By Patricia H. Kushlis
--The Wrong Man, for the Wrong Job, at the Wrong Time
--“There is no such thing as the United Nations. . . if the UN secretary building in New York lost ten stories, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.” - John Bolton in a 1994 speech at The World Federalist Association
On March 28, the Associated Press reported that 59 former American Ambassadors had written to Senator Richard Lugar to protest John Bolton’s confirmation as the next U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Lugar has scheduled those lightening-rod hearings to begin April 7.
I read the AP story about the Ambassadorial letter – and other reports based on it - in the New York Times, the Financial Times, The Christian Science Monitor – and even the Albuquerque Journal. It was not a front page story in New York, London, Boston or here on the banks of the Rio Grande. It didn’t compete for the Journal’s banner headlines that featured the weekend muggings, the man who survived after being dragged a mile behind a car, or the latest heart-rending details of the Terry Schiavo case. But at least the Journal and some other U.S. papers printed it; and I hope New Mexico’s Senators and their Senatorial colleagues will take the letter’s contents to heart.
I found an unexpurgated copy complete with the 59 signatures thanks to friends who directed me to Steve Clemons’ “The Washington Note” that links to the text. Clemons day job is Executive Vice President of the New America Foundation. But at night, he writes a blog – a progressive’s view of Washington politics – and he’s already made several thoughtful posts questioning Bolton’s appointment. Clemons views, not surprisingly, have also drawn criticisms from Bolton’s right-wing cheer-leaders. So I suppose, this post might result in a few, too. Or, not.
The letter from the retired Ambassadors draws Senator Lugar’s attention to concerns over Bolton’s attitudes towards arms control and U.S. arms control policies – as one might expect from a group of largely career, expert high-level U.S. diplomats.
As such, the contents of the Ambassadorial letter recoil at the unilateralist, anti-arms control positions Bolton has taken throughout his career particularly in the last four years as Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security at the State Department.
The Ambassadors’ bottom line is that Bolton has done everything in his power and beyond to smash the carefully crafted international arms control structures that the U.S. had –prior to the George W. Bush Administration - led the world in formulating, negotiating, advancing, and enforcing.
It mattered not to Bolton whether an arms control agreement was multilateral or bilateral – or whether it helped control the spread of biological weapons, land-mines or nuclear weapons. Regardless, he torpedoed it. Even the Reagan mantra “trust but verify” that set the stage for effective conventional and nuclear weapons pacts with the Soviets during the Gorbachev era was not good enough for Bolton.
He intentionally removed the verification teeth from all arms control documents including the Moscow Treaty, the cursory arms control agreement the current administration reluctantly signed with the Russian Federation in 2002 – thus rendering it and other treaties ineffectual – an action I firmly believe was Bolton’s goal all along.
Bolton also led “the campaign for U.S. withdrawal from the treaty limiting missile defenses (ABM treaty).” Although the Ambassador’s letter does not so state, this was done so the U.S. could pursue development of a Star Wars II missile defense shield.
Four years later, the shield remains a pipedream – despite the millions of dollars the U.S. government has poured, and continues to pour, into it and, haven't the Canadians recently told the U.S. to “remove Canada from its list?”
Meanwhile, the real tragedy to Americans has come from militant Islamists – 15 out of the 19 Saudi citizens - whom our flight schools taught to take off but not land, using a form of attack no missile defense system could have prevented.
The Ambassadors’ letter concludes with a catalog of additional reasons why Mr. Bolton would be a disaster as chief U.S. representative to the world’s most important international body. These objections include his:
“insistence that the U.N. is valuable only when it directly serves the United States, and that the most effective Security Council would be one where the U.S. is the only permanent member,”
skepticism about UN peacekeeping and objections to paying UN dues to fund those missions; and
“leadership of the opposition to the International Criminal Court” originally proposed by the U.S. itself . . . to prosecute human rights offenders.”
It is rare for former U.S. diplomats – Ambassadors in particular - to oppose publically a President's nomination. This may be a first. It should also be noted that the signatories have loyally served a variety of previous administrations – both Republican and Democratic. One, by the way, has a son who is a current member of the U.S. House of Representatives. And in fact, the Ambassadors’ letter represents the views of far more serving and retired U.S. diplomats than just the 59 names attached.
Bolton’s supporters and the neocon spin marchine have, as usual, ratcheted up the positive – the most substantive of which suggests that by naming him U.S. Ambassador to the UN – this leopard will suddenly change his spots and suddenly become a supporter of the organization and an ardent proponent of its needed organizational reform – and perhaps even retention of Kofi Annan as General Secretary. Sure. Right. Maybe. That doesn't fit his track-record as Under Secretary for Arms Control in the State Department.
Personally, I’d rather not take the chance and see. The Republicans must be able to find with a far better choice?
Meanwhile Fox News and its acolytes – with at best a hazy grasp of the complex but serious issues at stake – have launched a series of personal attacks against the Ambassadors who signed the letter.
How? Through ridicule of those whose first names could also be their last. And? Several of the Ambassadors do have last names as first names – including Monteagle Stearns, an Ambassador for whom I once served in Greece. But what's that got to do with anything? Stearns was an excellent career Ambassador who speaks Greek fluently and represented US interests there skillfully as a very difficult time.
Besides, when were Robert, Donald, John, Harry, Jack and James relegated solely to the surname category? I see plenty of those first names on the Ambassadors' list, too. And just a minute. . . doesn't the American South have a proud tradition of naming its children after their mothers’ maiden names?
Then how about George Walker Bush? Wasn’t our erstwhile President saddled with not only two, but three last names?
In my view, people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.