September 11, 2019, Strategic Culture Foundation (Russia) https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/09/11/end-modern-diplomacy/
Modern diplomacy can generally be
traced back to the late 19th century and the intercession of
professional diplomats in the foreign relations between major and minor powers
of the era. International negotiations to resolve problems were primarily
handled by diplomats prior to politicians giving their assent to peace treaties
and compacts. The Congress of Berlin of 1878 and 1905 Treaty of Portsmouth (New
Hampshire) helped resolve the Russo-Turkish War and Russo-Japanese War,
respectively. These early diplomatic efforts would eventually lead to treaties
establishing the League of Nations, the International Court of Justice, and the
United Nations, in addition to a variety of regional and specialized
international agencies. Each of these international agencies brought into being
a corps of international diplomats who, for the most part, were committed to
hammering out disputes between nations through negotiations and not armed
conflict. The lessons of World Wars I and II provided an impetus for nations to
commit to dialogue rather than war.
In recent years, the world has seen
the rise of anti-diplomacy occasioned by the appearance on the world stage of
political brutes, all operating
under the color of “populism.” Aristotle
defined a tyrant as someone who rules solely for his own benefit and pleasure.
The world has seen the steady rise of such tyrants over the past few decades.
What is alarming is that tyranny and anti-diplomacy has flourished in erstwhile
democratic nations having traditional presidential-legislative and
parliamentary systems of government.
Perhaps it is fitting that Silvio
Berlusconi, the media mogul and former Italian prime minister who introduced
brutish governance to Europe in the 1990s, has returned to politics after a
respite brought about by several indictments and a 2013 conviction for tax
fraud. Berlusconi leads his right-wing Forza Italia political party as a member
of the European Parliament. Berlusconi’s populism is consistently directed
against “Communists.” Berlusconi now directs his ire at the anti-establishment
Five Star Movement, which recently forced an old Berlusconi political ally –
the right-wing Northern League led by Matteo Salvini – out of a coalition
government. Salvini and Berlusconi now vie for the support of some 30 percent
of the Italian electorate that continues to admire World War II fascist leader
Benito Mussolini.
Berlusconi is recognized more for
his crude comments than his neo-fascist policies. In 2003, Berlusconi suggested
in the European Parliament that German Social Democratic MEP Martin Schulz play
the role of a “kapo,” a concentration camp inmate who was empowered by the Nazi
camp officials to enforce rules and labor details, in a forthcoming film. In
another reference to German concentration camps that same year, Berlusconi
said, “Mussolini never killed anyone, he just sent dissenters abroad for
vacation.” Italian relations with Germany and Israel soured. In 2009, at a G20
Summit photo shoot with Queen Elizabeth II and other world leaders, the queen
was irritated by Berlusconi’s loud shouting, prompting her to ask Barack Obama
– who Berlusconi previously called “sun-tanned,” – “Why does he have to shout?”
In 2010, Berlusconi further irritated Israel by telling a joke about a Jew who
hid fellow Jews in his basement for money without telling them World War II was
over. In 2011, Berlusconi said that German Chancellor Angela Merkel was “an
unfuckable lard-ass.” Berlusconi also made crude remarks about Finland’s female
president, Tarja Halonen and criticized the Spanish government for having too
many women in its Cabinet. Berlusconi insulted China when he claimed that under
Mao Zedong, the Chinese government “boiled children to fertilize the fields.”
It was a clear sign that the age of modern diplomacy had hit rocky shoals and
was about to rapidly sink. In 2011, the worst was yet to come.
Berlusconi’s vulgarity and
anti-diplomacy would soon be matched by that of Rodrigo Duterte, the president
of the Philippines. Duterte called the US ambassador in Manila a “bakla,” which
means an effeminate man in the Tagalog language. Duterte also called President
Obama a “son of a whore” and Pope Francis a “son of a bitch.” After Iceland
criticized Duterte’s human rights record, he responded by stating that
Icelanders “go about eating ice” and claimed that Iceland had “no policemen.”
He added that Iceland had “too much ice, and there is no clear day or night
there.” Duterte’s Foreign Secretary, Teodoro Locsin, Jr., who is nominally in
charge of the country’s diplomatic corps, emulated Duterte by referring to Europeans
as people “who don’t shower at least once daily and [were] likely on cartel
payroll.” Asked about the Philippines and the “international community,” Locsin
replied, “Fuck the international community. It can be bought.”
Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister
Michael McCormack recently insulted South Pacific leaders concerned about the
effects of global climate change on their vulnerable nations when he said of
Pacific islanders, “They’ll continue to survive because many of their workers
come here and pick our fruit.” Tuvalu Prime Minister Enele Sopoaga reacted by
threatening to pull his nation’s citizens out of Australia’s seasonal workers
program.
Such undiplomatic outbursts were
once rare, even at the height of the Cold War. Dwight Eisenhower entertained
visiting world leaders, including West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer,
French President Charles De Gaulle, Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, and
British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, at his Gettysburg, Pennsylvania farm,
where, in 1959, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev made a point of inviting
Eisenhower’s grandchildren to visit Moscow with their grandparents on a future
state visit. The era of diplomacy – both quiet and for public consumption – was
one of carefully-written communiqués and protocol-conscious photo
opportunities. Four letter epithets were never publicly overheard in matters of
diplomatic statecraft.
The personalized insult rhetoric was
normally consigned to Third World firebrand dictators like Uganda’s Idi Amin,
Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, and Gambia’s Yahya Jammeh. In the current
post-diplomacy era, such insults would no longer emanate from well-guarded
presidential palaces in Kampala, Harare, or Banjul, but from the White House,
Number 10 Downing Street, and Parliament Hill in Canberra. Leaders and their
close advisers now sound more like drunken sailors leaving a bar than
representatives of nations with long democratic traditions.
