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Bolton Back for Confirmation as U.N. Ambassador
As U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton returns to Washington for further nomination hearings today, international diplomats and U.S. lawmakers say that his behavior has made the Untied States increasingly isolated within the international body, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, Sept. 22, 2005). “He sometimes makes it very difficult to build bridges because he is a very honest and blunt person,” said South African U.N Ambassador Dumisani Shadrack Kumalo. He added that the perception of many countries within Group of 77 developed nations is that “Ambassador Bolton wants to prove nothing works at the United Nations.” “The first thing you learn in diplomatic school is never move yourself into a position of isolation, because even the biggest power will not sustain that position,” said Gunter Plueger, who retired in June as Germany’s U.N. ambassador. Bolton’s temporary appointment expires in January and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will decide if his post should become permanent. Democratic leaders said they plan to oppose Bolton’s appointment. “Mr. Bolton’s performance at the U.N. only confirms my conviction that he’s the wrong person for this job,” Senator Joseph Biden (D-Del.) said. Biden indicated that Democrats might filibuster against a Senate vote unless the White House releases papers he believes divulge Bolton’s use of National Security Agency intercepts involving U.S. citizens (see GSN, May 4, 2005). The Bush administration is seeking a quick appointment. Senator George Voinovich (R-Ohio), who opposed Bolton’s appointment last year, said he now supports the nomination, writing in a Washington Post commentary last week that Bolton’s behavior has “tempered.” Bolton’s supporters said his forcefulness in pursuing U.S. interests has aggravated foreign diplomats, including those from Western allies, the Post reported. “Bolton is not loved at Turtle Bay,” the Manhattan community where the United Nations is based, “but he is well-respected and he is regarded as a force to be reckoned with,” said Nile Gardiner of the conservative Heritage Foundation. “He has done a very successful job in terms of highlighting the huge, myriad failures within the United Nations.” Bolton has said he built alliances on various issues, but that diplomats who opposed change blocked his efforts to streamline the U.N. system. He added that he stayed away from conflict that “would raise the level of acrimony in an unproductive way.” Many diplomats who previously said they respected Bolton’s aggressive methods now say that he has undermined work to restrict unnecessary U.N. programs, produce a new human rights council and fix the U.N bureaucracy. “There is currently a perception among many otherwise quite moderate countries that anything the U.S. supports must have a secret agenda aimed at either subordinating multilateral processes to Washington’s ends or weakening the institutions, and therefore, put crudely, should be opposed without any real discussion of whether they make sense or not,” U.N. Deputy Secretary General Mark Malloch Brown said in a June speech. An angry Bolton fired back that Brown’s statements insulted the United States and were inappropriate from a civil servant (Colum Lynch, Washington Post, July 27).
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