Know Your Right-Wing Speakers: John Bolton

By Keith White, University of Virginia
Wednesday December 20, 2006

Although he failed to ever receive Senate confirmation as the United States representative to the United Nations, John Bolton still reached the pinnacle of his career through service in that job as a backdoor appointee of President Bush. Working his way up the ladder of top political appointees, Bolton has been a stalwart defender of a hard-line conservative foreign policy agenda. But his abrasive style doomed his nomination in the Senate.

Bolton’s reputation as an unflinching ideologue had early roots. Seventy-six of his Yale classmates, including Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau, signed a letter saying, “We are embarrassed and ashamed that the Bush administration has nominated someone so manifestly unsuited to represent our country at the United Nations.” But regardless of the impression he left on his peers, he did fine in school, earning both his bachelor’s and law degrees from Yale.

After school, Bolton jumped into corporate law. He worked for eight years at the prestigious firm Covington and Burling, whose upstanding clientele included Phillip Morris and Halliburton. During his stint at Covington and Burling, Bolton found time to aid James Baker’s 1978 campaign for Texas attorney general. While Baker’s bid proved futile, it helped propel Bolton into the White House under three presidents: Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush.

Bolton’s started his bureaucratic climb at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), first as a legal counsel and then as assistant administrator from 1981 to 1983. While there Bolton showcased his notorious temper. According to CounterPunch, Lynne Finney, then United Nations policy advisor for USAID, complained that when she refused to lobby World Health Organization delegates to weaken restrictions on the marketing of infant formula in the developing world, because she thought it would lead to product misuse and infant deaths, Bolton shouted that “Nestle was an important company and that he was giving me a direct order from President Reagan.” He allegedly blew his top and fired her. Apparently he made up the part about Reagan, and the top USAID administrator allowed her to keep her post. Finney claims that when Boltonlearned that he did not, in fact, have the authority to dismiss her, he “retaliated” by placing her in a "a shabby windowless office in the basement in order to force me to leave.”

But this worrisome episode did not stop Bolton’s rise: He continued to serve the Reagan administration in the Justice Department as Assistant Attorney General. While there he served as the White House’s point-man on the failed Supreme Court nomination of Robert Bork, ensuring that Reagan’s support for the controversial nominee would “put [the vote count] over the top.” That didn’t quite work out the way he had hoped. Bolton was also involved in the Justice Department’s 1986 Iran-Contra investigation.

When the first President Bush took office, Bolton served at the State Department as assistant secretary for international affairs from 1989 to 1993, garnering a number of successes: He monitored Nicaraguan elections, fought against the Palestinian Authority’s attempts to be recognized as a separate nation by international organizations, and helped reverse a 1975 U.N. resolution condemning Zionism as racism.

Out of power during the Clinton years, Bolton hovered in the holding bay of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington. There he lambasted Clinton’s policies toward the United Nations, ridiculed the International Criminal Court, defended the tobacco industry against international regulation, and deplored the United Nation’s role in mediating a solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Bolton sprung back into action with the Florida 2000 recount, helping his old friend James Baker to “stop the count.”

President Bush returned the favor by appointing Bolton undersecretary of state for arms control. There he worked on the U.S.-Russia nuclear reduction deal and shepherded the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), a U.S.-led international effort to combat the threat of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). PSI sought to apply the shaky logic behind Iraq’s “coalition of the willing” to securing and restricting the export of WMD materials. While the program has had success in garnering membership and stopping WMD transfers, after three years it still remains a hazy international agreement, undercutting its long term prospects for success.

Bolton’s convoluted quest to be U.S. representative to the United Nations got going in earnest on March 7, 2005. Bolton’s hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee got rough. John S. Wolf, a former undersecretary of state for nonproliferation, testified at the confirmation hearings that Bolton harassed officials who disagreed with him. Alan Foley, former director of the CIA's WMD office, added to the criticism, reportedly confirming to the committee staff Bolton’s attempt to fire a colleague over policy differences regarding Cuba. The controversy was heightened when the media focused attention on some of the incredibly antagonistic things Bolton had said in the past, such as “The [U.N.] Secretariat building in New York has 38 stories. If you lost 10 stories today, it wouldn't make a bit of difference." These reports led Republican Senator George Voinovich to join Democrats in refusing to endorse Bolton’s nomination. While Voinovich did vote to send Bolton’s nomination to a full Senate vote, he wrote a letter urging his Senate colleagues to vote against Bolton.

