Diplomacy and the Beast
March 31st, 2006The Bull in the China Shop — the Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton — bothers me. He bothers me because I believe his first wife when she says he forced her into orgies and was so abusive that she fled home. He bothers me because he abuses his co-workers. He bothers me because this is his face. Then he bothers me because he hangs out with James Dobson, is a member of the Project for a New American Century, and he happens to look like this, I repeat.
A puff piece on John Bolton is out, and, while the beginning makes my eyes roll at its semi-flattering portrayal of Bolton as some sort of loveable workaholic, the following stood out to me:
Gallows humor is key to surviving the deadly serious business confronting the UN. Mr. Bolton sandwiched a one-hour sit-down interview on March 23 between marathon sessions over Iran’s pursuit of a program likely to include nuclear weapons. As Mr. Bolton negotiated with his UN counterparts among the four other permanent Security Council members, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was on the phone to the Russian foreign minister. Over the weekend the two worked both sides of the Atlantic: Mr. Bolton hashing the details of a common statement from Britain, China, France, Russia, and the United States, while Ms. Rice walked the English countryside with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, looking for a way to proceed against Iran in light of ongoing differences. Mr. Bolton succeeded. The Security Council agreed March 30 to call on Iran to cease uranium enrichment, just ahead of Ms. Rice’s meeting with foreign ministers in Berlin.
The good news, compared to Security Council divisions on Iraq, is that among the five permanent members “there really is a strong feeling that Iran cannot be allowed to get nuclear weapons,” Mr. Bolton said. “The difficulty we are having now within the Five Perm is we don’t have agreement on how to do that, what kind of message to send to the Iranians, how to cut off their efforts to master the technology that they need to get a completely indigenous command of the nuclear fuel sites.”
Concern over Iran, Mr. Bolton confesses, is very real. “There’s much that we don’t know. There’s much that the IAEA doesn’t know. That makes us feel a lot more nervous.” Apart from the UN atomic inspection program, he said, “What we look for is if there is any sign from Iran that it wants to pursue a different kind of relationship with the rest of the world. What you see is the exact opposite.”
You’d have to be blind to deny that the world is, right now, coming together on Iran beyond what might’ve been expected from them a year ago. That’s not what interests me about this article, though. The thing that I wonder about is, If Bolton is getting them to agree with us, is it because of him or because the Reality of the Situation is So Severe that they’ll work with us In Spite of Him? It makes me wonder what a legitimate Diplomat would accomplish. You know, someone who doesn’t abuse his wife, subordinates and the rest of the world.
Let’s find out in a few years. Dick Holbrooke for UN Ambassador, 2009.