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.
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2008 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
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