It’s About the Uranium, Stupid

Actually the Nuclear Security Summit was an irrelevant farce, and obviously meant to cover for the ineffectual response to Nork and Iranian nukes. After all, who stays up nights worrying about the security of Canadian yellowcake? Most importantly, Iran and North Korea knew that in the kabuki of congratulating people for never having built nukes, or demilitarizing, as South Africa, Switzerland, and even peaced-out Sweden did, that they have little to worry about.

Whatever notice to the real bad guys it may have drawn, it’s made even less noteworthy by the presence of the disinvolved, the tangentially involved, and the likes of the European Union’s member state representatives, and China, whose industries are supplying the tools needed to build these nukes.

Nonetheless, the EU showed up seeking legitimacy, only to find Van Rompuy discovering:

But the summit was not a social function. Obama had business to take care of and had to make the most of the time allotted. So there was a clear-cut rationale behind the choice of bilateral meetings

Luckily, expectations are coming into line with the reality of Europe’s place in the world:

Van Rompuy gets handshake in Washington

Fully aware that he showed up for no good reason, De Standaard goes into full amnesiac whining mode:

Now we’ve got the proof: Herman Van Rompuy can’t stop the traffic in Washington DC. Worse still, at the nuclear security summit there on 12/13 April, he wasn’t even deemed worthy of a little tête-à-tête with Barack Obama, but just a handshake. Another occasion for Europeans to bewail their fate. First, Obama refused to attend the EU-US summit in Madrid this May. Then he did not invite a single EU representative to sign the START III treaty on nuclear disarmament last week in Prague. And now yet another slap in the face.

Are you kidding me? Sad as the whole affair was, Obama was actually trying to accomplish something in his nutty, adolescent-fantasy vision of whirled peas. What could old Herman Van possibly bring?is