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Editorial
Ambassador
Bolton
Published:
August 2, 2005
If there's a positive side to President Bush's appointment of
John Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations yesterday, it's
that as long as Mr. Bolton is in New York, he will not be wreaking
diplomatic havoc anywhere else. Talks with North Korea, for
instance, have been looking more productive since Mr. Bolton
left the State Department, and it's hard not to think that Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice's generally positive performance in
office is due, in part, to her canniness in dispatching Mr.
Bolton out of Washington.
But the appointment is, of course, terrible news for the United
Nations, whose diplomats have heard weeks of Senate testimony
about Mr. Bolton's lack of respect for their institution and
his deeply undiplomatic, bullying style of doing business. Senator
George Voinovich, the Ohio Republican who became one of Mr.
Bolton's strongest critics, said yesterday that he planned to
send the new ambassador a book on how to be an effective manager.
It couldn't hurt, but this may be the first time a world superpower
has used its top United Nations post as a spot for the remedial
training of a troublesome government employee.
Mr. Bush had been unable to get Mr. Bolton's nomination confirmed
by the Senate, so he waited until Congress left town and used
his constitutional power to make recess appointments. This is
a perfectly legal tactic, though one that has seldom been used
to fill this kind of position. A recess appointment is particularly
dicey for a major diplomatic post, where a good nominee should
carry an aura of personal gravitas and legitimacy.
The problem here from the beginning has been that Mr. Bush clearly
has little respect for either the United Nations or international
diplomacy in general.
There is plenty to complain about at the United Nations, but
real work happens there, and it requires the services of men
and women who know how to wring agreement out of a group of
wildly different and extremely self-interested representatives.
The president has not just sent the United Nations what Senator
Christopher Dodd accurately termed "damaged goods."
In Mr. Bolton, he has selected goods that weren't appropriate
for the task even before the Senate began to hold hearings -
when Mr. Bolton's reputation was still in one piece.
The United Nations could certainly be improved, but Mr. Bolton
is a poor candidate for a reformer. To make the institution
better, the Bush administration would first have to show that
it has a vision of what the U.N. could be. That vision has to
begin by accepting the fact that nations other than the United
States have a right to have a say, and sometimes take the lead.
•
Thank you Derek Berg
• Background image:
Francis Bacon, Painting 1946
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he
principle of give and take is the principle of diplomacy
-- give one and take ten."
