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Undiplomatically yours
By Sreeram Chaulia
NEW YORK - What is common among the political leaders of
Iran, North Korea, China and Venezuela? These world figures
spout venomous rhetoric in uninhibited tones that defy the
norms of diplomatic conduct. Their public comments against
foreign foes are notorious for vitriol bereft of civility
and subtlety - the two celebrated axioms of foreign policy.
Fiery, irreverent and provocative, their language never
fails to turn heads and jar the ears. In an international
system where the majority of heads of states and governments
speak in codes and signs, these firebrands do not believe in
mincing their words.
Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad leads the iconoclastic
brigade with
overtly anti-Semitic lingo that sounds vituperative to
Israel and its allies. In a speech delivered in October
2005, Ahmadinejad took a swipe at his Zionist archenemies as
"disgraceful stains" that will be "eliminated". Two months
later, he claimed that the Nazi holocaust of Jews was an
"invented" myth for which the people of Palestine were being
made to pay the price.
Although Iranian officials tried to make amends for these
outbursts by insisting that their leader had been
misunderstood and misquoted, Ahmadinejad's tempestuous words
heightened tensions in the Middle East and reinforced the
stereotypes that play into the hands of hardliners. The
neo-conservatives in the United States had a field day
whenever Ahmadinejad's verbal volleys hit the world press
and they cited his harsh "genocidal" language as further
justification for forcible regime change in Iran.
North Korea's "Dear Leader", Kim Jong-il, has his own
trademark style of bizarre and unpredictable harangues
against the West that buttress myths about his mental
condition. Under his direction, the state media in Pyongyang
have greatly enriched the lexicon of undiplomatic
utterances.
In 2002, the official government newspaper, Nodong Sinmun,
labeled then American Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld a
"babbler" prominent in the "belligerent [George W] Bush
group". State-run radio broadcasts in North Korea are under
Kim's directions to whip up anti-American frenzy and have
castigated the US as a "criminal nuclear war fanatic". In
2004, Kim's government portrayed Bush as "a tyrant that puts
Hitler in the shade" and a man whose advisers are "a typical
gang of political gangsters".
Kim's no-holds-barred propagandist timbre has irritated the
US, Japan and South Korea, inevitably spicing up an already
hot political climate in East Asia. It has fueled
impressions in the Western world that North Korea's
leadership is dangerous, trigger happy, and one that cannot
be trusted to honor diplomatic agreements. The regular ups
and downs in US-North Korea relations over Pyongyang's
nuclear ambitions have a "wild card" quality because of
Kim's extravagant language.
Although China's leaders have toned down their anti-Western
propaganda with the onset of a more "pragmatic" and
neo-liberal generation, their ire for Tibetan
self-determination remains hateful and illogically vehement.
The Dalai Lama has been subjected by the Chinese government
and media to a never-abating barrage of expletives ranging
from "treasonous snake" and a "wolf in monk's clothes" to a
"monster with a human face and an animal's heart". While the
rest of the world watches in perplexity at the abusive and
foul choice of words for a great spiritual seer, the Chinese
Communist Party and its officials revel in skewering him and
his followers.
Sometimes, the Chinese capacity for vilifying Tibetan
activists borders on the ludicrous. Following the mass
unrest in March 2008, Beijing accused Tibetan youth
organizations based in India of planning "suicide attacks"
with the assistance of al-Qaeda. On the question of Taiwan
too, Chinese leaders have unleashed violent words and images
that harmed cross-strait relations. In 2004, senior Chinese
General Liu Yuan declared that his forces would be
"seriously on guard against threats from Taiwan independence
terrorists".
Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, renowned for combative and
irascible language, has never flinched from attacking the US
with utmost disdain. In February 2004, he referred to
American president George W Bush as a pendejo
(Spanish profanity) and followed it up a year later by
criticizing US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as
"completely illiterate" in her understanding of Latin
America. Chavez's colorful and earthy Sunday radio program,
Alo Presidente, often features lengthy tirades laced with ad
hominem remarks on American and Israeli leaders.
In the 2006 UN General Assembly session, the veritable
parliament of the world, Chavez called Bush "the devil" and
raised more than eyebrows. The charismatic Venezuelan
populist has frequently resorted to character assassination
of his opponents in public, the most catchy being his
labelling of Bush as "the biggest terrorist in the world
today". Like Ahmadinejad, Chavez's blistering language has
arguably added a personal bitterness to already antagonistic
relations with the US.
Is there a calculated logic behind the unsavory language of
some leaders in world politics? Aside from pumping adrenalin
and conveying the message that they are ready to take on
their rivals, the Iranian, North Korean, Chinese and
Venezuelan governments are all self-professed revolutionary
regimes opposed to the current world order. The language of
revolutionaries carries a lethal denunciatory sharpness that
is absent in countries governed by bourgeois elites.
Islamist, communist or Bolivarian revolutionaries envisage a
world in which struggle and confrontation are necessary for
progress and change. When the category of "class enemies" or
"religious Satans" is extended beyond the confines of the
revolutionary state, it is stuck on perceived imperialist or
neo-colonial actors like the US which are seen as sabotaging
the stability of the revolutionary regime. Indeed, for
leaders like Chavez, there is concrete evidence to back
anger at American intelligence involvement in fomenting coup
d'etat attempts on legally elected governments.
Livid language can be a way for revolutionary regimes to
mobilize maximum vigilance among their own populations
against foreign overthrow or military invasion. This is as
true today as it was in France after 1787 or Russia after
1917. The entire onus of revolutionary governments is to
defend their hard-won victories by all means, including
vicious propaganda, against the forces of "reaction" or
"counter-revolution".
Undiplomatic statements are, of course, not the sole
monopoly of leftist or radical world leaders. It is worth
recalling that former US president Ronald Reagan condemned
the Soviet Union as the "evil empire". At a press conference
in 1987, he also pilloried Libyan supremo Muammar Gaddafi as
"this mad dog of the Middle East". Bush's formulation of the
"axis of evil" falls in the same category of politically
incorrect and inflammatory language that achieves no
positive purpose. Senator Hillary Clinton, the candidate for
the US Democratic presidential nomination, recently vowed to
"obliterate" Iran if it attacked Israel.
It is debatable whether language really matters. The norms
of diplomacy, including words of gentility, can mask
subterfuge and intrigue in deeds. The former colonized
nations of the world nurse deep grudges about the hypocrisy
of the West, which talks softly but wields the big stick to
coerce unwilling but weak countries. One could legitimately
argue that the spoken broadsides of an Ahmadinejad or a Kim
Jong-il are less harmful than the military invasions and
assaults of a George W Bush.
"Rogue states" is a particularly derogatory term used by
Western leaders to rally support for their numerous military
and economic interventions in the developing world. Its
antithesis is the so-called "civilized world" (read the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization and its allies), which
will not tolerate the misdemeanors of these "rogues". Stormy
language is not a benchmark for judging whether a state
being targeted by the West is a "rogue", but it adds to the
folklore of certain countries being beyond the pale of
civilization. Undiplomatic language is thus a mirror not
only of inter-state schisms but also of the racism inherent
in world politics.
Sreeram Chaulia is a researcher on
international affairs at the Maxwell School of Citizenship
at Syracuse University, New York.
(Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
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