Meet John Bolton, the Anti-Diplomat

Check out the track record of President Bush’s disastrous nominee for U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.

“Should John Bolton be the next U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations?” Campus Progress sponsors a debate at Brown University on Wednesday, April 13. Check the events page for more information.

Next Monday, April 11, President Bush’s nominee for U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations—arch neoconservative John Bolton—will stand before the Senate for his confirmation hearing. At a time when the world faces threats of nuclear proliferation from Iran and North Korea, a humanitarian crisis in Darfur, and persistent global poverty, President Bush appoints to this important post a man distinguished only by his right-wing bluster and his track record as Undersecretary of State for making tough problems even worse.

• It’s like naming a felon as the chief of police. Chas Freeman, the U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia under the first President Bush, said naming Bolton to the U.N. job was "the equivalent of dropping a neutron bomb on the organization." Bolton once opined that "There’s no such thing as the United Nations," and that if the U.N. building in New York "lost 10 stories it wouldn’t make a bit of difference." In 2000, Bolton said, "If I were doing the Security Council today, I’d have one permanent member [the United States] because that’s the real reflection of the distribution of power in the world."
• Reflects Bush’s misguided approach to the United Nations. The senselessly provocative appointment of Bolton, whose loathing for the United Nations is unmatched even within the Bush administration, is a gift to the most caustic isolationists on the right. As Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute said, "While John’s voice may at times be abrasive, the principles he represents are clearly those of the president." The selection of Bolton reflects one of the Bush administration’s fundamental foreign policy goals: to restrain, undermine, and delegitimize the world’s most valuable institution for multilateral problem-solving. By so doing, Bush is squandering an opportunity to strengthen and improve the U.N. so that it can better serve a broad range of our interests – from intervening in humanitarian crises to enforcing international agreements against the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
• "Ambassador Bolton" is an oxymoron. As the United States’ chief emissary to the world’s most significant international body, Bolton is much more likely to offend than to persuade our adversaries to bridge critical differences. Bolton is no diplomat. He once answered a question about U.S. policy toward North Korea by grabbing a book from the shelf – The End of North Korea – and saying, "That is our policy." And there was the time that Bolton was ordered back to the United States just before crucial six-nation talks with North Korea because he thoughtlessly called Kim Jong-Il "scum." As Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment put it, " Bolton has been totally unapologetic about his radical prescription for dealing with the proliferation threat. The main problem is that it hasn’t worked anywhere."

Feeling queasy about choosing as top diplomat a man with utter contempt for global institutions and international cooperation? Help stop the Bolton nomination.