21st Century Self-Destruction

Sea change?

Is Brazil’s President Lula the next Saddam or the next Kim Jong-il?

Tough question, eh? Let the Diary answer it for you.

According to the Economist, Lula is not the champion of the world’s poor, as many of you may have mistakenly assumed. Rather, Lula is the latest threat to international peace.

Brazil, a nation conspicuously absent from the “axis of evil”, has recently announced it intends to start enriching uranium and has turned its back on the International Atomic Energy Agency's Additional Protocol, which gives greater access to international inspectors. Argentina is alarmed. How long before it too goes nuclear?

The worry is that the international accord on how to deal with the spread of nuclear technology and material is either inadequate, breaking down, or totally kaput.

As the Diary wrote last month: “The existing Non-proliferation Treaty relies on honesty, trust and the gentleman’s word.”

We’re all dead, then.

From Libya to Iran to North Korea and the black-market trading of Pakistan’s Abdul Qadeer Khan & Co., something sure ain’t right, people. “(The) only real difference between a civilian nuclear fuel-cycle and a military nuclear fuel-cycle is one of intent,” writes The Economist.

Ah yes, intent. Speaking of which, anyone tracking those terrorists who are looking to exchange suitcases full of cash for suitcases full of bombs? Did they pick up any bargains at the Khan & Co. clearance? (To obtain a nuclear weapon is a “religious duty”, says a guy called Osama bin Laden.)

Stealing the Diary’s thunder, The Economist puts it in stark terms: “If anything, the 21st century seems an even more dangerous, because less predictable, place.”

Great. Another sleepless century.

Even better: “(The) risk that someone, somewhere, might detonate a bomb in anger is arguably greater than at any time since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis brought the cold-war world soberingly close to the brink.”

But these days, of course, sobriety is in short supply. Those not drunk on booze are drunk on power or religious fervour.

Still, there’s always the Diary, your weekly dose of cold turkey.

From Russia with hate

Meanwhile…

As the US presses ahead with its research into small bunker-busting nukes, attention shifts from Brazil back to Iran.

There are two modes of thinking on the Iranian nuclear situation at the moment. The first suspects that Iran bought its bomb design from Khan & Co., as did Libya. The second ties Iran to Russia, also through the black market.

This week, inspectors reportedly found that the highly-enriched uranium on Iran’s nuclear machinery bore an uncanny resemblance to Russian uranium. The $20 billion set aside by the G8 two years ago to safeguard Russia’s nuclear materials appears not to be doing its job.

Next week, the board of the IAEA will consider the latest report on Iran by its head, Mohammed ElBaradei. The report says Iran failed to declare designs for the advanced P-2 centrifuge that makes bomb-grade material. ElBaradei is a sober man, shaken by recent revelations of sophisticated international black-market proliferation. On Iran, he struck a more upbeat tone than this Diary has so far managed. “If you look at the big picture, we are clearly moving in the right direction. If you compare where we were a year ago and where we are today, that’s sea change. I hope sometime in the future – should Iran continue to cooperate, continue to give us all the details – we should be able to see some light at the end of the tunnel.” (Reuters)

Right. Just as long as it isn’t a blinding flash of light.

The Diary doesn’t want to completely wreck your day, but it’s worth noting that less than a month ago, ElBaderei put a somewhat different gloss on things. “If the world does not change course,” he warned, “we risk self-destruction.”

(Read more)

Scrap or freeze?

OK, so while we’re on the subject (as ever), let’s once again turn our attention to nuked-up North Korea.

The second round of six-party talks concluded in Beijing on the weekend. There was no agreement, of course, and there were contrasting accounts of whether any breakthrough had been made in the stand-off between Washington and Pyongyang.

North Korea, you’ll be surprised to hear, is not about to dismantle its nuclear programme and quit its bomb ambitions. And even if it was, how the hell would anyone tell? Pyongyang is not known for being liberal with the truth. In fact, Pyongyang is not known for being liberal with anything.

It didn’t take long for the Stalinist delegation to announce “We will abandon our nuclear weapons programme when the United States drops its hostile policy.”

Don’t hold your breath.

Public posturing, as newspapers like the New York Times soberly phrase it, is the sine qua non of North Korean diplomacy. These guys make Don Rumsfeld look charming.

North Korea can’t actually decide if it has a uranium-enrichment programme or not. One minute it has, and plans to launch nukes at its hostile enemies, the next minute it is a small communist-pacifist paradise being bullied by imperialist madmen in Washington.

