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Sack John Bolton, or at least muzzle him
The Condoleezza Rice State Department is proving more adept at diplomacy than the Colin Powell State Department. Part of her success is tied to her cagey effort to move John Bolton from Washington to New York, where he serves _ minus Senate confirmation _ as the ambassador to the United Nations. Problem is, he's plowing just as wide a path of destruction through the United Nations as he plowed through overall U.S. foreign policy when he worked in Washington.Rice deserves a fair amount of credit for the change in her department. She is close to President Bush, so she's viewed as a trustworthy insider; Powell wasn't. Rice also had the good sense to elevate Nick Burns to the top political post at State. Burns is young, smart, pragmatic, a consummate diplomat with a warm, engaging demeanor. He would make a fine secretary of state himself. Shuffling Bolton off to the United Nations helped an awful lot too. The department no longer had to suffer his brutish, undiplomatic approach to foreign policy. Bolton does not appear to believe in traditional statesmanship; his way is to wade into an issue, mouth blazing, and demand that his views _ by extension, America's views _ prevail. Bolton single-handedly sabotaged talks with North Korea on its nuclear-weapons program. And when the British and Americans were trying to get Libya to renounce nukes, the British actually requested that Bolton be kept away from the negotiations, lest he wreck them. But while it was good to get Bolton out of Washington, it hasn't been healthy for the United Nations. Bolton, you'll recall, once remarked that you could knock off the top 10 stories of the U.N. headquarters building and suffer no negative effect. Time and again, he has mucked up U.N. efforts to reform the organization, which badly needs it. Bolton's latest contretemps involves Secretary-General Kofi Annan's plan for reform. Annan developed a series of quite radical proposals, aimed at eliminating useless work and assigning staff where they were most needed. Poor nations rejected key parts of Annan's plan, fearing they would dilute Third World power in the organization. So Bolton responded that if they continue to resist reform, wealthy countries (which pay for a huge percentage of the budget) should stop paying for the United Nations. Ultimatums usually don't work, and that is particularly true at U.N. headquarters, where consensus is the traditional path to action. The result of Bolton's ploy has been paralytic crisis. Poor nations have their backs up, and Bolton won't budge. Yet the deadline for agreeing on reforms looms at the end of June. Everyone is worried that U.S. and Japanese financial support will be cut off, leaving U.N. agencies unable to function. An essential part of Rice's job at State is containing the damage that Bolton can cause anywhere he applies his boorish bluster. The best thing would be to sack Bolton and let him slink off to a think tank. At the least, he needs to be put on a short leash and forced to wear a muzzle. Rice should arrange a fitting for those devices early this morning, even as she withdraws the threat to withhold U.S. funding and upbraids opponents of reform. Posted by: ryuge 2006-06-21 |
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