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March 14, 2005

Bolton's Principles

John Bolton, who was recently appointed by the president to be our next ambassador to the United Nations, has a firm set of ideas for dealing with that body. Bolton laid out these principles in a 1997 essay which was part of a Cato Institute publication titled "Delusions of Grandeur". In his essay, "The Creation, Fall, Rise and Fall of the United Nations", he outlines five things that we should insist on when dealing with the UN:

  1. "The new secretary-general must deliver on reform." This remains as relevant now as it was eight years ago. Mr. Bolton still believes that the key to reform lies in breaking down the United Nations' traditional fiefdoms in the development program, environment program, the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and others, and treating the United Nations as a single system.
  2. The United Nations should "stick with traditional peacekeeping," which means following the old rule that permanent members of the Security Council -- the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China -- should not take part in peacekeeping. Moreover, "what should be relegated to history's junk pile at the first opportunity are the chimerical Clinton notions of U.N. 'peace enforcement' and 'nation-building' and 'enlargement.'
  3. "Do not reform the Security Council." Mr. Bolton wants the current permanent members to keep their veto, a power that he sees as "the greatest single protection the U.S. has at the U.N. ... The desire to remold the Security Council now to conform to theoretical models of contemporary global politics should not obscure our present ability to make the council function effectively, at least in certain circumstances."
  4. "Management and financial reform remains essential." Mr. Bolton questions the financial basis of the United Nations, under which each country pays dues that are meant to be assessed roughly in accordance with their wealth. "Eliminate assessments altogether, moving toward a U.N. system that is funded entirely by purely voluntary contributions from the member governments ... [which] would allow each government to judge for itself whether it was getting its money's worth from the U.N. and each of its component agencies."
  5. "Face reality" and accept the United Nations' limitations and the realities of national interest, and from the American point of view, remember, "The U.N. is only a tool, not a theology. It is one of several options we have and is certainly not invariably the most important one."
The only one I'd quibble with at all is number three, yet even there Bolton's warnings are well taken. On the one hand, the Security Council is a relic of the Cold War, and at best reflects a world that hasn't existed in almost a hundred years (the only reason France has a permanent seat is because everyone felt sorry for them after World War II). On the other hand, revising it may only make matters worse (and things can always get worse).

Other than that I see his appointment as nothing but positive. The UN desperately needs to be shaken up, and to be told things that it doesn't want to hear.

Best of all, Bolton has all the right enemies. The usual suspects in the Democrat Party have promised to oppose his nomination, which I take as meaning that President Bush appointed the right man.

Posted by Tom at March 14, 2005 3:34 PM

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