Undiplomatic diplomat at the UN

While we praised United States President George W. Bush for his compassionate action in the Teri Schiavo case, we must return to one of his more inexplicable and somewhat weird appointments, that of Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton as the new US Ambassador to the United Nations.

Why is this appointment, in the eyes of most UN supporters, an inappropriate one? Well, because Time Magazine, for one, characterizes Bolton as an official whose "24-year career in and out of government has been defined by a self-professed distaste for treaties, contempt for diplomatic niceties and hostility toward the UN."

That being the case, letting this UN basher, this "undiplomatic diplomat" (Newsweek Magazine’s term), loose in the UN – already the target of harsh criticism by the US for its refusal to back the Iraq War – is pretty much like letting the fox into the chicken coop. If Bush wanted doctors in Florida to reconnect Teri Schiavo’s feeding tubes, he also apparently wants Bolton to cause the UN to lapse into a persistent vegetative state, and the new ambassador to help withdraw the life support system.

This doesn’t mean that Bush has completely forgotten that he needs to work with the international community if he is to move his democratic agenda forward. His appointment of long-time aide Karen Hughes as Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy, a new post he invented reportedly to build bridges to a Muslim world increasingly suspicious of and hostile to the US, is a sign of that new openness.

So was his recent swing through Europe, as well as newly-minted Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s whirlwind, getting-to-know-you tour of 17 countries in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. All this is supposed to signal the "new diplomacy" that the Bush administration is implementing to counter the dour, grim, go-it-alone posture associated with Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

None of this, though, means renewed respect for the United Nations and its admittedly ponderous decision-making processes. Moreover, the Oil-for-Food scandal, which many think has tainted Secretary General Kofi Annan despite the recent findings of a high-level investigating body that failed to directly link him to any financial shenanigans, and other unseemly controversies have raised questions about the effectiveness and continuing relevance of the world body.

But however serious the problems of the UN are, no one is credibly advocating its abolition. While the organization is obviously in need of far-reaching and fundamental reform – for example, the composition of the Security Council and the veto power given its permanent members clearly need re-examination – most of its members still see it as a useful avenue for the resolution of conflict, as well as a necessary vehicle for orderly humanitarian effort both on a global scale as well as in specific disaster areas.

Thus, while Bush has shown some openness to multilateralism, without in any way abandoning his own doctrine of unilateral action by the US whenever deemed necessary to meet a perceived threat to its broad national security interests, he probably doesn’t think he needs to do it necessarily, much less exclusively, through the UN.

State Secretary Rice, many observers say, represents a return to a more pragmatic diplomacy which may supplant to some extent, albeit not completely, the super hawkishness of the Cheney-Rumsfeld-Paul Wolfowitz unholy trinity. She, along with the trusted Hughes, are indisputably closer to Bush than the Vice President and the Defense Secretary, who is rumored to want out of his high-pressure job. Besides, the real focus of the second Bush term may be the US economy which clearly deserves the Chief Executive’s priority attention.

But if part of this new diplomacy is urgent reform of the United Nations, we can expect the US to insist, to the greatest extent possible, on influencing, if not quite controlling, the process of reform. This, I think, is where the John Bolton comes in.

His mandate will be nothing less than to spearhead a US move to mold the UN, according to America’s image of a decisive international body committed to fighting terrorism and all perceived threats to world peace and the global economy, with the use of multilateral armed force if necessary, in order to impose the collective will of the community of nations on all rogue states and organizations.

Who better to do this, it is argued, than one who would not think twice about scrapping the world body altogether, one who, according to Newsweek, has publicly called the UN an example of global government gone wild. This is the same man who, Time Magazine claims, told a radio audience that if he were to reorganize the Security Council, he would just have one permanent member, the United States, because that is "the real reflection of the distribution of power in the world." He also allegedly insisted that those who think international law means anything "are those who want to constrict the United States."

But Time quotes unnamed "top Bush aides" as saying that the "smart and abrasive" Bolton is just the person to convince the US Congress that it will serve the country’s interests to give the UN the money and support it needs. One of these aides is convinced that, "This guy has the credibility to go to the skeptics and say, ‘It’s in our vital interests to have the UN because we can’t do all these things alone.’"

Not all are convinced that an ostensibly reasonable Terminator stance will achieve a wide-ranging reform of the United Nations. It is just as conceivable that the staunchly conservative Bolton will turn off those who firmly believe that the salvation of the UN lies in strengthening the voice of weak and developing countries rather than allowing the body to become a tool of US policy and democratic messianism.

I understand that a group of former US diplomats have registered their objection to Bolton’s nomination. This is not expected to block his Senate confirmation. However, it does reflect the concern that the prospect of placing an "undiplomatic diplomat" in an arena which, perhaps more than others, tests one’s patience, negotiating skills and commitment to the uncertainties of international discourse is really bad news.