At first, I viewed Bush's recess appointment of John Bolton as our ambassador to the UN as nothing more than additional evidence of the administration's arrogance and stubbornness, but I'm starting to think that there's more to it than that. What if Bolton was chosen
specifically for his shortcomings?
It is no secret that President Bush and most of his inner circle have little genuine respect for the United Nations, and Bush's recess appointment of Bolton is further evidence of this. Today's New York Times editorial makes this point very effectively. I urge you to go read the entire editorial, but here are the concluding paragraphs:
The problem here from the beginning has been that Mr. Bush clearly has little respect for either the United Nations or international diplomacy in general.
There is plenty to complain about at the United Nations, but real work happens there, and it requires the services of men and women who know how to wring agreement out of a group of wildly different and extremely self-interested representatives. The president has not just sent the United Nations what Senator Christopher Dodd accurately termed "damaged goods." In Mr. Bolton, he has selected goods that weren't appropriate for the task even before the Senate began to hold hearings - when Mr. Bolton's reputation was still in one piece.
The United Nations could certainly be improved, but Mr. Bolton is a poor candidate for a reformer. To make the institution better, the Bush administration would first have to show that it has a vision of what the U.N. could be. That vision has to begin by accepting the fact that nations other than the United States have a right to have a say, and sometimes take the lead.
[emphasis mine]
If anything at all came to light during the confirmation hearings, it was that Mr. Bolton's character and temperament are in no way, shape, or form those of a diplopmat. He simply doesn't have the necessary skills.
But is it possible that the Bush administration recognizes this, and that Bolton was chosen for precisely that reason? I may be entering conspiracy-theory territory here, but is it possible that Bolton was chosen in order to make sure that real reform of the UN does not take place? What if he was set up to fail?
We know that the Bush administration does not respect the UN. Their task, then, is to get the rest of the U.S. to see the UN the same way they do. What better way to do this than to send in someone who has been hyped-up by them as the man who is up to the task of reforming the UN. Then, when he tries and fails, they can throw up their hands in mock exasperation and say, "We tried! We tried our best to fix it, but the UN is simply broken beyond repair. Nothing more can be done." This would then give them an excuse to withdraw from the UN entirely, which would effectively kill it.
Now then, if this really is the intention of the Bush inner circle, could they have possibly found a better man for the job than John Bolton?
Ask yourself, given everything you've seen this administration do in the past four years, especially in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, is this theory really all that farfetched?