Bolton's Power Plays are Never Polite
By Olivia Ward
The Toronto Star
October 29, 2006

It was a Bolton from the blue.

In August 2005, before a historic summit aimed at eradicating dire poverty, a diminutive, mop-haired figure strode into the corridors of UN headquarters in New York and dropped a bombshell that blasted apart a year of diplomatic bridge-building.

John Bolton, Washington's newly appointed ambassador to the United Nations, had arrived on the scene, carrying a list of 750 amendments to the painstakingly negotiated summit document and changing its focus from poverty to administrative reform.

With less than a month to go until world leaders gathered for a widely anticipated endorsement of the paper, it was the diplomatic equivalent of "shock and awe."

"Bolton's views were well known, and there were expectations that he'd push hard on UN reform," says veteran Canadian diplomat Louise Fréchette, former deputy secretary general of the world body.

"But when he made such a huge case of it, people were taken by surprise."

Bolton's insistence on pushing Washington's reform agenda ahead of helping millions of poor people outraged developing countries, which had seen the summit as a boost for the UN Millennium Development Goals for wiping out the most extreme poverty by 2015. Some charged that the United States had "hijacked" the summit.

Since then, the outspoken ambassador has imprinted his style on the U.S. mission, brushing aside diplomatic niceties, along with the traditional routines of give and take.

He has made it clear that power, not politeness, is what counts.

"The reality of the world is that some are more equal than others," says Fréchette. "But everybody wants a sense that they've been heard, and people felt bulldozed by Bolton."

American politicians have had their own reservations about the ambassador. He has served in his UN post on a temporary basis after failing to win a mandatory confirmation vote in the U.S. Senate.

Now, after serving 14 months at the post, he is reaching the end of his shelf life, amid rumours that the White House is seeking ways of extending his already-tenuous term beyond its Jan. 1 expiration date.

The suggestion of a new term for Bolton makes his opponents shudder.

"He's maximalist and uncompromising," says Scott Paul, campaign manager for the Washington-based Citizens for Global Solutions. "Before he was installed, the U.S. had a much better track record at the UN."

Bolton was shoehorned into the ambassador's job as a temporary "recess appointee," through a loophole in the law that allows the president to fill jobs when Congress isn't sitting.

But internationally conscious Republicans, as well as Democrats, believe Bolton's open hostility to the world body — which he has deemed useful only when it serves U.S. interests — made him the least desirable candidate for UN ambassador.

His abrasive, my-way-or-the-highway style appears to be the antithesis of diplomacy, which is politics by consensus rather than collision.

But his conservative supporters say his presence at the UN is a splash of cold water on a sluggish body that is in need of the shock.

"Who better to represent America to an organization that is in need of serious reform than someone who is brave enough to point out its flaws?" writes Aaron Margolis on the Political Gateway website.

Those who watch Bolton in action at the UN agree that he has a certain tough-guy cachet, with a comic twist supplied by his white moustache flashing below a dramatically contrasting swath of dark hair.

The bushy soup-strainer and his chokehold ties might make him appear chatty and deceptively lacking in vanity, but not everyone is charmed. Washington Post fashion editor Robin Givhan described him as defiantly ill groomed and gloomily walrus-like.

"Bolton simply needs the basics," Givhan declared. "Tidy the curling, unruly locks ... reel in the wings flapping above his ears and broker a compromise between his sand-covered mop and his snow-colored moustache."

Compromise is not much in evidence in 57-year-old Bolton's long career.

"John Bolton," said his mentor, Christian right leader and former North Carolina senator Jesse Helms, "is the kind of man with whom I would want to stand at Armageddon, or what the Bible describes as the final battle between good or evil."

The son of a fireman in working-class Baltimore, the youthful Bolton honed his contrarian views by rejecting the hippie generation and heading the ultra-conservative Students for Goldwater, touting conservative Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater in 1964.

Graduating summa cum laude from Yale, he entered a Washington law firm in 1974 and spent the next 25 years mixing politics and a thriving legal practice with zealous Republican fundraising.

His close political ties include one with powerful former secretary of state James Baker.

He has also served as a senior official for the right-wing American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research and worked with other conservative think-tanks.

Bolton, who is married and has a grown daughter, began his public service career in 1981 with the U.S. Agency for International Development.

He moved to the Justice Department as assistant attorney-general in 1985 and in 1989 was appointed assistant secretary for international organization affairs at the State Department.

But it was with George W. Bush's rise to power that Bolton sprang onto the public stage, beginning with a jaw-dropping performance at a Tallahassee library in 2000, when a recount of crucial Florida presidential ballots was in progress.

"I'm with the Bush-Cheney team and I'm here to stop the count," Bolton announced, after a bid to block the recount succeeded in the Supreme Court.

His slash-and-burn tactics continued when he headed arms control and security efforts for the State Department, declaring a proposal on verifying bio-weapons was "dead, dead, dead" and insisting that Washington would oppose any initiative to regulate the international small-arms trade.

He worked to undermine the Antiballistic Missile Treaty and opposed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty on nuclear weapons.

Bolton accused Cuba of harbouring weapons of mass destruction and sparked a mud-slinging match with North Korea when he accused President Kim Jong-il of living like royalty while making life a "hellish nightmare" for his people.

In return, Pyongyang labelled Bolton "human scum" and cut off negotiations with the Washington.

In the run-up to the war in Iraq, Bolton was accused of undermining his secretary of state, the more moderate Colin Powell, by exaggerating claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The State Department later acknowledged that Bolton had been questioned in an investigation into intelligence lapses before the war.

Since bursting on the UN scene, he has had mixed reviews. Supporters in the Bush administration applaud him as a two-fisted symbol of America's right to dominate the world body's agenda as its biggest financial contributor and the sole global superpower.

Other observers' reactions range from skeptical to fiercely opposed, claiming that he has been confrontational and divisive, making Washington more enemies than friends.

But, notes Linda Fasulo, author of An Insider's Guide to the UN, "there's a longstanding tradition of American ambassadors who aren't just Grey Suits. They can be colourful in their language, blunt and direct. It's a high-profile post and ambassadors often have the ear of the president. Bolton fits the mould."

Says former deputy secretary general Fréchette: "He's a very hard-working person and he really knows his stuff. He's prepared to go through an enormous amount of detail himself. But at the UN, so much depends on trust, and he doesn't enjoy the personal side of diplomacy."

Now, all ears are tuned to rumours that the ideologues of the Bush administration — including Vice-President Dick Cheney and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld — are determined to keep Bolton in office with another "recess" appointment that would avoid a confirmation vote. But he would be legally barred from receiving a salary and some suggest he might instead be offered a lower diplomatic post while being made acting ambassador.

"If he doesn't stay at the UN, what would they do with him?" wonders a Washington insider who asked not to be named. "He might want to be national security adviser, but Condi (Secretary of State Condoleezza) Rice would see it as a threat. And she wouldn't want him rattling around in the State Department."

Concludes Global Solutions' Scott Paul: "We can only hope his tenure expires quickly and Bush is able to nominate someone who will unite people behind a bipartisan policy. The post should be filled by someone all Americans can be proud of.

"We need a representative who is capable of repairing the ties that Bolton has allowed to wither away."

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