Rich Lowry editorialized Almost everyone agrees that the Democrats are viewed as too soft on national security. How is the party addressing this deficiency? By making its rallying cry, "Please, don't be mean to the United Nations."
This is the gravamen of its attack on President Bush's nominee to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton. Bolton's chief offense is having been harshly critical of the U.N. through the years. The toughest Bolton quote is that the U.N. headquarters could lose ten stories and no one would notice. The notable thing about this statement is that it is indisputably true. A ten-story subtraction would still leave 29 stories to house the planet's most hellishly impenetrable and inefficient bureaucracy.
The outraged-at-Bolton caucus has a problem, which is that anything Bolton has said about the U.N. appears mild given recent U.N. malfeasance. He never said that U.N. peacekeepers would rape children in the Congo. He never said the U.N. would engage in insider dealing to rip off its own Oil-for-Food program in Iraq. He never said the U.N. would institute what appears to be a cover-up of its Oil-for-Food wrongdoing. But this all happened, which is why even Kofi Annan says the U.N. needs a thorough overhaul.
Democrats who oppose Bolton are in effect more deliriously pro-U.N. than even the secretary general. Bolton has always said that the U.N. needs strong U.S. leadership in order to work as an institution.
We need someone like Bolton to represent us in the UN
LA Times reported "The U.N. needs reform — lots of it," said Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.). "But we don't need a voice people are not inclined to listen to."
We are not going to get any reform if we have a meek person who just says what people want to hear.
Fred Kaplan editorialized He looked and sounded like a man at best uninterested in, and often contemptuous of, the United Nations as an institution. In short, John Bolton came off as strikingly lacking in the credibility, values, and basic commitment that, especially these days, the job of U.N. ambassador requires. He's animated, passionate, livid. He clearly believes what he's saying and wants to make the most of it, wants to engage and provoke.
An animated, passionate John Bolton is exactly what the job of U.N. ambassador requires
S.Z. blogged Everybody who has had a boss like Bolton knows how much damage they can do just by being jerks -- and doesn't the UN have enough problems already without inflicting Bolton on them?
Bolton is exactly what the UN needs
Tuesday, April 12, 2005
John Bolton, Multilateralist
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7 comments:
The best solution would be a UN that worked.
If we can't get that, then I support abolishing it, or at least getting it out of the US where it just serves as a den of spies, and replace it with a union of democratic countries
It's a bit glib to reduce it all to the phrase "a UN that worked", isn't it? Worked in what way? Gave the US everything it ever wanted? Rubber-stamped US initiatives and condemned everything the US didn't like?
That would be nice, and OK with me
If, on the other hand, you mean a UN that worked in the sense that it provided a global forum for all countries to discuss issues of global importance, then surely it does that now.
No what we have is an organization that sends rapists on peacekeeping missions, steals money from programs that were supposed to help people, etc.
Here's the real issue: do you want an international organization that provides an opportunity to address disputes between nations in some manner other than bilateral conflict? Do you want an international organization that represents a "third party" overseer of disputes? And if so, are you willing to accept the fact that we'll win some and we'll lose some?
It would be nice to win some. Right now the UN is a Bash the US organization.
Most of the UN-bashers I have encountered don't want to surrender one iota of national sovereignty to anybody. That works fairly well when you're the biggest SOB in the valley. The problem comes when the rest of the world decides that you're a bully, and they start to gang up on you. Let's face it, in a "US against the world" scenario, we lose bigtime.
We are the sole remaining Super Power. If that is what you mean by the biggest SOB in the valley, then so be it.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, because I am the largest SOB in the valley.
OK, let's run with that logic. We're the most powerful country on the planet, and we can throw our weight around, and if other countries don't like it, that's just too bad for them.
Works for me
Of course, this will surely earn their distrust or outright animosity, but, as Caligula said, we'd rather be feared than liked, right? Indeed, there aren't many countries that are well-disposed to our interests just now: Israel, Taiwan, maybe a few of the Eastern European nations.
Countries we have done something for, or who want us to do something for them.
Tony Blair is trying hard to remain our friend, but the British public don't share his opinion of the USA. We've got few outright enemies: Iran, North Korea. But the fact is, we are fast losing support from countries that previously held us in high regard.
Countries always look out for their own interests. France opposes us because they want to be the Big Dog on the European Continent, but the next time they are invaded they will come crying to us for help, just like they did the last two times.
But that doesn't matter, so long as we have more nukes than anybody else, right? Well, that depends on what matters. It's kinda hard to come down hard on terrorism when other nations won't extradite suspects to us or won't cooperate with our investigations; we're starting to see some instances of this. What happens when, say, Malaysia refuses to turn over a man whom we know to be a terrorist? Do we invade Malaysia?
No, but we cut off any money we are sending to Malaysia
Or then there's the problem of getting countries to agree on trade issues. They're showing increasing intransigence. China is taking advantage of this. Here's a tiny example: the US is trying to set up favorable trade agreements with Latin American countries, but the Chinese are busily signing trade treaties left and right in Latin America -- treaties that give them preferential treatment.
And we have similar treaties, both in Latin America and the Pacific Rim
So are you willing to let America's trade wither, and American efforts to hunt down terrorists get blocked in foreign countries?
Trade treaties are signed by countries that think they can get more concessions than they have to give up, not because they like or respect the country they are signing the treaty with.
Trade treaties are signed by countries that think they can get more concessions than they have to give up, not because they like or respect the country they are signing the treaty with.
