Weird IR

Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump's historic summit meeting in Singapore is now underway, and the best news so far comes from reports that Kim Jong Un traveled to Singapore with his own toilet.

Is North Korean toilet technology that advanced that he prefers his own toilet over those of a high priced resort in Singapore? No, Kim Jong Un is just worried that foreign intel agencies will deploy their poop detectors to retrieve Kim's stools from the hotel sewers in order to find out about his health and diet. Dear Leader's poop must remain a mystery!

We hope this one-day summit between the world's two weirdest leaders continues to produce more WeirdIR content.

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Former NBA player, Dennis Rodman, who famously became the first American to meet North Korean dictator, Kim Jung Un, and has made a few visits to the closed off country in the name of "basketball diplomacy", may be going to Singapore for the June 12 summit between Kim and US President Donald Trump. He would make himself available if his help is needed, according to news media reports. 

We really hope these reports are true and that Trump allows Rodman to sit in on the meetings next to Sec of State Mike Pompeo. That would really make our day. Here's an old pic of the Pres with the Worm.

One of the truly weird stories from the world of international relations concerns the Yellow Fleet, a fleet of fifteen unrelated merchant vessels that happened to be sailing in the Suez Canal when the Six-Day War broke out between Israel and the Arab States in June 1967.

With the outbreak of war, both ends of the canal became blocked by scuttled ships and destroyed bridges, leading the fifteen ships of the Yellow Fleet to be stuck in the canal. The ships would remain there for eight years - the canal was finally cleared and reopened in 1975.

The ships, which were registered in the US and seven European countries, gathered together in a wide part of the canal for the duration of their unintended internment. Their hulls became coated with the dust of the desert, lending the fleet their name.

The crews gathered together for mutual support, played soccer on the largest ship, and held church services and meals together. Interestingly, they also hand-made their own stamps, which Egypt recognized, thereby granting the stamps international standing and allowing the mail to be forwarded onward from Egypt. These stamps, samples of which can be found below, are now collectors' items. The "MS" names in the top left of the envelope are the names of five of the Yellow Fleet ships. ​

The crewmen fortunately were not stuck on the ships the whole eight years, but most remained for at least a couple years and the last remaining crew when home in 1972, five years after the Six-Day War.

John Bolton's recent appointment to National Security Advisor was among the most controversial personnel decisions that President Trump has made this year. And, that's saying a lot. 

We at Weird IR are watching this development with great interest. Not just because Bolton is now one of the most influential US foreign policymakers-- who will be steps away from the West Wing-- but also because his persona has been used by Iranian hackers to steal passwords and sensitive information from some of DC's elites. We covered this story in 2014, but you can revisit it here. In short: If John Bolton wants to connect with you on LinkedIn, tread carefully.

While we have you... did you know that our book is coming out soon? That's right! Weird IR: Deviant Cases in International Relations is hitting shelves in August. More information to follow. 

Recent convert to anti-migrant xenophobia and longtime perv Silvio Berlusconi is poised to become the next prime minister of Italy.

The guy whom Americans might know as the weirdo who gave Michelle Obama the creepy crawlies won big (but not too big) in yesterday's elections. If that's not enough, Silvio has been accused of multiple crimes, including bribing senators and soliciting underage prostitutes. His accomplishments include being a billionaire, presiding over Italy's decline in the global economy, and avoiding prison time. His interests are dominating Italian media and soccer. His turn-ons are well documented by court proceedings.

The man who was Trump before Trump had a perfectly Berlusconi-esque moment at the ballot box, when a topless protester stood from FEMEN stood on a desk and confronted the leader of Forza Italia for his many alleged crimes and indiscretions against women.

Hola, amigos. I know it's been a while since I rapped at ya, but Phil and I have been hard at work on our new book. 

I just had to write a quick post about Mikheil Saakashvili, the former President of Georgia. If you're not familiar, he was a busy guy when he was in office. Among his accomplishments:

Spearheading the 2004 Rose Revolution, which brought democratic reforms to Georgia

Starting and then losing a war with Russia

Getting NATO's attention but never sealing the deal with membership

Losing control of his country's military

Hey, you win some and you lose some. That's life, right? Anyway, Saakashvili's turn to the weird side began when his second term as president ended. He spent some time in the United States, writing op-eds about how Russia sucks and teaching a few courses at the Fletcher School. One of those op-eds was a passionate defense of the Ukrainian government, which had just lost chunks of its territory to Russia. 