Whatever, the US came away from the chinwag surprisingly upbeat. “The talks were very successful, they exceeded my expectations,” grinned an American official.

The North Koreans, who are known to have picked up some choice bargains at the Khan & Co. garage sale, were not so chuffed. “The American delegation did not have an attitude to resolve the problem by peaceful means,” said Kim Kye-kwan, North Korean chief negotiator.

In fact, a day after the talks resumed, Pyongyang described Washington’s tactics as the “behaviour of a bat-blind person who knows nothing”.

Believe it or not, this is progress. After the first round of talks last year, by the time they’d reached the departure lounge at Beijing airport, the North Korean delegation threatened to detonate a nuke.

Cause for optimism?

Boy, are we desperate or what?

Thawing relations

Now, relations between Germany and the United States have barely been better than those between North Korea and the US over the past year and a half. But that has started to change.

This week, German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder visited the White House for the first time in two years.

That’s right, readers, two years. This has been a humdinger spat. US-German relations haven’t been this bad since... well, since 1945.

To nutshell it: Germany was a key member of the “axis of weasels” who opposed the Iraq war; Bush thinks Schröder got re-elected by deliberately attacking the White House and making crowd-pleasing anti-American speeches; America thinks it gave Germany freedom from Nazism and protection from communism; Germany thinks that was like so last century, times have moved on, and besides, Bush ist nicht Roosevelt, and Berlin, unlike Britain, ist nicht eine poodle.

An even more brilliant analysis of the situation is available here.

The day before popping into the White House for beer and pretzels, Schröder found himself in the Windy City, giving a decidedly pro-American, not to mention breezy, speech to the Chicago Council of Foreign Relations.

The US “has a strong partner in Europe and Germany,” he said, warming up the crowd with his Germanic sense of humour. As for Bush’s ambitious plans to bring democracy and stability to the Middle East, Schröder was positively gushing, insisting he had “confidence” Bush could pull off this monumental ideal.

Schröder has markedly shifted his tone in recent weeks. He now speaks of “jihadist terrorism” and a “new totalitarianism” as the biggest global threats – and neither of them are references to the US. He and foreign minister Joschka Fischer are all for bringing hope, modernity, democracy and free markets to the Middle East (if not to Germany).

Eager to appear to his electorate like he hasn’t made enemies with the entire world, and desperate for assistance in rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan, Bush clearly has a lot to gain from patching things up with Gertie. At pains to re-establish himself on the international stage and carry even more weight in Europe, Gertie also gains. Both men are polling badly in their respective nations, not to mention each other’s. Gertie’s Social Democrats suffered a crushing defeat in the Hamburg state elections this week.

According to German government sources quoted in the International Herald Tribune, Bush and Schröder “function with one another in a friendly and partner-like way.” They emerged from their confab with what they called “A German-American Alliance for the 21st Century”.

Beautiful.

Earlier in the week, speaking on behalf of Washington, Daniel Coates, US ambassador to Germany, said, “We would welcome it if Germany strengthened its economy, its military and its foreign policy.”

Oh, is that all? Piece of Schwarzwalder kirschtorte.

Figures of the week

$14 billion
The expected 2004 revenue from Iraqi oil exports

Quotes of the week

“The message could not be clearer. All across our country, change is coming to America.”
Senator John Kerry.

“New York can kill you, no question.”
Mario Cuomo, governor of New York 1982-1994, on the Democratic primary contest.

“I suspect that we’ll find it is accomplished at some point in the future, and I wouldn’t have any idea when.”
US secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld on whether the US will capture Osama bin Laden.

“I’m trying to pick the right words.”
Don Rumsfeld again, struggling to voice his disdain for a reporter’s question which asked whether President Aristide of Haiti had been “virtually kidnapped” by the US.

“I love it when the people go to the polls and flex their muscles and let their voices be heard.”
Arnold Schwarzenegger, governor of California.

“Branding is for cows. It is something you do when there is nothing original about your product.”
Roy Disney, nephew of Walt.

“Everyone is hungry and sleepy. This is not the way to write the law of a country.”
Mahmood Othman, a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, on the eve of unveiling an interim constitution.

“It was a very emotional moment. We established a bill of rights like no other in the region. It was quite a remarkable thing.”
Salem Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress on the deal to establish the constitution.

Contact the Diary: dominic.hilton@openDemocracy.net