John Bolton: Undermining U.S. Foreign
Policy
At John Bolton’s confirmation hearing last year, Senate
Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar (R-IN) outlined a three-point
test for diplomatic statements: First, is the statement true? Second, is the
statement consistent with the policy positions of the President of the United States
and Secretary of State? And finally, is there a rational expectation that the
statement furthers American objectives and interests?
Senators considering the renomination of John Bolton as U.S.
Ambassador to the U.N. should consider his public rhetoric in the framework of
Chairman Lugar’s test. Senators should also ask some additional questions to
evaluate Ambassador Bolton’s tenure. Has he advanced the U.S. agenda or set it back? Has his
approach been conducive to U.N. reform? Has he raised or lowered the standing,
reputation, and power of the U.S.
in the world? Ultimately, is John Bolton the best person to represent the United States
at the United Nations? Has he helped or hindered the achievement of national
security goals in North Korea
and Iran? Can he forge a broad consensus to support a
political solution to the Israel
- Lebanon
crisis?
On these questions and on Chairman Lugar’s as well, Ambassador
Bolton’s record is replete with failures. It is a tale of missed opportunities,
dysfunctional diplomacy, and increasing isolation. Amb. Bolton has significantly
undermined U.S. foreign
policy and sowed distrust and resentment of the U.S. at the U.N. What follows is a
chronicle of John Bolton’s most egregious mistakes and missed opportunities in
his year-long tenure as U.N. Ambassador. With so many talented and respected
individuals available to serve, the U.S. must choose someone more
qualified to fill this important post.
1. The World Summit Amendments
Upon his arrival, Amb. Bolton
proposed over 750 amendments to the draft World Summit Outcome Document (OD),
including all 14 references to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Developing countries were outraged by Bolton’s
amendments and countries that were intent on disrupting the process felt emboldened
by them. They responded by proposing their own amendments and eliminating the
U.S.-backed provisions inserted by former acting U.N. Ambassador Patterson. According
to a September 10, 2005 story in The
Guardian, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw personally pleaded with
Secretary Rice to rein in Amb. Bolton and
instruct him to restore the consensus he destroyed on the OD. The American Prospect reports that
Secretary Rice then intervened, instructing Amb. Bolton
to restore consensus and find a compromise on the MDGs. By this point, the
international community was thoroughly confused by the U.S. position, and the fragile agreement
that held the OD together fell apart. At the World Summit, President Bush and
Secretary Rice tried to limit the damage done by independently and
unambiguously reaffirming U.S.
support for the MDGs.
2. Cut ‘n Gut Funding: Pay for what we want
While trying to jump-start sensitive negotiations over the
Human Rights Council and management reform, Amb. Bolton created a ‘study group’
in the State Department to consider whether the U.S. should push to abolish the
system of mandatory assessed contributions to the U.N. core budget. The study
group never reached any public conclusion, but that didn’t stop Amb. Bolton from publicly airing his personal views while
these important negotiations were in progress. He asked numerous times: “Why
shouldn’t we pay for what we want, instead of paying a bill for what we get?” This helped further the impression at the U.N.
that Amb. Bolton and the U.S.
were more focused on cost-cutting than building a strong and effective
institution capable of responding to the problems facing all nations.
3. ‘Sex and
Corruption’ in political speeches
In one instance of the incendiary rhetoric that has become a
hallmark of Mr. Bolton’s Ambassadorship, Amb. Bolton
inaccurately called sexual abuse and exploitation by peacekeepers – a serious
problem that the U.N. must address – a "rampant practice." He speaks
regularly of a “culture of inaction” at the U.N. and, contrary to Secretary of
State’s and President’s message, has discussed reform as a U.S. project.
He went as far as to say that the U.S. effort to reform the U.N.
“could be like the irresistible force meeting the immovable object." One
of Amb. Bolton’s speeches was so inflammatory
that the Associated Press, which covered the event, entitled its article,
“Bolton Blasts U.N. ‘Sex and Corruption.’”