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko was so amped by Saakashvili's essay that he offered him citizenship. And the former Georgian President accepted it. At the time, he was under investigation for multiple crimes in Georgia, and relished the opportunity to get the hell out of Dodge, so to speak. Georgian law bans dual citizenship, so when Saakashvili took his Ukrainian citizenship, he gave up his Georgian citizenship.

The bromance between Poroshenko and Saakashvili lasted for a while. Saakashvili became the governor of Odessa oblast, a bizarre and unpredicted turn of events for everyone. Eventually, however, Poroshenko grew tired of Saakashvili's shit. Saakashvili lost his position in Poroshenko's government and did what any annoying privileged person would do-- he moved to Williamsburg, Brooklyn. From there, he began to coordinate an electoral challenge to Poroshenko's ruling party. 

He would also rail against Poroshenko's government, accusing it of widespread corruption. (As if Ukraine's government didn't have enough on its plate.) Eventually, enough was enough, and Ukraine stripped Saakashvili of his citizenship.

Thus, in late July 2017, Saakashvili became stateless. This is where the story gets really sketchy. By early August, he somehow got from the United States to Lithuania. He quickly hopped the border to Poland-- without credentials-- and tried to sneak into Ukraine. 

He was stopped, of course. Saakashvili remained trapped in Poland for a few more days, until he snuck onto a bus and made it into Ukraine. He spent a few weeks with loyalists, plotting his return to Kiev to confront his old political rivals. That never happened, though. Yesterday, a group of commandos grabbed Saakashvili while he was eating lunch and kicked his ass out of the country. As of this writing, he is in Poland, no doubt plotting another return. He might also want to find a passport while he's at it. 

Actually, never mind. He clearly doesn't need one. I've never seen a stateless person be so mobile in my life. Props, Mikheil.

Given the totality of the 2003 US-Iraq War and the ensuing occupation - the huge costs in lives, money, and resources on both sides, not to mention the loss of international prestige for the US - it's easy to forget all the strange events that preceded the US invasion. The event that people are most likely to remember from the lead-up to war is Sec of State Colin Powell presentation of fake evidence of Iraq seeking WMD to the UN. That was quite a doozy, so it's easy to see why it's so memorable.

But one short vignette that is unfortunately forgotten is Iraq's proposal to solve the US-Iraq dispute over WMD and Saddam's continuing rule by holding a duel. That's right, an old-school, Hamilton-and-Burr, man-to-man, ​armed confrontation between the leaders of the two countries. Unfortunately, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer rejected the proposal, replying that "there can be no serious response to an irresponsible statement like that."

Naturally, it would have been a much better way to avoid all those lost lives. But who would have won? On one hand, Saddam was a military man, and Bush had avoided the Vietnam War by joining the Texas Air National Guard. On the other hand, Bush was nine years younger than Saddam - Saddam was 66 in 2003, and Bush was 57.

Bush was a Texas rancher, used to pulling out his gun to deal with vermin to protect his livestock; Saddam had to deal with vermin to protect his hold on power. Saddam probably would have resorted to dirty tricks, but Bush's father probably taught him a thing or two about dirty tricks when he was the CIA chief. Saddam stood 186 cm, while Bush is 182, giving Saddam a small reach advantage. We'll never know!

The whole thing reminds me of one of the best music videos of the '80s: Frankie Goes to Hollywood's video for Two Tribes, which featured a Reagan look-alike wrestling against a Leonid Brezhnev look-alike. Maybe Saddam was a Frankie fan?

​China nominated two regional strongmen for its 2017 Confucius Peace Prize - President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines and Prime Minister Hun Sen of Cambodia. The winner will be announced soon.

In case you're not aware, Duterte has instituted extrajudicial killings of suspected drug dealers and users, has sacked and undermined politicians who oppose him, and made light of the rape and murder of a nun. But he also pivoted to a friendlier, conciliatory foreign policy toward China in the past year, making him Beijing's man in Manila.

