Every now and again you have to concede that Vice-President Dick Cheney has a sense of humour. The nomination of John Bolton, his hawkish ally at the State Department, to be the US ambassador to the United Nations was almost a practical joke on the liberal media.
Does Cheney get a kick out of observing the splutters from The New York Times? You bet. The editors of that august newspaper rose swiftly to the bait last week: “(Bolton) will undoubtedly do a fine job continuing the Bush administration’s charm offensive with the rest of the world. Which leaves us wondering what Mr Bush’s next nomination will be. Donald Rumsfeld to negotiate a new set of Geneva conventions? Martha Stewart to run the Securities and Exchange Commission? Kenneth Lay (the former Enron boss) for energy secretary?” Oh, the sarcasm.
But Cheney must have gained even more pleasure from this response: “(Bolton is) just about the most inexplicable appointment the president could make to represent the United States to the world community.” Who said that? John Kerry. Score! Sidney Blumenthal, the Democratic party apparatchik who is now writing for The Guardian, bested them all, calling Bolton a “neo-primitive”.
Well, Sid got one thing right. Bolton is not a neocon. He’s more like a con. And what is conservatism’s fundamental principle in foreign policy? The pursuit of national interest through multinational institutions if necessary.
This extremist, outrageous, neo-primitive approach to world affairs is, apparently, what terrifies the “world community”.
But, really, what else is there to foreign policy? This was Margaret Thatcher’s approach to the European Union. Britain and the EU benefited greatly from a blast of cold reality.
Bolton’s real sin is to see the UN for what it is: an assembly of representatives of all world governments — some of which are democratic, some autocratic, and some of which are outright kleptomaniac, genocidal dictators.
This body can sometimes be effective in limited ways, but more often it defends the international status quo and sustains corruption.
Bolton’s deeper sin is to believe that democracy matters, that democratic regimes are more easily dealt with than non-democratic regimes and that institutions — such as the UN — that make no distinction between them have a serious credibility problem.
More than a decade ago Bolton blurted out the brutal truth: “There is no such thing as the United Nations. There is an international community that occasionally can be led by the only real power left in the world and that is the United States, when it suits our interest and we can get others to go along.”
Does that mean no international co-operation? Hardly. Bolton has spent the past four years trying hard to get the International Atomic Energy Agency to get its act together and presiding over the more effective proliferation security initiative, which tries to stop the smuggling of dangerous weapons on the high seas.
It remains true that Bolton’s visceral suspicion of the UN is not what we usually think of as diplomacy. But the post of UN ambassador has long been a job in which ferocious critics of the UN have found their niche. Remember Jeane Kirkpatrick, President Reagan’s ambassador, or, more pertinently, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the late Democratic senator? When the UN passed its infamous “Zionism is racism” resolution, Moynihan diplomatically stated, “This is a lie.” When Idi Amin addressed the organisation and was granted the same respect and status as a democratic leader, Moynihan called him a “racist murderer”. Somehow the UN and world diplomacy survived this rare outburst of truth.
At a time when the UN needs some tough love, after appalling scandals and impotence, Bolton is not an inexplicable choice, as Kerry stated. He is a potentially inspired one.
Whatever some European hysterics believe, it is not a sign of renewed Bush administration go-it-alone-ism. In the past couple of weeks the president has signalled a willingness to let the Europeans take the lead with Iran and in coaxing the Shi’ite Hezbollah into Lebanese politics. What more do they want? If you look at the broad composition of Bush’s second-term cabinet you see something rather close to his first-term cabinet with a subtle but important adjustment.
The first term had a blend of realists and neocons. The same with the second term — with the realists more prominent. The State Department has a more realist cast. Douglas Feith, a major neocon, is quitting the Pentagon.
Bolton’s move to New York means that another Cheney ally has been shifted from the central conference rooms of power. The UN job is an important one but it is not as powerful as his previous job at the State Department. It is a platform as much as a portfolio. It could be interpreted as a softening by Bush as much as an affront.
That may explain the UN’s response to the appointment. Kofi Annan’s spokesman said that Annan had “nothing against people who hold us accountable” and was “looking forward to working with Mr Bolton”.
Kirkpatrick’s advice to Bolton was even more revealing: “My advice is to stand for what he believes in. It is harder in the UN than in other places. There are so many people who are not-so-serious in the United Nations. But I told John that I had learnt more about the world there than in any other place.”
The implication is that Bolton is not not-so-serious about making the UN work; and that Bush is in earnest as well. Making the institution work will not succeed if you merely flatter it or ignore it or enable its worst instincts.
In some ways appointing a man like Bolton to the UN is an indication that the administration takes its role there seriously — the opposite of what its critics are now claiming. But then if Bush had kept Bolton at the State Department or moved him to the Pentagon the critics would have complained just as loudly. Most of the time Bush cannot win.
Maybe Bolton will flame out. Maybe his penchant for inflammatory rhetoric will get the better of him. Maybe this is also a sop to the president’s anti-UN political base. But none of that is inevitable or yet proven. And the opposite is more likely.
Bolton — like Nixon in China or Sharon in Gaza — has the credibility to bring change. And maybe, just maybe, he will succeed. Which should make even The New York Times happy.