In May 2006, he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the U.N. could
use “a gale of creative destruction.”
4. Human Rights
Council Negotiations
Amb. Bolton missed all but
one of 35 negotiating sessions to create the Human Rights Council in November
and December. In mid-January, Ambassador Kumalo of South Africa, who was also
co-chairman of the Human Rights Council negotiations, was quoted in the
Washington Post as saying “I can’t remember a meeting where Ambassador Bolton
participated...Maybe if he did participate he didn’t say anything, and you know
I’d have remembered if.”
Later, in the middle of a press briefing on the Council, Amb. Bolton said:
“let’s be clear, the real [U.S.]
priority is management reform.”
When Amb. Bolton finally did get engaged, he seemed to muddy
the waters, asserting in January that all five permanent members of the
Security Council (including human rights abusers China and Russia) should have
the right to sit on the Council permanently – a position that was not part of
the U.S. negotiating strategy and quickly retracted by the State
Department. Amb. Kumalo called Amb.
Bolton’s remarks “unhelpful,” saying, “It sends an indirect message back to the
people that these five will be set aside – you know, they will be forgiven and
the rest of all of you will be targets.”
In mid-February, when Amb. Bolton attended a crucial
negotiating session with General Assembly President Jan Eliasson, he did not
mention the importance of requiring 2/3 supermajority support in the General
Assembly for membership on the Council, even though this had consistently been
listed by the State Department as a must-have provision.
The draft text subsequently came out without the 2/3rds
provision, leading Amb. Bolton to assert that
the negotiations had failed and that it was now time to get down “real”
negotiations. Yet, according to Ambassador Ricardo Arias of Panama, Ambassador Bolton failed to
engage in the negotiations leading up to the vote. Emyr Jones Parry, the British Ambassador
noted that the EU had endorsed the new HRC but that “The job now is to get clarity on what the U.S.
wants.’’
In the end, the U.S.
rejected the Human Rights Council on Amb. Bolton’s
recommendation and was joined by only four countries. Peter Maurer, the
ambassador of Switzerland,
characterized Bolton’s approach as
“intransigent and maximalist.”
5. Off-message on
Indian and Pakistani pursuit of WMD
According to the U.N. Security Council U.S. Presidential
Statement of January 1992, the proliferation of all WMD constitutes a threat to
international peace and security. The U.S. has never distinguished
between parties and nonparties to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in this
regard.
Yet, Amb. Bolton misrepresented the U.S.
position, telling the World Jewish Congress: "I give them [India and Pakistan] credit – at least that
what they did was consistent with the obligations they undertook. They never
pretended that they had given up the pursuit of nuclear weapons. They never
tried to tie what they were doing under a cloak of international legitimacy.
They did it openly and they did it legitimately."
6. Missed
opportunities in management reform
Management
reform at the United Nations has proceeded at a slow and uneven pace, due in
part to Amb. Bolton’s counterproductive
efforts. In December, he single-handedly insisted on placing a cap on the
U.N.’s spending authority. Further funding, he asserted, should be provided
only if progress is made toward management reforms. Amb. Bolton
said the cap was meant to turn up the heat on reform-resistant developing
countries, but the tactic backfired. Even the United States’ European allies, who
have attempted to do the hard work of consensus-building for management reform,
opposed the cap. “It should be clear to all of us that the imposition of the
spending cap has placed this organization and its membership in a very
difficult position,” said South African Ambassador Dumisani Kumalo. “The
spending cap has become an obstacle to the trust among Member States
and work of the Organization.”
Amb.
Bolton’s heavy-handed diplomacy further antagonized developing countries and
his fiery, anti-U.N. speeches made them question the United States’ motives. In one now-well-publicized
incident in June, Amb. Bolton entered a negotiating
session on management reform, produced a cordless microphone, and scolded other
Ambassadors for weakening a proposal out of turn and out of order. When
silenced by the Chair, he threw up his hands and said, “Well, so much for
trying something different.”
Six Ambassadors of countries closely allied with the U.S. anonymously reported the
incident to the New York Times.
