|
UNITED NATIONS - / www.MaximsNews.com@
U.N./
- 18
September 2006 -- For months, the Bush administration has been
pressuring the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to make John Bolton the
permanent U.S. envoy to the United Nations.
Bolton
is serving until January on a temporary assignment because his notorious
anti-U.N. reputation and difficult temperament (among other things) made the
Republican-controlled committee unwilling to confirm him to the post last year.
Now,
Bolton has had 12 months to show his stuff. And frankly, there is still no
evidence to suggest that he deserves a full-time posting.
Bolton
has never been a diplomat which, among his supporters, is regarded as a mark
of honor. He hails from the Republican Party's extreme conservative wing. Bush
chose him to please the most fervent right-wingers in his administration, most
of whom either scorn or want to terminate the United Nations.
Bolton
has for a long time been an excessive and unrestrained critic of the U.N.
Among
his infamous utterances: that it wouldn't make a difference if 10 stories were
sliced off the U.N. building; that the U.S. has no obligation to pay its dues to
the organization; that the Security Council should be reduced to one member,
namely the U.S.
And,
perhaps his most notable sally, that "there's no such thing as the United
Nations."
His
record since taking over as ambassador in August 2005 has shown that his
adversarial stance toward the institution has not softened.
In his
first month as U.N. envoy, he gleefully undermined the most comprehensive reform
movement in U.N. history by insisting on the adoption of hundreds of irrelevant
amendments that were never going to be accepted by the General Assembly.
Later,
when the U.N. did agree on one important change creating a new, reformed
Human Rights Council he argued furiously against it, rallied just three
other nations to the cause (out of 191) and eventually saw the U.S. go down to a
humiliating defeat.
Then he
turned around and said he would work with the council and help it financially
but not join it. Which left Washington looking not just like a loser, but a
whiny one at that.
As Sen.
Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) remarked, Bolton was not just a bully, but an
"ineffective" one.
In
furtherance of his mission, Bolton also has promoted various pet causes at the
institution. For example, when issues of population control or limiting the use
of small arms come up, he brings into his office antiabortion activists and
National Rifle Assn. members, respectively, to take the other side.
He has,
on occasion, reportedly sneaked around his own nominal boss, Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice, to Vice President Dick Cheney's office to get support for his
own hard-line views at the U.N. for example, his refusal last summer to
endorse the U.N.'s Millennium Development Goals aimed at reducing poverty in the
developing world.
Rice
eventually forced him to reverse that stance.
To the
extent that he has been able to operate at all at the United Nations most
recently in the Israel-Hezbollah cease-fire he has had to bow to a new
realism within the Bush administration, and yes, sometimes, to international
pressure.
Even
then, though, according to published news reports, he doesn't get along well
with our allies. His bristling nature has left many bruised feelings among his
colleagues. His accomplishments are marginal at best.
He may
be among the most ineffective envoys the United States has ever sent to the U.N.
Just
when the administration thought Bolton was finally going to be approved by the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.) began to raise
questions about Bolton's performance and pushed to delay the vote.
The Bush
administration is said to be exploring other ways to keep Bolton in the job.
A
responsible nation that intends to harmonize differing viewpoints and work out
compromises to further U.S. national security interests makes a serious error in
appointing a Jacobin to work inside a collegial global body.
Bolton's
presence on the same roster with previous U.S. envoys such as Henry Cabot Lodge,
Adlai Stevenson, Arthur Goldberg, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Madeleine Albright,
Richard Holbrooke and Bush appointees John Negroponte and John Danforth or,
for that matter, with George H. W. Bush is a blemish on our nation.
His
nomination should be rejected again by the Senate.
Labels: United
Nations, U.N.,
~~~~~
MaximsNews.com, An Independent Voice from the
U.N., provides commentary and analysis from
leading world figures: King Abdullah II
(Jordan), HRH Prince Zeid Ra'ad Zeid Al-Hussein
(Jordan), Sir Brian Urquhart, Hans Blix, Amb.
Richard Holbrooke, Anwar Ibrahim, Bianca Jagger,
Dr. Nafis Sadik, Shashi Tharoor, Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, Noeleen Heyzer, Kerry
Kennedy, Ian Williams, Stephen Schlesinger, Sen.
Timothy E. Wirth, Marc Morial, Amb. Jayantha
Dhanapala (Sri Lanka), Amb. Pierre Schori
(Sweden), Amb. William H. Luers, Susan Roosevelt
Weld, Rory Kennedy, Mehri
Madarshahi, J. Michael Adams, Gloria Feldt,
Jeffrey Laurenti, Rodney D. Smith, Ashley
Bommer, Rory
O'Connor, Genevieve Stamper, Max Stamper and
others.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
MaximsNews Network® LLC is a Global News Network reaching over 30,000 in the International Community. It is associated with MediaChannel.org and Globalvision News Network, global news and media information services with more than 350 news affiliates in 135 countries.
MaximsNews®LLC is in partnership with the United Nations Foundation and the Better World Fund.
Established in 1999.
The views expressed are the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of MaximsNews®
LLC.
MaximsNews.com
U.N. ® LLC News for the United Nations and the International Community -
www.MaximsNews.com
| MaximsNews@MaximsNews.com |
Please
contact us about Republishing:
Syndication@MaximsNews.com ©Copyrights 1999 - 2007, MaximsNews® LLC. All rights
reserved.
|
