chronology

Chronology: John Bolton’s First Year at the United Nations

August: [September Summit negotiations]

Just days after Bolton arrived in New York after a recess appointment, the U.S. Mission released over 700 edits to the draft document for the summit. Many of the edits concerned U.S. attempts to delete references to the MDGs—internationally agreed upon targets for development which are very important to the developing world and others. The backlash to this move was so strong that President Bush had to reverse it by endorsing the MDGs during his September 2005 speech to the UN.

September 28: [Funding the UN]

During testimony before the House International Relations Committee, Bolton states he wants to explore increasing programs which are voluntarily funded, rather than assessed, at the United Nations.

September 28: [Human Rights Council]

Ambassador Bolton tells House International Relations Committee that work on the Human Rights Council is “a very high priority, and a personal priority of mine. We're going to spend a lot of time on it.”

October: [Human Rights Council negotiations]

Thirty-five informal plenary meetings were held on the proposed new Human Rights Council between October and the end of February. Ambassador Bolton attended one.

November: [Human Rights Council negotiations]

As early as November, Bolton began making negative statements about the failure to create a better Council, months before Member States made their final decisions concerning the Council.

December [Israel and suicide bombers] Bolton walked away from a U.S.-sponsored Security Council resolution condemning a suicide bombing that killed five Israelis rather than walk it through the normal approval and amendment process. The Algerian Ambassador reported that this violation of protocol, had killed the resolution, saying “We had no chance to express our views, and I am confident if we had had such a meeting we would have been able to come up with a balanced text.”

December [Budget cap] To create pressure for more reform, Bolton insists on putting the United Nations on a short term “continuing resolution” rather than the usual two-year budget. The move becomes more and more poisonous over time, leading the British to abandon the strategy and call for a return to full rather than short-term funding for the UN.

January: [Human Rights Council negotiations]

Ambassador Bolton calls for the P5 of the Security Council to have permanent seats, a position that is disavowed by the State Department and angers many countries. The U.S. fails to find any other nation to support a key “must-have” provision calling for nations under Security Council sanctions to be barred from the Council.

February: [Human Rights Council negotiations]

During the time preceding the release of the final draft resolution creating the Human Rights Council, Bolton spent his time lobbying editorial writers to be against the new body, doing a call with dozens of editorial writers weeks before the vote, pushing negative messages on it.

February: [Actions during Security Council Presidency]

When presiding over the Security Council during the month of February, Bolton brought issues into the SC that were seen to be in the domain of the General Assembly, such as peacekeeping abuse allegations and problems with procurement—angering Member States who were already upset over a perceived power play by the Security Council and Secretariat.

Mid-February: [Next Secretary-General]

Ambassador Bolton said he thought the next SG should be selected by June 2006—six months before the current SG’s term was to end and again breaking UN precedent.

March: [Development Agenda]

The U.S. Mission takes the position that they don’t necessarily think funds for development should be funneled back into development as part of the mandate review. The Secretariat and others have felt the only way the G-77 would go along with the mandate review was if there was an agreement that funds for development would stay dedicated to development – they would just shift, streamline and eliminate programs to use them more effectively.

March 15: [Human Rights Council vote]

Despite calling it a “very high priority” of the Administration, the U.S. votes against the new Human Rights Council, joined by only 3 other countries. In total, 170 countries voted in support of the new Council.

April: [U.S. participation in Human Rights Council]

Despite a. pledge to work cooperatively with the Council even though the U.S. was not running for a seat on it, the U.S. failed to show up at a meeting of the Community of Democracies when members were slated to discuss voting for democracies to be on the Council – ironically, something the Administration had been pushing repeatedly over the past 5 years.

April 17: [Capitol Master Plan]

UN Capital Master Plan Director Fritz Reuter (who has since retired because of frustration over a lack of agreement by Member States) speaks out about solo opposition from the U.S. over a plan to move forward with the CMP. After this opposition was outed in the press, the U.S. stopped holding up approval of the first stage of the plan but did not go along with the consensus of the other member states.

April 26: [Budget Committee Vote on Management Reform]

Two days before discussions in the Fifth (budget) Committee on the SG’s management reform proposals resulted in an unprecedented vote, Ambassador Bolton goaded Member States to vote so the opponents of reform would be exposed.

April 28: [Budget Committee Vote on Management Reform]

In the final hours before a major institutional breakdown over reform and the budget process, the EU and G-77 were reportedly in agreement with a deal that would have deferred budget process reform and given the Secretary-General more management authority and accountability. Bolton declared the deal unacceptable, leading radicals in the G77 to call for a vote broadly blocking UN reform.

