Belgium, mini-me minion?

In het VRT-journaal had Greet de Keyser het vanavond over een artikel in de Wall Street Journal waarin nogal smalend gedaan werd over België, naar aanleiding van het Frans-Belgische veto in de NAVO. We zochten het citaat voor u op. In een editoriaal met als titel "The End of NATO - An alliance that refuses to defend a member nation is useless" staat het volgende te lezen over België: Three countries -- France, Germany and their mini-me minion, Belgium -- have moved from opposition to U.S. policy toward Iraq into formal, and consequential, obstructionism.

Mini-me minion? Waddayamean? We zochten het voor u op in een paar woordenboeken.


1) minion
Etymology: Middle French mignon darling
Date: 1501
1 : a servile dependent, follower, or underling
2 : one highly favored : IDOL
3 : a subordinate or petty official
(Bron: Merriam-Webster English Dictionary)

2) mini-me
Volgens de "Collins Gem English Pocket Dictionary" een neologisme, aldus een artikel in de boekenbijlage van The Guardian.
Mini-me is derived partly from the media usage "Nigel Griffiths, Gordon Brown's mini-me, has claimed £40,000 in office rental". Kortom: een mini-me is een soort dwerg-vervanger.

Het editoriaal verscheen naamloos, maar inmiddels maakte de auteur zichzelf bekend op het tv-station Fox News Channel. Het gaat om Rob Pollack, senior editorial writer bij de Wall Street Journal.



Vorige week vrijdag al publiceerde de Wall Street Journal een ander opinie-artikel dat niet zo vleiend was voor België. Deze keer luidde de titel "Better than seven Belgiums". We citeren Vladimir Socor, senior fellow bij het Institute for Advanced Strategic & Political Studies:

Only a few months ago, as NATO considered inviting up to seven candidate countries to join the alliance, skeptical commentators warned that those countries would turn out to be "seven more Belgiums" -- i.e., strategically irrelevant, unable to participate effectively in allied operations, freeloaders on defense spending, and afflicted with sanctimonious pacifism. (Although they chose Belgium as the "bad" example, the Red-Green-misgoverned Germany could just as well fit that description.) The anti-enlargement crowd also predicted that NATO would become "unwieldy" and "lose its cohesion" by taking in new countries in the freed part of Europe. The handwringers' predictions have twice been proven wrong. First, by the invitee countries themselves, who are working hard and successfully to meet the NATO admission criteria. And, second, because it is actually some among the old member countries who are now jeopardizing NATO's transformation into an effective antiterrorist alliance and undermining its internal political cohesion. Three times in the last two weeks, France, Germany and -- yes -- Belgium (along Luxembourg) vetoed proposals that NATO begin planning some limited measures of a defensive nature, in preparation for a possible offensive operation in Iraq.