Yes, that's true, and in fact the statement to which you are responding is a touch hyperbolic. But there can be no question that American influence is slowly eroding. The Chinese recently managed to get us barred from an East Asian security conference.
I had not heard that, but I don't know why we would want to be at an East Asian security conference anyway. We should not be the policemen for the world.
The only hammer we have is the military one; if we can't credibly threaten to attack them, they laugh at us.
It is not our only hammer, but it certainly is a big one. But we have other tools in our toolbox.
Iran is forging ahead with its nuclear program because its facilities are well-hidden and well-protected.
And they would have been doing that even if everyone else loved us
North Korea is forging ahead with its nuclear program because China sees no need to help us out here.
That is not likely to be the case for long, because China does not want Japan to become a nuclear nation, but if Japan sees nukes in both China and North Korea they will insist on going nuclear themselves
Thus, we are absolutely impotent on two of most important foreign policy issues of the day. If we tell the rest of the world to go to hell, we shouldn't be surprised when they respond in like fashion.
Even the most recent diplomatic success of the Bush Administration, the European reversal of the decision to allow to lapse the ban on weapons trade with China, is looking thinner every day. They never made an absolute commitment to maintain the ban and some recent statements suggest that there is still serious disagreement within the EU community on this point. Quite a few Europeans (including some I have spoken with) maintain that the world needs other power centers to counterbalance American hegemony. It's really in their own interests to resume selling weapons to China. They'll do it, sooner or later, irregardless of US interests.
Perhaps, but if they do, it will be because there is too much profit in selling weapons, not because they want to make China a superpower.
Like what? Moral power? We've already thrown that away. Nobody's going to do anything merely because we claim it's the right thing to do.
Moral persuasion has seldom had much of an affect in international matters
Economic power? We are only 25% of world GDP; slapping unilateral trade sanctions on a country accomplishes nothing.
25% is certainly non trivial, and if we refused to buy from countries that did not support our sanctions on another country, it could have a significant effect
Our trade sanctions against Cuba are made meaningless by the rest of the world's willingness to trade with them.
They can buy things from the rest of the world, but they don't have enough money to buy much
We can deny them foreign aid, but we account for only 20% of world foreign aid.
20% is also non-trivial
Moreover, our economic strength is being steadily eroded by the weakening dollar, which by all accounts will continue to weaken.
What other sources of power have we to wield?
That is plenty
If we had retained the goodwill of the Europeans, they'd have agreed to sanctions against Iran some time ago.
No way. Europeans are much more interested in whether they can make money doing something, rather than whether it will offend us or not
They are slowly coming around to the idea of sanctions, but they're dragging their feet on this. Right now, sanctions are the only effective weapon we can threaten the Iranians with, and our past unilateral behavior does not incline others to join us in multilateral actions.
France and Germany were against us before the unilateral action in Iraq. It was because they were making too much money selling to Saddam.
There's a lot of wishful thinking there. The Chinese are master geopoliticians who have adroitly exploited every mistake we have made. They're really making hay since we invaded Iraq, even cosying up to India (!) Their goal is East Asian hegemony, and the first step toward that goal is to discredit the USA. That's why they're being so difficult with North Korea; they'll keep this going long enough to make it absolutely clear that the USA has zero power in this matter; they'll pull the rabbit out of the hat at the moment best suited to make them look like the real superpower of East Asia. And they'll force the Taiwan issue the moment they think they can humiliate us with it -- and not a moment before.
We will see.
Once again we have reduced matters to the point of basic disagreements. However, I'd like to step back for a moment and make the case for multilaterism.
Fine
My core point is that multilateralism is motivated by pragmatism where unilaterism is motivated by vanity. There's no question that we can always accomplish more by working with other nations than by telling them to go to hell.
Which is why Bush wasted so much time trying to work within the UN, that he gave Saddam time to move all of the WMD stockpiles to Syria, and to set up the fininancing for the insurgency
Yes, multilaterism can be frustratingly slow and the politics of multilaterism can become almost silly. But multilateralism gives us the highest bang for our buck.
What comes out of the south end of a bull facing north?
Unilaterism, by contrast, is a policy of impatience, impulsiveness, and pride. Unilaterists rush in where multilateralists fear to tread. The unilateralist is so fixated on some immediate problem that he loses sight of the ongoing nature of geopolitics. He sacrifices long-term interests to solve an immediate problem.
There are times when multilaterialsm is appropriate, and times when unilateralism is appropriate. Neither works all the time.
At its heart, multilaterism is nothing more than a very weak extension of the concept of government to the geopolitical stage, where unilateralism is an extension of anarchism to the geopolitical stage.
I agree multilateralism can be weak, but I disagree that unilateralism is anarchism
Starting about 5,000 years ago, we have been learning that organizing society according to rules yields the greatest overall good. We have developed all these complicated systems for governmental procedure. We have broken down government into different levels -- municipal, county, state, and national -- and yet unilateralists reject any application of the basic concept at the global level. Unilateralism applied at the state level amounts to civil war. Unilateralism applied at the municipal level amounts to "every man for himself".
And unilateralism at the global level can be a very good idea.
For the last eight months, I have been pursuing a Diogenes-like search for an honest conservative with whom I can discuss issues in good faith. It seems I have failed. Vaya con dios, my friend.
I have carried on an extensive discussion with you, with six exchanges on this thread alone, but my BS meter rang on that last post.
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