Whatever happened to good old fashioned diplomacy? If you listen to the rhetoric of some world leaders today, you can almost imagine them in short trousers exchanging insults over the ownership of a lollipop. Except in this not so brave New World Order there are people's lives and livelihoods at stake.

There are none more juvenile than that of the self-appointed leader of the free world with his "wanted dead or alive," "we'll smoke him out of his cave," "mission accomplished" and his proud labelling of Iran, Iraq and North Korea as an "axis of evil."

Apparently, even Laura Bush doesn't approve of them, although to ears of jingoistic Fox News viewers such phrases are as milk and honey.

More worrying is the recent expose by filmmaker Alex Jones, who snuck into the fortress-like Bohemian Grove, an all-male private club in California, armed with a video camera.

The resultant documentary is shocking. Each year the club members whose number include a succession of US presidents, including the present incumbent, meet to "don red, black and silver robes before sacrificing an effigy before a giant owl, otherwise known as "the Great Owl of Bohemia."

This account must surely represent food-for-thought for parents who regularly tell their erring offspring to "grow up!"

One of the latest tit-for-tats spats is between members of the Bush team and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, who together with Cuba's Castro and Bolivia's Evo Morales, make up what Chavez unoriginally calls the "axis of good."

Old Europe

The US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, who stuck his foot in his mouth terming France and Germany "old Europe," recently likened Chavez to Hitler. Not to be outdone Chavez denounces Bush as "Mr Danger," "a killer" and "a madman."

Across the Atlantic, British politicians tend to be more circumspect with their adjectives, with the exception of London's mayor, Ken Livingstone. He was upbraided for comparing a Jewish reporter to a "Nazi concentration camp guard" before turning his ire onto the US ambassador to Britain, whom he called "a chiseling little crook" for trying to avoid London's entry toll.

Cross the channel into Europe and it's a different story. France's Interior Minister Nicholas Sarkozy got himself in hot water for calling young people who live in poor suburbs "rabble."

Insult watchers must have been gratified to observe the run-up to the Italian elections where candidates engaged in mutual vilification with words like "fascist," "Mafioso" and "communist" liberally sprinkled around.

Then this week the Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad decided to turn up the international heat on Tehran with flowery threats against Israel; the country that the US president recently swore to defend at all costs.

As most of my regular readers are no doubt aware, I am vehemently opposed to sanctions (or worse) being imposed on Iran due to its uranium enrichment, which I believe it has a right to conduct for peaceful purposes.

But every time Ahmadinejad speaks in this vein, he offers grist to the mill of his enemies, who claim that the Iranian regime is a dangerous one, even though neither it nor its predecessors have ever initiated conflict. In this way Iran unfairly gets the name without the game.

Keen to get in on the act is the Israeli politician Shimon Peres, who responded to the Iranian leader's rhetoric with a warning that he would end up like Saddam Hussain.

In the personal name-calling stakes, Israeli politicians head the list. As the Independent's Middle East reporter Robert Fisk reminded us, former Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin referred to Palestinians as "two-legged beasts," Ehud Barak called them "crocodiles," while former Israeli Chief of Staff Rafael Eytan said they were like "cockroaches in a glass jar."

We all know that the pen is mightier than the sword but so are the words that trip off the tongues of people with their fingers on the button or responsible for the well being of people who voted for them.

Neo-machismo

All this neo-machismo prevents dialogue between nations, and it is real dialogue that is needed now more than ever. How can you proffer olive branches to people who have called you "evil" or a "terrorist"?

The true grown ups on the global block are Chinese leaders, who keep their feelings close to their chests. With the Chinese economy surging through the roof, the Chinese bear loves to give the impression it's nothing but a panda. Perhaps China would do well to open a school for foreign politicians with lesson one on the subject of discretion being the better part of valour.

In an ideal world, our leaders should stand as role models for young people. We want to respect our elected officials. We want to believe they are truthful, wise, uncorrupt and honourable. We want to believe they are doing all they can to keep us safe rather than pouring verbal fuel on the embers of hatred. A little Chinese inscrutability could work wonders for their reputations and, who knows, once the war of words is set aside, they might actually begin to talk.