are really like”.

Hope she remembered the family photos.

On Monday, Laura met America’s bête noire and leader of the “axis of weasels”, France’s president Jacques Chirac, at the Elysée palace.

Chirac’s spokeswoman said the two had a “friendly conversation”. “Our attachment is emotional”, Mrs. Bush said, “intimate and intense at the same time.”

That’s the attachment between US and France, not between Mrs. Bush and Jacques Chirac. Although Chirac twice kissed Laura’s hand, the old smoothie.

Irony of ironies, Mrs. Bush then presided over a ceremony marking the US re-entry into Unesco. In 1984, the Americans stormed out of it amid accusations of anti-western bias and “an endemic hostility toward the institutions of a free society particularly those that protect a free press, free markets and, above all, individual human rights.”

Laura is raising her profile and is even said to be the Republicans’ “secret weapon” in her husband’s re-election plans (a notable change from Clinton’s secret weapon, which didn’t remain a secret very long). The Diary suspects that Dubya originally, and unsuccessfully, asked his wife for a financial contribution.

The first lady delivered a twenty-five minute address to Unesco, urging the organisation to spread “the values that will help defeat terror and lead to a better and safer world: education, tolerance, respect for human life and respect for each other’s differences.”

Sounds almost multilateralist.

The New York Times described how Laura “stood ram-rod straight, her hand on her heart” as the Star-Spangled Banner was sung and the flag was raised to join the flags of 189 other nations. “But Mrs. Bush did not face the flag as the anthem was sung,” the NYT reported, “instead, she stood perpendicular to it, a pose that enabled photographers to capture her in profile, with the flag and the Eiffel Tower behind.”

Of such things are international politics made.

Jean protection

Meanwhile, as the world still comes to terms with the cock-up of Cancún, a story caught the Diary’s attention this week that seems to epitomise the free trade/protectionist dichotomy.

Levi Strauss, giant of the blue jean, announced plans to close its last manufacturing plants in the US. Jobs will go to cheaper labour overseas, described by the company as its “global network of suppliers”.

The Levi’s jean, not made in America? Whatever next?

CEO Philip Marineau talked business. “We are in a highly competitive industry,” he explained. It just doesn’t pay to pay Americans.

Unions were angry. New reports had Bruce Raynor, president of Unite, the US’s largest apparel workers’ union, blaming US government trade policies which allow companies to “scour the globe for the cheapest, most vulnerable labour they can find”.

Election year looms. Can Dubya afford not to protect these jobs?

The International Herald Tribune commented in a disapproving editorial: “Most of the [Democrat presidential] candidates are selling decidedly protectionist messages, as if seeking to become the Ross Perot of the 2004 race, not the Bill Clinton.”

It’s the economy, stupid.

Lula and Fidel

Lula, president of Brazil, wrapped up a controversial visit to Cuba this week.

Lula has been a pal of Castro for over twenty years. Cuba is currently facing international condemnation for jailing and executing “dissidents” (i.e. people calling for or trying to escape to a democracy).

Anyway, the BBC says that during the love-in, Lula “steered clear of politics and focused on economic relations and cooperation agreements.”

As the Cuban dictator waved his friend goodbye at Havana airport he told reporters “It was the best visit that we’ve ever had”.

He said the same thing to Naomi Campbell.

The Diary suspects Lula might have lost some friends in Washington with his Cuban escapade.

The Brazilian supremo, refusing to talk human rights, made this extraordinary remark:

“I don’t give opinions about the internal political conditions of other countries.”

Make of that what you will, folks.

I’m clean, honest

Finally, to Kenya.

In order to show the world how uncorrupt their country can be, President Mwai Kibaki and his cabinet made a show of publicly declaring their wealth this week.

Any public servant who fails to declare their wealth will from this week be guilty of corruption.

Smart move.

The mass confessional is aimed at the World Bank and IMF, who promise to lend Kenya tons of cash if it brings an end to endemic corruption.

“This few months I have been in government, I have known that the government has adequate resources to carry out what we want, were it nor for corruption,” Kibaki said.

His words echo around the world.

Quotes of the week

“We expect it to be a hard-fought, close election in a country narrowly divided.”
Karl Rove, President Bush’s senior advisor, on next year’s presidential.

“We did not have perfect foresight into what we were going to find in Iraq.”
US national security advisor Condoleezza Rice.

“In the process of editing the book, our publishing house made some technical adjustments to ensure an even better reception from our readership.”
Zhang Zude, head of Yilin Press, the Chinese publishing house who cut passages in Hillary Clinton’s book that referred to jailed Chinese dissidents.

“Never has France been so listened to and never have so many hopes been placed in it.”
French foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin.

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