Every now and then the law of unintended consequences works out for the best. That’s just how it’s turned out with the nasty campaign last year to block John Bolton’s confirmation as ambassador to the UN. Bolton during his time at Turtle Bay was as good an ambassador as we’re going to get; but getting anything useful done at the UN is a labor of Sisyphus, and even Bolton could not get far. He was dealing with the Kofi-crony crowd in the Secretariat, the thug-packed General Assembly, the permanent hypocrites on the Security Council, and at his back was a back-stabbing State Department that under Condoleezza Rice seems to be harking back to the foreign policy of Jimmy Carter. It was a mix that left Bolton as ambassador toiling away against impossible odds on what were hopelessly flawed official initiatives to begin with.
Bolton is now clear of all that, free to speak his mind, and from the American Enterprise Institute has become a desperately needed voice of sanity in Washington. He has an important article in Monday’s Wall Street Journal — vital reading — on “The North Korea Climbdown,” addressing the recent attempts by “Washington’s most important person — the Anonymous Senior Official” to spin away the North Korean nuclear threat.
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1. Alex Reed:Ambassador Bolton’s article in the WSJ gives the kind of clear-eyed exposition of the negotiations with North Korea that his many admirers have come to esteem, all the more for an unwavering devotion to the truth all too rare from any public figure in America these days. He neatly exposes the mind-bending policy contortions, to say nothing of eviscerations of past Bush Administration policy, currently being played out by the Bushies themselves - a pathetic, seemingly self-imposed, autodafé. But why? And at whose behest? Appeasement at any cost seems to be the order of the day, and Mr. Bolton gives us chapter and verse on the U.S. intra-governmental side of the equation.
Mar 5, 2007 - 2:52 pm 2. Geo11:To complete the picture of the chute we seem to be greasing for ourselves in these negotiations with Kim, there’s another great article in today’s WSJ that need’s to be read, and then read again, Kim Jong Il’s Word in the Review & Outlook section of the Opinion Page. “Kim’s Word” looks at the negotiations from an international perspective and places them deftly in the matrix of understanding we should be considering given the ongoing Kimian developments at the U.N.
Our State Dept. needs a serious shakeup. Condi is not getting the job done and is being undermined by some of her staff.
Mar 5, 2007 - 9:26 pm 3. Brian:Geo11 :
Agreed. But trying to reform the State Department seems to me to be particularly and uniquely difficult.
How do you do it?
It’s not like the UN, or even teachers’ unions, where you might be able to construct competing organizations. And you couldn’t just sack everyone at State and start over, though I sometimes fantasize about that . . ..
Every large organization overflows with individuals who have their own opinions, biases and agendas and each person will make decisions colored by his own interests.
And superimposed on that will be an institutional impetus to seek power for itself and protect the prerogatives it has already won.
The fact that no Secretary of State has been able to reform the State Department in any meaningful way tells me more about the nature of large organizations than the shortcomings of its bosses.
About the only thing can be done is to try to force change by exposing incompetence, bias, corruption and malfeasance to the public eye, and hope that enough pressure can be brought to effect change, somehow, some way.
Which is why the writings of Mr. Bolton and Ms Rosett are so vital.
Brian
Mar 6, 2007 - 1:06 pm