Bolton - Still Unfit to Serve

Bolton - Still Unfit to Serve

July 24, 2006

This Thursday, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will hold hearings on the nomination of U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton. Bolton was nominated to the post last year by President Bush but failed to win Senate confirmation after a series of problematic disclosures about his past, particularly a record of mishandling intelligence and a pattern of intimidating subordinates. The timing of the hearings is no accident. The White House is attempting to rally support for the Bolton nomination by politicizing the escalating conflict in the Middle East, arguing that this moment of geopolitical peril requires a permanent representative at the United Nations. But closer inspection of Bolton's record over the past year has demonstrated an individual who was sent there not to make it stronger, but to undermine it.

• Bolton’s record at the U.N. has been rather un-diplomatic. According to Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), "Many ambassadors at the U.N. feel that he hasn't done a good job there. He's polarized the situation." Before going to the United Nations, Bolton was described by a former State Department colleague as "a quintessential kiss-up, kick-down sort of guy." Representatives of the U.N. member-states agree. The New York Times reported that "many diplomats say they see Mr. Bolton as a stand-in for the arrogance of the administration itself." After a confrontation with Bolton, Algeria's U.N. Ambassador Abdullah Baali said the U.S. stance that "you take it or you leave it is not helping the Security Council, and is not helping the cause of peace in the Middle East."
  
  
• Bolton’s actions serve to undermine the U.N. On many of the key issues before the United Nations, Bolton has worked against the consensus of the international body. In March, the U.N. overwhelmingly approved the creation of a much-improved council to protect human rights but the U.S. was one of only four nations to vote against it. Bolton also distanced the U.S. from its allies on the issue of Sudan by insisting that a list of names proffered by the U.K. of individuals involved in genocide be whittled down, leaving only one mid-level Sudanese government official on the list. Bolton even resisted renovating the aging, dilapidated, asbestos-coated headquarters of the United Nations.
  
  
• Old problems with Bolton continue to linger. Among the issues that arose last year was a revelation that Bolton requested 10 National Security Agency (NSA) intercepts of conversations between U.S. government officials and foreign persons. At the time, the Bush administration refused Senate requests to turn over the intercepts. Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS) said Bush should have provided the disputed documents. Since that time, the NSA warrantless surveillance program has been revealed, which Sen. Joseph Biden (D-DE) recently argued, "makes these intercepts even more relevant.” Also, last year, the Senate was informed that Bolton once tried to replace two intelligence analysts who disagreed with him.