After failing to overcome Democratic opposition to a floor vote, President Bush did the next best thing: He installed Bolton by recess appointment.

While at the United Nations, Bolton did earn some praise. He succeeded in helping to bring discipline to the U.N. Security Council; as chair he demanded what had been heresy—starting Security Council meetings on time. And after North Korea’s recent nuclear test, Bolton successfully shepherded through a tough unanimous Security Council resolution.

Yet even his North Korean success story points to Bolton’s diplomatic handicaps. After succeeding in passage of the North Korea resolution, which led to the North Korean delegation to walk out, Bolton pointed at their empty chair and proclaimed, “That was the equivalent of [Soviet leader Nikita] Khrushchev pounding his shoe on the table.” While the botch did not jolt Russia to change its vote, such diplomatic heartburn could not have come at a more sensitive moment.

Later, fortune seemed to smile on Bolton: Voinovich, the chief cause of his recess appointment, reversed course and endorsed him, clearing the way for Senate approval. Yet Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, citing the need for more questioning of the nominee, delayed a committee vote on Bolton until after the 2006 midterm elections. Two days after losing his reelection bid, Chaffee came out against Bolton’s nomination, killing any hope for Bolton to make his temporary posting permanent.

Bolton handed his resignation to President Bush on Dec. 4, 2006, becoming a symbol of the public’s dissatisfaction with the administration’s arrogant and ideological foreign policy. Bolton will most likely serve out the reminder of his term, which ends on Jan. 3, 2007.

Don’t worry about Bolton though—he’ll be raking in the dough giving speeches through the Washington Speakers Bureau, where he joins the esteemed ranks of other former Bush cronies like such as Mark McClellan, Scott McClellan and Andrew Card.

Bolton Quotes, courtesy of Stop Bolton:

"If I were redoing the Security Council today, I'd have one permanent member because that's the real reflection of the distribution of power in the world."

“There is no such thing as the United Nations. There is an international community that occasionally can be led by the only real power left in the world and that is the United States when it suits our interest and we can get others to go along.''

“While treaties may well be politically or even morally binding, they are not legally obligatory. They are just not ’law’ as we apprehend the term. And what happens to countries when they do not adhere to international law on some matter? Usually nothing. Why, then, do we continue to talk about international ‘law’? Because the word has a strong emotive appeal.”

Illustration: August J. Pollak

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Comments

1. I am very happy that Mr. Bolton is gone. He is a signatory to the PNAC plan for US world dominance. He was sent to the UN to sabotoge anything they might do for world peace, or anything that offends his personal PNAC agenda. He is an asshole, and he was never worthy of serving at the UN. We need to get all of those Neocons, and bush, out of our White House.

   — thomas - Dec 21, 02:42 PM - #
   
   

2. Bolton’s departure is certainly a step in the right direction. All we need to do now is get rid of the rest of the incompetents. Bush and company would not know what a real diplomat is from a crow.

   — Paige McAdoo - Dec 21, 08:02 PM - #
   
   

3. His departure from the UN will be symbolic indeed, because, along with the depature of RUmsfield, the world is seeing key foreign policy figures that have helped shape our deplorable international response being “forced” out of office. Hopefully this will help bolster confidence in the U.S. as a whole, that shows that we mean well, even if our political leaders can sometimes be misguided.

   — Corey Ponder - Dec 22, 10:10 AM - #
   
   

4. he will be back

   — al rinker - Dec 24, 03:07 AM - #
   
   

5. Who does he think he is, speaking up for our interests instead of writing chacks and accepting condemnations.

   — Walter E. Wallis - Dec 24, 12:02 PM - #
   
   

6. His candor will definitely be missed. His is 100% correct about the enforceability of treaties and international law. For instance, Saddam blatantly ignored sanctions, no-fly zones, inspections, and even the most basic tenants of human rights. He was removed practically unilaterally by the US with the assitance of Britain, Australia, and help from Eastern Europe. Bolton was right…

   — Nick - Jan 30, 09:59 AM - #
   
   

7. Bolton is correct when he says that the U.S. isn’t legally obligated to pay the U.N. The Constitution always trumps international law. However, I disagree with him about Iraq.

   — Will Jolly - Apr 15, 08:58 PM - #
   
   

8. Bolton was right on just about everything. His depature from the government is our loss.

   The Leftists wont be happy until they drive all honest dedicated patriots away from serving in the Government… leaving behind a government staffed with corrupt elitist internationalists.

   — VinceP1974 - Mar 18, 07:45 PM - #