7. Pursuing
Congressional withholding of U.S.
dues to the U.N.
After
the U.N. General Assembly lifted the budget cap on the U.N. in June, Amb. Bolton exploded. While Assistant Secretary of State for
International Organization Kristin Silverberg, Amb. Bolton’s direct superior, clearly
stated on June 26: “…we oppose any mandatory withholding legislation that will
prevent us from meeting our obligations," A June 27 New York Sun Article,
entitled “"Bolton
Encourages Congress to Tie U.N. Funds to Reform,” left little doubt
that Amb. Bolton was not interested in advancing official U.S. policy on the matter of paying
U.N. dues. Benny Avni writes: “The American ambassador
to the United Nations, John Bolton, said yesterday that Congress would be
justified in withholding funds from the United Nations if the world body failed
to make substantial reforms.”
"If asked, as I was before the
Senate subcommittee last week, how much reform has taken place, I will answer
honestly: not much," Amb. Bolton said, in
his classic, glass-half-empty way. Yet he was not merely content to stray from U.S. policy;
Amb. Bolton insisted also on attempting to
represent, without any solid basis, the political mood in Congress regarding
U.S.-U.N. relations: “Now there is pressure
building again in Congress to withhold contributions.”
The
results have been underwhelming. While reform at the United Nations has moved
forward, the effort to overhaul the U.N.’s management practices has mostly
progressed when the Secretary-General has the authority to make change
unilaterally. The other changes, most of which require approval from the
General Assembly, have been stalled in the atmosphere of distrust and
resentment that Amb. Bolton has helped to
create at the U.N.
8. Put up or shut up
time for Iran
Amb. Bolton’s bellicosity on Iran has been cited as a factor in heightening
tensions with Iran.
When he told Neil Cavuto, “This is put-up-or-shut-up time for Iran,”
his implication that the U.S.
was considering unilateral military action. Privately, officials have noted that
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has attempted to keep him out of key
negotiations on Iran. Amb. Bolton even made public his own
reservations about Rice’s outreach efforts to Iran. Noting that he was “not much of a carrots man,”
Amb. Bolton told the Financial Times that
he would not expect much from Rice’s talks: “It would be a mistake to think
these negotiations are a first step towards some kind of grand bargain
[involving US
recognition]. We are only addressing the nuclear issue and stopping their
pursuit of nuclear weapons.” According
to the Financial Times, even as the
negotiations were pending, Amb. Bolton reverted to regime change rhetoric: “He said U.S. security guarantees for Iran
were ‘not on the table’, and argued instead that regime change could remove a
nuclear threat: ‘Our experience has been that when there is a dramatic change
in the life of a country, that’s the most likely point at which they give up
nuclear weapons.’”
9. AWOL in Darfur
On June 6, the members of the U.N. Security Council embarked
upon an unprecedented mission to Darfur, where they met with Sudanese
governmental officials and explored ways of providing humanitarian assistance
to Darfur’s refugees. Of the 15 member-states
in attendance, the U.S.
was the only country not to send its top or second-ranking diplomat on the
mission. Amb. Bolton’s absence was both puzzling and conspicuous, given that
the United States had led
the charge opposing the genocide in Darfur.
Instead of joining the mission, he delivered a political speech in London, reprimanding Deputy Secretary General Mark Malloch
Brown for having called for a stronger U.S.-U.N. relationship and better U.S.
diplomacy.
10. A Side Deal on
Mandate Review
On June 30, Ambassador Bolton stunned a group of allied
ambassadors by cutting a side deal to postpone a plan to review thousands of
outdated and redundant directives. As the Ambassadors were waiting for the President
of the General Assembly, Jan Eliasson, to approve the plan. Amb. Bolton cut the
deal with the three countries known to be the proposal’s most vocal opponents: Egypt, India
and South Africa.
An anonymous envoy, known to consistently vote with the United States, was reported to have
said: “[The postponement] came as very shocking and disappointing to us. We
usually work very closely with him, but sometimes, I guess, you get surprised.”