Keith Suter: Why Bolton is not the right American for the UN job

Keith Suter

President George W. Bush's assault on the United Nations has continued with his nomination of John Bolton as the next United States Ambassador to the UN. This is not a good omen.

Bolton, a lawyer educated at Yale, is described by the US International Relations Centre as the Bush Administration's "designated treaty killer". He led the campaign to withdraw the Clinton Administration's signature of the Rome Treaty for the International Criminal Court, and to stop the creation of a proposed treaty to verify the biological weapons treaty. He has also opposed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

In July 2003, North Korea banned him from involvement in the six-power negotiations over its nuclear programme. While in South Korea, he had described the North Korean head of state as a "tyrannical dictator" of a country where "life is a hellish nightmare".

I happen to agree with his assessment of North Korea. But they were hardly the right words for the US Undersecretary of State to use for the country he was due to negotiate with the following week.

It showed a high degree of clumsiness. Words are bullets in foreign affairs. Given his periodic deployments in the US Government (beginning in 1981) he should have known the risk he was running with his undiplomatic behaviour.

Bolton's period as US Ambassador at the UN will no doubt provide the media with colourful quotes. But there should be a greater role for the American delegation than being part of the entertainment industry.

Bolton's nomination has two implications for the UN.

First, it is a further evidence of United States alienation from the UN and what it stands for. The President has nominated someone who is antagonistic to multilateral diplomacy. No doubt there are many governmental positions for which Bolton's style of rugged individualism would be appropriate but the UN position is not one of them.

The nomination of the US Ambassador to the UN is a senior presidential appointment. It attracts far more attention than, say, the appointment of the career diplomat who represents New Zealand or Australia there. President Bush's own father served with distinction as the US Ambassador to the UN about three decades ago.

When the UN began in 1945, the US took a keen interest in making it a success, and it was committed to multilateral diplomacy.

About two or so decades ago America became increasingly hostile to the UN. This included withholding US membership dues, a tactic previously employed by the Soviet Union. Ironically, by the late 1980s, the USSR, led by Mikhail Gorbachev, was on an international charm offensive and it repaid its back-dues and lectured the US on the need to honour its international commitments.

The generation of World War II veterans (including the President's father) who knew from bitter experience the value of international co-operation, has been replaced by a generation that has far less commitment to it. Eighty per cent of the members of the US Congress do not even have passports.

There is now an even greater need for international co-operation but there is little support for it from Washington. Even the conservative British magazine the Economist in July 2001 asked rhetorically if George W. Bush had ever met a treaty he liked.

The other implication for the UN of Bolton's appointment is that its political work will continue to die from the process of 1000 cuts. The UN Charter has an elaborate system for maintaining international peace and security, but the system has hardly been used.

The UN was not set up to fail. A great deal of effort went into trying to learn the lessons of the 1930s and World War II.

But there is little appetite for using the UN's system. For example, the Clinton Administration was unwilling to intervene through it to stop the genocide in Rwanda a decade ago. The US had been traumatised by its Somalia experience and did not want any more American deaths in Africa.

Critics of the UN ignore the fact that it can only be as effective as its members want it to be. If the UN member states fail to live up to their international obligations, it will be ineffective.

In the early years of World War II (before the Americans got involved) Winston Churchill asked that Britain be given the tools by the recalcitrant US to finish the job of beating Germany. The UN now needs the tools to do its job.

* Keith Suter is the former national president of the United Nations Association of Australia.