The Hon. John Bolton

Rarely do the words “United Nations” and “fun” occur for us in the same sentence; nor the words “United Nations” and “effective progress.” However, the nomination of John Bolton to be U.S. Ambassador to the UN makes us hopeful for the first time in a long time that the institution in which so many hopes have been so wrongly vested for so many years might be better vested now.

Rarely do the words “United Nations” and “fun” occur for us in the same sentence; nor the words “United Nations” and “effective progress.” However, the nomination of John Bolton to be U.S. Ambassador to the UN makes us hopeful for the first time in a long time that the institution in which so many hopes have been so wrongly vested for so many years might be better vested now.

Mr. Bolton – a member of the JINSA Board of Advisors when not in public service – is one of very few people in Washington who can tick off specific accomplishments. He is responsible for withdrawing U.S. participation in the outmoded ABM Treaty with the agreement of Russia; withdrawing the U.S. signature from the treaty on the International Criminal Court with its provisions that contradict the U.S. Constitution; withdrawing the U.S. signature from the unworkable Kyoto Treaty; spearheading the UN rescinding of the infamous “Zionism is Racism” resolution. And, lest one think all of his accomplishments are in the negative, John Bolton is author and executor of the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) – a vastly underappreciated multinational operation to halt illicit trade in nuclear materials.

PSI deserves a closer look. It is a focused program to solve an existing problem using existing legal authorities and international law frameworks, including UN Resolution 1540. It began with eleven partners – Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, the UK and the U.S. That represents a fair percentage of Old Europe including those who were unalterably opposed to U.S. action in Iraq, proving that Mr. Bolton can build coalitions around agreed-upon principles.

The PSI partners are democratic countries, but Mr. Bolton has also been the architect of the Six Party Talks on North Korean nuclear capabilities. In that case, he formed a coalition of regional neighbors, not all democracies, directly affected by North Korean activities – China, Russia, Japan, South Korea – plus the U.S. and North Korea.

In terms of the United Nations, the repeal of “Zionism is Racism” is a clue to Mr. Bolton’s attitude toward the institution. He is not, as his critics claim, “anti-UN,” but rather unwilling to overlook the obvious problems of an institution with a democratic mechanism (a General Assembly with voting power) driven by undemocratic nations seeking to use the form for undemocratic purposes. The repeal was essential, he told a JINSA audience at the time, because even though General Assembly resolutions have no force of international law, they set the moral standard. It was wrong, he said, to have enshrined in the Assembly such a flagrant untruth. It was his mission to fix it.

And therein lies the “fun.” It isn’t clear that the UN can be “fixed,” but it is clear that the path to “effective progress” lies in a U.S. Ambassador to the UN with the ability to define discrete problems, an ability to form coalitions to resolve those problems, and most important, a clear moral compass defining democracy as a higher order of government. John Bolton does and he can and it will be fun to watch him take those skills to Turtle Bay on behalf of American interests and American allies, including Israel.