THE most charitable description of John Bolton, President Bush’s nominee to replace the urbane John Negroponte as America’s UN ambassador is that he is “forthright.” The Senate Foreign Affairs Committee examining his suitability for the job has also heard him called a “bully” and a “gorilla”. It is odd, however, that these hearings have focused on the candidate’s character rather than his publicly expressed contempt for the UN, which he once said, rather tastelessly, could lose ten floors of officials and delegates without damage.

Bolton is seen as a firm believer in the global exercise of American power and appears impatient with the UN “talking shop.” Such an intolerant view is, to be fair, at odds with the more diplomacy-based foreign policy for Bush’s second term administration announced by new Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Yet the president has chosen this man and Rice has backed him fulsomely saying “He gets things done.” What is the real message here?

Maybe the White House has figured that the radical changes UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan is initiating to clean up UN inefficiency and corruption need a hard man sitting at America’s UN desk. Bolton’s tough guy approach to the job may concentrate minds within the UN and keep them on track to deliver the promised reforms. Apart from his behavior within the UN, Bolton would have little in the way of independence since he would merely be the principal US mouthpiece and his brief would come from the State Department or straight from the White House.

However, if Bolton is indeed a bully, he could create more problems for the US than he solves. The UN is a place where consensus is sought and deals are cut in corridors away from the main meetings. Most would have thought that the days of boorish behavior when Soviet leader Khrushchev took off his shoe and banged it on his desk were long gone. While no one expects such an exhibition from John Bolton, a US delegation under his leadership might understandably be treated with suspicion by many delegates.

Bolton would also bring baggage to the job. One example of his overbearing behavior which the Senate Committee heard of concerned his fury with a junior analyst who had advised against claiming three years ago that Cuba had weapons of mass destruction. Bolton, then undersecretary of state responsible for arms control, was about to give a speech saying that the Cubans had WMDs. It was that behavior which prompted Carl Ford, who ran the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, to call Bolton a “kiss-up, kick-down kind of guy.” Not the best credentials for the man America is sending to the UN to lecture the world on principles and civilized values. His presence at the UN could be a constant reminder of phony US claims about Iraq’s WMDs and the phony claims that could not be made about Cuba’s WMDs. It is not surprising that, with the US all primed to bring another WMD case to the UN, there are worries in the Senate that Bolton’s appointment would cast more doubt on US intelligence.