May: [Iran]

Under strict secrecy, Secretary Rice assembled a small group of her closest aides to craft an announcement that the United States would agree to join the Europeans in negations with Iran on its nuclear ambitions. Bolton, who had insisted that “This is put-up-or-shut-up time for Iran” and implied that the U.S. was considering unilateral military action was explicitly excluded from the planning and not informed until the day before its announcement. This was not the first time Bolton was excluded from Iran negotiations. In 2005 the Washington Post reported that when officials from France, Britain and Germany flew secretly to Washington for a brainstorming session on Iran. Bolton was not invited. One European diplomat said it was the Americans, not the Europeans, who wanted Bolton kept out: “We weren’t the ones who wanted to keep the meeting secret. It was the American side that didn’t want him there.”[i]

May 25: [Inflammatory Rhetoric before Congress]

In his recent testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Bolton said the UN could benefit from a “gale of creative destruction.”

May 25: [Mandate Review]

Bolton prematurely announced a position on the UN’s mandate review as a joint position of JUSCANZ when other countries in this group hadn’t signed off on it. He also announced this position to the U.S. Congress instead of other Member States, a move that angered allies and other Member States.

May 25: [Budget Cap]

Bolton tells Foreign Relations Committee the U.S. is offering a three-month extension to the budget cap as a solution to the pending crisis without clearance.

June: [Next Secretary-General]

Bolton argues that all senior officials should resign when the SG’s term is up, which would create chaos within the UN.

June 5: [Acting out in General Assembly]

Ambassador Bolton comes into a General Assembly discussion on mandates with a roving mike, walked up to the front of the room, and said while he recognized this wasn’t how the UN did things, he wanted to speak out of turn and have a “colloquy” with the G77 “just like we do in the US Congress.” He was out of turn and wasn’t even in the chair for the U.S. (Mark Wallace was), but said he thought the UN needed to get away from the practice of having discussions facilitated by Co-Chairs and engage in direct discussions with each other. Canadian Ambassador Allan Rock had to step in and say he couldn’t speak out of turn.

June 6: [Darfur]

Despite pressing vocally for an accelerated deployment of UN peacekeepers into Darfur, Bolton skips a Security Council members’ trip to Sudan; the majority of other Security Council members were represented at the Ambassadorial level.

June 7: [Mark Malloch Brown speech]

After Mark Malloch Brown’s speech on U.S. leadership at the UN, Bolton makes a public statement calling it “the worst mistake by a senior UN official” since 1989 and also warns of serious repercussions from Washington before there was any evidence there would be any.

June 29: [Mandate Review]

The co-chairs of the management reform process (Amb. Allan Rock of Canada and Amb. Munir Akram of Pakistan) presented a draft resolution on mandate review. The resolution proposed that the mandate review start in a limited fashion but laid out a rough timeline for its continuation throughout the year.

June 30: [Mandate Review]

This resolution was blocked due to opposition from Bolton and some G-77 countries—despite being supported by some key U.S. allies like Japan.

Bolton commented on this matter, saying “The negotiations over the potential resolution on the mandate review were far from agreement and there was every prospect of a resolution that would set mandate review back. We concluded that damage mitigation meant we should have no resolution at all… There’s no point in negotiating a resolution that would make things worse, not better. The United States has led the charge on mandate review and we will continue to do so.”

In fact, the resolution would have made things better because the alternative is that nothing at all happens on mandate review. The resolution would have at least allowed the review to begin, albeit in a more limited fashion, and would have created a process to discuss doing a more robust mandate review later in the year. It is interesting how Bolton can say the U.S. is “leading the charge” on mandate review when his actions prevented the mandate review from getting going.

Two key allies of the U.S. were “surprised and disappointed” (Japan) and felt the failure to approve this resolution was "a missed opportunity" (Canada).

June 30: [Budget Cap negotiations]

In leading up to negotiations on lifting the budget cap, Bolton said “perhaps some of you will be here tonight at 7:30 when the General Assembly convenes… I will be here. If it’s all night, it’s all right.” In fact, Ambassador Bolton was not there for these final sessions which actually began at 9:15 pm. One of his deputies, Mark Wallace, was sitting in the U.S. chair and making the statements on behalf of the U.S.

July 6: [Human Rights Council and Israel]

Human Rights Council adopts resolution on Israel relating to recent outbreaks of violence in the Middle East. While 11 countries voted against the resolution and the Swiss tried to amend the resolution to make it more even-handed, the U.S. was powerless to re-shape the discussion or influence the vote as they do not hold a seat on the HRC.