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Contributors
J.F. Kelly, Jr. - Contributor
J.F.
Kelly, Jr. is a retired Navy Captain and bank executive who
writes on current events and military subjects. He is a resident
of Coronado, California. [go to Kelly index]
 The
Right Man for the Job
John Bolton & the U.N…
[J. F. Kelly, Jr.] 3/16/05
Fans of the
United Nations, including the liberal media, much of our State
Department
and many of the diplomats of Europe and
the third world, expressed shock at President Bush’s choice
of John Bolton to be U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Why, they asked,
did the president appoint an outspoken critic of the U.N. to
represent our interests in that body? The answer, of course,
is contained in the question. It is precisely because he is a
no-nonsense realist regarding the U.N. that he is the right man
for the job.
The United Nations is a failed organization by at least three
measures. First and most obvious are its mission failures. It
has botched nearly every opportunity to live up to its charter
and the expectations the world once had for it. It has failed
spectacularly to prevent chaos and slaughter in Bosnia, Sudan
and Rwanda. Its blue-helmeted soldiers have stood by while innocent
non-combatants have been raped and murdered. It refused to enforce
its own repeated resolutions regarding Iraq and then condemned
the U.S.-led coalition for trying to enforce them.
As an international organization created to prevent war by
substituting mediation and diplomacy, it has succeeded only in
substituting debate for resolve and enforcement. Resolutions
are its only weapons and diplomacy its only tactic.
Its second area of failure is administrative. The U.N. is inept,
inefficient and, as the recent investigation of the food-for-oil
scandal has revealed, also corrupt. One of its supposed strengths
was thought to be its ability to coordinate and deliver humanitarian
assistance in the aftermath of natural disasters or those caused
by warfare. But even here it has under-performed and nations
acting individually, especially the United States, have generally
done far more.
Its facilities and the perquisites enjoyed by its legions of
bureaucrats and diplomats are overly lavish. The United States
gets little in return for the disproportionate support it has
provided to this unproductive organization and the conspicuous
presence of its headquarters in New York can only be viewed as
a great irony.
But the most egregious failure of the United Nations is its
moral bankruptcy. Operational failures can be rationalized to
a degree. Military and logistical resources from multiple national
sources are difficult to muster and coordinate. Large multinational
institutions have certain built-in inefficiencies. But the moral
failures of this organization are unforgivable and cannot be
excused by citing cultural differences. In an effort to be all
things to all people, it refuses to differentiate between good
and bad. All cultures and governments are to be respected regardless
of what evils they permit or encourage. Anti-Semitism and anti-American
speech is permitted as free expression. Democracies and dictatorships
are treated essentially as equals.
Human rights may
be discussed but not enforced. We are expected to tolerate
the outlandish spectacle represented by the U.N.
Human Rights Commission from which the United States was removed
in favor such bastions of human rights as Cuba, Libya, Sudan
and Zimbabwe. In return for contributing a lion’s share
of the resources of this organization, the United States is routinely
insulted and criticized by some of its least deserving members.
The choice of Mr.
Bolton as ambassador to this dysfunctional organization should
serve long overdue notice that the United
States intends to step up the pressure on it to act as a true
force for peace, justice and self-determination instead of a
toothless observer to world events and maker of meaningless resolutions.
Mr. Bolton, moreover, is his own man, not just another product
of Foggy Bottom’s career corps of dithering diplomats.
He can be expected to represent the foreign policy of this administration,
not that of its State Department. It is the president, after
all, who is ultimately responsible for it, not un-elected foreign
policy specialists. tOR
copyright
2005 J. F. Kelly, Jr.
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