Upper Volta with rockets

The phrase Upper Volta with Rockets has circulated over the years but with uncertain attribution.  The phrase conveys the idea of weak and retrograde governance in charge of lethal technology.  Upper Volta was the earlier name of what is now Burkina Faso in West Africa.

I came across the origin of the phrase:

Date: Thu, 18 Feb 1999 

From: "Xan Smiley" <XanSmiley@economist.com> 

Subject: Upper Volta with Rockets

I notice that the phrase "Upper Volta with rockets" has popped up a few

times recently in DJL, with occasional passing discussion as to its

origins. Henry Kissinger, Helmut Schmidt and even Mikhail Gorbachev have

been cited as the phrase's inventor.

Sorry, but it was I who first put it into public print. It was in the

summer of 1987, I think, when I was the correspondent in Moscow (1986-89)

for The Daily Telegraph (London) and The Sunday Telegraph. The phrase

caused some enjoyable offence at the time, and I was castigated for my

"rabid anti-Sovietism" etc in the Soviet press.

In fact, I had previously heard a thought expressed rather similarly by a

non-journalist woman who happened to be a Zimbabwean, and I thought I'd

play with it. Bad luck that the Upper Voltans had actually been calling

their country Burkina Faso for quite some time. But poor Upper Volta had a

more hopeless and comic ring to it.

Anyway, I don't see why the aforementioned bigwigs should get the credit

for it, if credit it is!

yours sincerely

Xan Smiley

Europe Editor

The Economist

Xan Smiley of the Economist!