Mr. Personality
One of the favorites of the Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight, UN Ambassador John Bolton, continues the tradition of this regime in fine fashion. He has singlehandedly ruined any possibility of UN reform, allegedly the principle reason he was nominated by the Resident. The NY Times weighed in on the issue today.
Muscular diplomacy is one thing. But John Bolton has been all muscle and no diplomacy as the United States ambassador to the United Nations. Now he's threatening to hold up its entire two-year operating budget unless his demands for major reforms are met almost immediately.
As it happens, the American reform agenda contains many good elements. No one can seriously argue that the U.N. is a rationally structured, efficiently managed body. And letting countries like Cuba, Libya and Sudan sit on a human rights commission that judges the records of other countries diminishes the U.N.'s most important authority, its moral authority. But just as the Senate feared when it declined to confirm Mr. Bolton in the job, his blustering unilateral style is turning him into one of the biggest obstacles to achieving changes that had been within reach before he appeared on the scene.
...Mr. Annan made a promising start earlier this year at building a consensus for reform, only to have it derailed by Mr. Bolton. Soon after taking over the American mission this summer, he issued a long list of last-minute demands. As a result, a special international summit meeting that had been organized to adopt real reforms ended up endorsing a document that was mostly fudge and mush.
...Mr. Bolton's latest threat, to block the next U.N. budget, is likely to be equally counterproductive. America's most successful U.N. ambassadors, whether they served Republican or Democratic presidents, have known how to harness American power to patient, skillful diplomacy. Regrettably, Mr. Bolton has failed to profit from their example. [Emphasis added]
Apparently BushCo is uninterested in real reform at the United Nations. With that reform, the UN might become an even larger stumbling block to US plans to make the world over in the image the regime deems appropriate: lesser entities subservient to the bully on the block. If destroying any credibility the UN may still have was the goal all along, then Mr. Bolton was the ideal choice.
Muscular diplomacy is one thing. But John Bolton has been all muscle and no diplomacy as the United States ambassador to the United Nations. Now he's threatening to hold up its entire two-year operating budget unless his demands for major reforms are met almost immediately.
As it happens, the American reform agenda contains many good elements. No one can seriously argue that the U.N. is a rationally structured, efficiently managed body. And letting countries like Cuba, Libya and Sudan sit on a human rights commission that judges the records of other countries diminishes the U.N.'s most important authority, its moral authority. But just as the Senate feared when it declined to confirm Mr. Bolton in the job, his blustering unilateral style is turning him into one of the biggest obstacles to achieving changes that had been within reach before he appeared on the scene.
...Mr. Annan made a promising start earlier this year at building a consensus for reform, only to have it derailed by Mr. Bolton. Soon after taking over the American mission this summer, he issued a long list of last-minute demands. As a result, a special international summit meeting that had been organized to adopt real reforms ended up endorsing a document that was mostly fudge and mush.
...Mr. Bolton's latest threat, to block the next U.N. budget, is likely to be equally counterproductive. America's most successful U.N. ambassadors, whether they served Republican or Democratic presidents, have known how to harness American power to patient, skillful diplomacy. Regrettably, Mr. Bolton has failed to profit from their example. [Emphasis added]
Apparently BushCo is uninterested in real reform at the United Nations. With that reform, the UN might become an even larger stumbling block to US plans to make the world over in the image the regime deems appropriate: lesser entities subservient to the bully on the block. If destroying any credibility the UN may still have was the goal all along, then Mr. Bolton was the ideal choice.
posted by Diane at 4:24 AM
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