And Hun Sen has cracked down on the free press and the main opposition party in Cambodia, but he also enjoys a growing close relationship with China. He travels to Beijing to seek aid money, and in return he blocks anti-China statements on the South China Sea in ASEAN.

So China clearly equates peace with kissing ass. It's funny though that the case award for the Confucius Prize is only a measly $15,000, which is surprising for cash-abundant China. 

It should be noted that the recently deposed dictator of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, who led his country to economic ruin and abused human rights throughout his long reign in power, was given the Confucius Prize in 2015. For some reason, he turned it down. I guess he thought the $15,000 prize was an insult as far as bribes go.

Malaysian police are now saying that Kim Jong-nam, the older half-brother of North Korean ruler Kim Jong-un who was murdered at Kuala Lumpur Airport on Feb 13, 2017, was carrying vials of nerve gas antidote in his bags. Kim Jong-nam was accosted and poisoned with VX nerve gas by two women hired by North Korean intelligence (the women claim that they were hired to play a joke).

If  this is true, this would mean that Kim could have easily prevented his own murder. It was known that there was a standing order in the North Korean government to have Kim killed, so it could be possible that Kim was carrying the nerve gas antidote just for such an occasion. If so, then what an idiot. But what do you expect from someone who threw away inheriting his father's rule in order to try to sneak into Japan to visit Tokyo Disneyland?

On the other hand, maybe he was carrying or smuggling the antidote on his person as part of a business venture - the guy had to make money after all - and he had no idea what he was carrying. But that's a pretty big coincidence. Hopefully, the news in the coming weeks will shed more light on this revelation.

(Note: given the current focus on Russia in the U.S. news, we thought this post from 2012 deserved a reposting)
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One of my former students wrote a great thesis for her Russian major on blat networks in Russia. What's blat, you ask?...it's the only way to get anywhere in the Russian business world. 

Blat networks have their origins in the Soviet era, when shortages of needed items were frequent. A blat consisted of networks of friends, relatives, and other contacts, who procured those hard to find items for you in exchange for whatever you can get your hands on. 

As the Soviet economy transitioned to a market economy, one that has been particularly marked by corruption, so the blat tradition has changed. As deeply embedded in Russian culture as it was, the blat way of doing business did not go away, it just transformed. Now, to do business in Russia, one must be tapped into a blat network. You want to open a new store, you better know the people who will let that happen: bureaucrats, laborers, local businessmen, etc. 

So, contrary to what we think about globalization and its power to break down obstacles for entry into new markets, the blat tradition in Russia ensures that barriers to foreign entry remain high. 

Ikea learned this the hard way. After trying to break into the newly opened Russian market for a decade, Ikea finally opened its first store in 2000. Ikea knew they had to make contacts at the official level: Ikea's founder for instance met with President  Vladimir  Putin. But Ikea didn't know how deeply their schmoozing would have to travel.

Just before the opening of one of their stores in Moscow, local officials cut off the electricity. Ikea officials deftly sidestepped this maneuver by purchasing and running their own generators. This led Ikea to place generators in all of their stores. It was only a little later however, that Ikea found out that they had paid about $200 million (U.S. dollars) for the generators, the result of local contractor some greasing of the palms of blat buddies. When Ikea tried to sue in Russian court, they were fined 5 million euros for their trouble.​
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There are many other stories like this. When Ikea tried to open a store in Samara, they were delayed by local officials nine times, lasting in total over four year. The final complaint was that the store was not up to hurricane proof standards. Samara is not very close to any hurricane prone regions. 

Needless to say, Ikea had insufficient blat for their Russian business venture.
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When I read my student's work on Ikea's troubles in Russia, it made me think of a bizarre episode in international business that took place back in 2005. Maybe the concept of blat can shed a light on why President Putin pocketed New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft's 4.94 carat, 124 diamond-encrusted Super Bowl ring.

This occurred during a meeting of major corporate CEOs with Putin, including execs from IBM, Intel, and Citigroup.  Putin admired Kraft's ring, so Kraft took it off and let Putin try it on. Putin admired it for a while, then took it off......and placed it in his own jacket pocket! Kraft tried to play it off later. Given our new knowledge of how business is done in Russia, it's likely that Putin thought the business leaders were paying the first of many costs for doing business in Russia. Better save some of that jewelry for the local electric utilities.
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