Britain’s Boris Johnson has had a
non-distinguished history of insulting people, both as Mayor of London, Foreign
Secretary, and now as Prime Minister. He once called those in Commonwealth
nations, who avidly welcomed the British Queen, “cheering crowds of flag-waving
piccaninnies” bearing “watermelon smiles.” Johnson also said the people of
Papua New Guinea, a Commonwealth member nation, practiced “orgies of
cannibalism and chief-killing.” Johnson also referred to Africa as “that
country.” As Foreign Secretary, Johnson was prepared to recite a crude poem,
titled the “Road to Mandalay,” written by Rudyard Kipling about colonial
era-Burma. Johnson happened to be visiting the most scared Buddhist temple –
the Shwedegon Pagoda – in Yangon, Myanmar. Johnson was prepared to utter the
following stanza that referred to Buddha: “Bloomin’ idol made o’ mud/ Wot they called
the Great Gawd Budd” – before the British ambassador stopped him with a warning
that it was definitely not appropriate to recite such words in the Buddhist
religious shrine.
Johnson also insulted Turkish
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan – who is no shrinking violet when it comes to
his own insults – with a crude limerick he wrote:
“There was a young fellow from
Ankara
Who was a terrific wankerer
Till he sowed his wild oats
With the help of a goat
But he didn’t even stop to thankera.”
Who was a terrific wankerer
Till he sowed his wild oats
With the help of a goat
But he didn’t even stop to thankera.”
Not to be outdone, Erdogan and
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu were fond of trading insults, with
each calling the other a “terrorist.” Erdogan also insulted Australia, stating
that “anti-Muslim Australians” in Turkey would return to Australia in coffins
like their grandfathers, a reference to the World War I Gallipoli, Turkey
invasion that saw thousands of Australian soldiers killed in battle.
Johnson’s ideological and vulgar
doppelganger in Washington, Donald Trump, has similarly disparaged Africa and
Africans by calling their nations “shithole countries.” At a Republican Party
fundraiser in the millionaire enclave of The Hamptons on Long Island, Trump
mimicked South Korean President Moon Jae-in and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo
Abe by speaking in a mock Asian accent. Trump’s insults of Mexicans resulted in
then-Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto canceling a visit to Washington in
2017.
Prior to his love affair with North
Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Trump referred to him as “little rocket man.”
Canadian Prime Minster Justin Trudeau was called “very dishonest and weak”
after Trump stormed out of the 2018 G-7 summit in Quebec. Trump called Danish
Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen as “nasty,” after she rejected as “absurd”
Trump’s proposal to buy Greenland from Denmark. Trump also insulted Denmark’s
Queen Margrethe II by canceling, at the last minute, a state visit to Denmark,
leaving the Danes with pre-purchased state dinner food and drink. Trump
insulted Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven after the prime minister informed Trump that
he had no power to release from jail a fourth-rate US rapper named A$AP Rocky
who was charged with the assault of a man on a Stockholm street.
Others who have fallen victim to Trump’s personal insults include
French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Merkel, former British
Prime Minister Theresa May, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, Montenegro Prime
Minister Duško Marković, former Australian
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan (who had
to arrange for his own transportation to downtown Washington, DC after arriving
at Dulles International Airport in Virginia for a visit to the White House), Afghan
President Ashraf Ghani (whose only invitation to meet with Trump was to be at
an abruptly-canceled “secret” meeting with Taliban leaders at Camp David in
Maryland during the same week that marks the 9/11 attack). There have been
others similarly insulted.
The schoolyard antics of Trump and
Johnson are matched by Brazil’s Adolf Hitler-loving President Jair Bolsonaro.
After President Macron criticized Bolsonaro’s handling of Amazon rainforest
arson-inducted fires, Bolsonaro criticized the age of Macron’s wife, Brigitte,
who is 66, as compared to Bolsonaro’s wife, who is 37. Macron responded, “I
think that Brazilians, who are a great people, will probably be ashamed to see
this behavior.” In July of this year, Bolsonaro canceled a meeting with French
Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian to get a haircut.
After United Nations High
Commissioner for Human Rights and former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet
criticized police abuse and the killing of Amazon indigenous tribal leaders in
Brazil, Bolsonaro replied, “While [Bachelet] says that Brazil is losing
democratic space, she forgets that her country is not Cuba thanks only to those
who had the courage to put a stop on the left-wing in 1973,” a reference to the
1973 military coup that ousted Chile’s democratically-elected Socialist
President Salvador Allende. Bolsonaro added insult to injury by praising the
Chilean junta’s execution of Bachelet’s father, Air Force Brigadier General
Alberto Bachelet. Bolsonaro bragged that “among the communists during that era
was her [Bachelet’s] brigadier father.” Bolsonaro’s Economy Minister, Paulo
Guedes, piled on, stating that: “What I see in the newspapers is that he
[Bolsonaro] insulted [Michelle] Bachelet, or that he called Macron’s wife ugly
. . . He did say that and it’s true – the woman is indeed ugly.”
Too many diplomats, from UN
Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold and UN Middle East mediator Count Folke
Bernadotte to Russian ambassador to Turkey Andrei Karlov, US ambassador to
Cyprus Rodger Davies, and UN Commissioner for Namibia Bernt Carlsson, have died
in diplomatic service in furtherance of peace to allow low-class ruffians and
gangsters to hijack modern diplomacy for their own greedy and extremist
purposes.
*Wayne Madsen: Investigative
journalist, author and syndicated columnist. A member of the Society of
Professional Journalists (SPJ) and the National Press Club
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