It is a worldwide practice for United States to select their best possible permanent representatives to the United Nations, from a short list of the most experienced and senior ambassadors, for at a time of crisis he, for it is still almost always a man even in 2006, will represent their government, their people and their case before the world. In my time the United Kingdom has been represented at the United Nations by such highly respected diplomats as Sir Hugh Foot, father of UN Security Council Resolution 242, Sir Antony Parsons, Sir David Hannay, and Sir Jeremy Greenstock, who went on to represent his country in Baghdad.
Clearly President George Bush had other ideas when he selected John Bolton to represent the United States at the United Nations — but then the neoconservatives do not have a high opinion of the UN. Ambassador Bolton is today’s “Ugly American” and he seems to have been selected by a tiny group around the president for his hostility to the UN and all it stands for in today’s world. Even his inexperience as a senior diplomat did not seem to matter.
Many ambassadors at the UN were both horrified and contemptuous of their new colleague — and for good reason. He represented that strand of the American public that has no time for this New York-based organization unless it is seen to be acting as an agency of the US.
The Economist has described John Bolton, who is 57, as a “conservative’s conservative”. He is a lawyer and not a diplomat by background and he was educated at Yale. During 1985-89 he was assistant attorney general. During the years 2001-05 he was under-secretary of state for arms control and international security.
He has come out with some remarkable criticisms of the UN. Twelve years ago he suggested that if the UN building in New York lost ten stories “it wouldn’t’ make a bit of difference”. In the same year he told a convention in New York:
“There is no such thing as the United Nations. There is an international community that occasionally can be led by the only real power left in the world, and that’s the United States when it suits our interests...”
Six years ago he astonished an interviewer by remarking: “If I were redoing the Security Council today, I’d have one permanent member because that’s the real reflection of the distribution of power in the world.”
He denies that there is any “right of humanitarian intervention” to stop ethnic cleansing or even genocide. He has opposed sending UN peacekeepers to conflicts that he did not regard as threats to international security such as the Congo.
The news running at the UN today is that Ambassador Bolton is in real danger of losing his job. When President Bush presented John Bolton’s nomination to the Senate in March 2005, after Vice President Dick Cheney had demanded a high level post for him, it ran into deep trouble. Two Republican senators failed to back him. Sen. George Voinovich, a Republican from Ohio, declared:
“It is my opinion that John Bolton is the poster child of what someone in the diplomatic corps should not be.”
The White House was short of the required votes.
During the Senate hearings there were vivid reports of John Bolton’s bad temper. It was suggested he was a bully who attempted to remove members of his staff who disagreed with him. It was also seriously suggested that he had exaggerated intelligence on what was supposed to be a Cuban biological weapons program.
If that was not enough to sink this foolish nomination Colin Powell, the former secretary of state, took the trouble to warn key Republicans at a private meeting that John Bolton had a suspect temperament and was regularly at war with colleagues. Colin Powell’s former chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson, informed The New York Times John Bolton would be an “abysmal ambassador”.
Instead of dropping John Bolton’s nomination President Bush arrogantly made a recess appointment that summer. No previous UN ambassador has been appointed without Senate confirmation. The Senate was not amused. Sen. Edward Kennedy described it as a “devious move that further darkens the cloud over Mr. Bolton’s credibility at the UN.”
Appointing John Bolton in this way limited it to the duration of the current Congress, which comes to an end on Jan. 3. The Senate could confirm him before then but that approval is looking increasingly unlikely.
No Senate support would be a blow for President Bush who has been determined to have John Bolton at the UN. It would also raise the question as who would be the next choice for this important job.
It would be excellent if the House of Commons at Westminster had similar powers to the Senate to approve senior diplomatic appointments.
