Accompanied by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, President George W. Bush announces his appointment of John Bolton, left, as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Monday, Aug. 1, 2005, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. White House photo by Paul Morse.  

Jeffrey Laurenti is a senior fellow in international affairs at The Century Foundation. He is an expert in international security, international law and multilateral institutions. He is a Contributor to MaximsNews.com. Please see his bio below.  This article first appeared on The Century Foundation website.  JeffreyLaurenti@MaximsNews.com

Bolton: A New UN Phenomenon

          UNITED NATIONS - 5 August 2005  / www.MaximsNews.com / Just in case Europeans had misinterpreted the charm offensive of President Bush's February fence-mending visit to Europe as a sign he would now moderate the high-handed unilateralism of his first term, on returning home he promptly nominated John Bolton to be the United States representative to the United Nations.

Just in case Americans might think President Bush would try to rebuild bipartisan backing on foreign policy, he has now installed Mr. Bolton as ambassador to the UN in spite of the Senate's refusal to confirm him.

The quaint 18th century provision in the U.S. Constitution for Presidential recess appointments without Senate consent—crafted for the long periods when the horse-and-buggy Congress was not in session—has now, for the first time, been invoked to send a divisive figure of toxic partisanship to America's most visible diplomatic mission.

Neither America's allies abroad nor Democrats at home can still harbor illusions. 

Nor Republicans, for that matter: the President's insistence on elevating a factional infighter who repeatedly undercut Secretary of State Colin Powell has confounded Republican traditionalists who want to believe that a return to realism in foreign policy is just around the corner.

For John Bolton is an intellectual leader of the "American supremacist" wing of Republican foreign policy elites. 

He and his allies deny the legal status of international law; they dismiss the United Nations as a hologram—an illusion created by projections of national power that has no tangible existence in reality; and they view international relations as a Hobbesian struggle of all against all.

In their view, the American superpower does not negotiate, it commands. 

Mr. Bolton once stunned news correspondents at the United Nations by revealing the cosmology underpinning his certitude: 

"At the United Nations, the United States is the sun, and the other member states are the planets, the moons, and the asteroids."

Such views have made John Bolton a puzzling choice to manage the Bush administration's diplomacy in the global institution whose preeminent values are cooperation and mutual consent. 

The President's recent UN successes in marshalling Security Council majorities to press Syrian forces out of Lebanon and to support a peace settlement with a peacekeeping force in Sudan required sensitive politicking by the American delegation in New York.

Perhaps Mr. Bolton can reinvent himself as a politically savvy listener and inclusive deal-maker. 

Perhaps he will indeed follow instructions sent out from Washington—though reports that he is determined to spend more time in the capital, because that's where policy decisions are made, rather than New York have aroused anxieties in the State Department. 

His political skills should soon be in evidence in the elections to various United Nations boards and commissions, where the United States has traditionally enjoyed re-election virtually without challenge. 

If the United States loses any of those seats, it will be a sign that the remake has not been successful.

Odds are, unfortunately, that an instinctive belligerent streak, plus deeply held views that conflict with those of most democratic governments, will make it difficult for Mr. Bolton to forge agreements with other countries' representatives in New York. 

If this proves to be the case, allied diplomats will prefer to work around the roadblock, cultivating alternative routes to Washington on issues where America's vote is required—and simply forging coalitions on emerging issues without America where it is not.

For partisans of American supremacy, deadlocks in diplomacy may not be a bad thing. With an essentially negative view of America's interests in the world, blocking others' initiatives on peace-building or global warming or war crimes prosecutions or biological weapons inspections or poverty reduction can be a virtue.

In this context, failure has its uses. Failure, for instance, to win votes for a narrowly defined agenda of reforms at the United Nations—such as de-funding UN programs in economic and social areas and transferring from the General Assembly to the Security Council the responsibility for UN financial oversight and ethics—would, under legislation recently adopted by the U.S. House of Representatives, trigger U.S. nonpayment of U.N. dues. 

Another measure of whether Ambassador Bolton is doing his job for the administration will be his willingness to confront his ideological allies in the Congress to block any moves toward a dues default.

The United States has often sent towering figures in our nation's public life to represent it at the United Nations. Their mission has always been to represent America as a whole, not a fringe faction of the President's political party. 

John Bolton represents a new phenomenon in global diplomacy—the emissary unconfirmable in his own house. 

Americans and our partners overseas will be eager to see how the gamble pays off.

JeffreyLaurenti@MaximsNews.com

MaximsNews Columns by Jeffrey Laurenti

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Bolton: A New UN Phenomenon

         Jeffrey Laurenti is a senior fellow in international affairs at The Century Foundation.  He is an expert in international security, international law and multilateral institutions. 

He is the author of numerous monographs on international peace and security, terrorism, U.N. reform, and international narcotics policy. He has authored articles for The Christian Science Monitor, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, New York Newsday, and the Los Angeles Times, and international policy journals. 

As a senior advisor to the United Nations Foundation, Laurenti has served as deputy director of the United Nations and Global Security initiative the foundation established, with backing from The Century Foundation, to support the debate on international security of the High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change commissioned by the United Nations Secretary-General. 

Laurenti was executive director of policy studies at the United Nations Association of the United States until 2003, currently serves on the Association’s Board of Directors, and also is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. 

He was candidate for the US House of Representatives in 1986, senior issues advisor to the Mondale/Ferraro campaign and from 1978 to 1984, was Executive Director of the New Jersey Senate. Previously, he was a program officer for The Century Foundation, then the Twentieth Century Fund.  

Jeffrey Laurenti is a Contributor to MaximsNews.com.