Bolton Battle On Tap

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

UNITED NATIONS — The crowd around Secretary-General Annan believes the United Nations’s role is to balance out the vast power America projects around the world. President Bush’s answer to that belief is John Bolton — America’s counterbalance to the vast world powers of the United Nations.

As a new type of war unfolds on the Israeli-Lebanese border, Mr. Annan’s administration has applied old clichés, misunderstood the new regional nuances, and ignored policies set by the United Nations itself.

This week, Mr.Bolton will prepare for a hearing at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which congressional head counters believe will lead to a full approval of his status as ambassador, strengthening his position in such future battles as the race for a new secretary-general.

Democrats from states where Israel is an issue, like New York, will be hard-pressed to oppose Mr. Bolton as he battles a knee-jerk U.N. crowd that fears the Jewish state more than Iran. Expect Senators Schumer and Clinton to agonize over their confirmation votes — to say nothing of Senator Lieberman of Connecticut.

Red staters up for re-election might also waver in the fight over Mr. Bolton, conscious that few politicians have ever gained votes by supporting Turtle Bay, especially when it is so blatantly at odds with American policy-makers. Watch Senator Nelson, a Democrat of Nebraska.

Nevertheless, the outgoing Annan administration, led by Deputy Secretary-General Mark Malloch Brown, has been pulling strings in Washington to organize opposition to Mr. Bolton’s nomination, which he believes would weaken the United Nations’s position in the world.

But there is no better illustration of Turtle Bay’s current old-think than its reaction to the Lebanon war, which was cartoonish even by comparison to the nuanced reaction of the Arab world.

One Lebanese ambassador was recently called home from Washington for being too pro-Hezbollah. Lebanon’s ambassador to the United Nations, meanwhile, also was recalled — for alleged anti-Syrian comments. Beirut’s special envoy to Turtle Bay, its ambassador to Mexico, Nouhad Mahmoud, is now understandably cautious in his rhetoric. Does he represent the anti-Hezbollah Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt or the Shiite politician Nabih Berry?

An Arab diplomat I spoke with last week wondered if his rhetoric should reflect the statements of Iran-fearing Saudis, who criticize Hezbollah, or the attacks on Israel and America by Shiite Arabs, including Prime Minister al-Maliki of Iraq, who spent years in exile in Syria.

Contrast that with the empty U.N. rhetoric. Israeli attacks “seem” to be a “violation of humanitarian law,” the U.N. humanitarian coordinator, Jan Egeland, said in Beirut yesterday. (He has yet to visit Haifa.) In Lebanon, “casualties are mainly among the civilian population, about one-third of them children,” Mr. Annan said. (Israeli military officials say more than 100 top Hezbollah fighters, who wear no uniforms, have been killed.)

Human Rights Commissioner Louise Arbour, a former international prosecutor, threatened war crimes trials of Israelis for the possible “personal criminal responsibility of those involved, particularly those in a position of command and control.”

The as-seen-on-TV humanitarian reaction led most Europeans —– and some at the State Department — to demand immediate pressure on Israel, even as Sunni Arabs are secretly cheering it on.

In America, “prosecutors are not supposed to threaten people in public based on press reports,” Mr. Bolton told CNN yesterday. “I would just say as one lawyer to another to Mrs. Arbour that she should consider her professional ethics and responsibilities very carefully here.”

The British Foreign Office minister, Kim Howells, said in Beirut that he found it hard to explain Israel’s tactics attacking “the entire Lebanese nation.” Mr. Bolton has had his share of backroom clashes with fair-weather U.N. “allies.”

“There may be individual comments here and there,” he said, but Prime Minister Blair and Mr. Bush work “closely together” on Lebanon.

For some in Washington, all this illustrates that Mr. Bolton does not play well with others at Turtle Bay. Why, he even opposed the recent creation of the Human Rights Council, which sane Europeans hailed as a major U.N. “reform.”

When, predictably, the new council singled out Israel as the only world human rights violator, Mr. Bolton told me that the only question in his mind had been whether the new body would first attack Israel or America. As it turned out, he said, “Israel took the world cup.”

Anyone who hopes the United Nations can muzzle America’s world power, including its lonely support of Israel, should oppose Mr. Bolton’s nomination. Then there are the rest, who yearn for more sane policies than those Turtle Bay produces.


The New York Sun

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