Debating Bolton at the UN

Unsurprisingly, I’ve received plenty of pushback on yesterday’s post regarding John Bolton’s tenure at the UN. A very well-informed reader argues that Security Council activity levels and resolutions are a poor indication of Bolton’s diplomatic impact and that his true colors emerged in the informal consultations that are the bread-and-butter of UN diplomacy:

Where a PermRep (and any other diplomat posted to New York) shows his or her character, and where most of the work is done, is in negotiations leading up to votes in the Security Council or General Assembly. By every account I’ve either read (see Mark Malloch Brown’s book last year, or James Traub’s on Annan) or heard from people who firsthand dealt with Bolton while he was the PermRep, he was a "blow the place up" negotiator who gave little thought to how his maximalist positions, delivered maximally, would actually drive the negotiations. He stepped back from the social engagements that other PermReps use to build relationships with their colleagues from other countries, and thus didn’t have a well of connections to draw upon. 

Over at UN Dispatch, Mark Goldberg revisits some of his reporting from 2005 to argue that, in fact, Bolton had to be restrained by Washington from damaging excesses:

When left to his own devices, Bolton did, in fact, try to impose his hard-edge ideology on debates at the United Nations. He just did not get away with it because he still had to take orders from a Secretary of State (Condoleezza Rice) who was much more pragmatic than Bolton. In fact, when things got really bad Kofi Annan would telephone Rice and ask her to reign in Amb. Bolton. And she did.

These are important points. And to be clear, I do not believe that Bolton was a particularly effective UN ambassador (or that he should be Secretary of State). My point was much more modest–that the pressure of events and the demands of diplomacy tend to blunt the edges of even those with strong ideological committments. I cited Security Council resolutions as evidence that however much Bolton may have been perceived as a "blow-the-place-up" guy, he didn’t really do so. In fact, the Security Council continued with much of its routine work. What’s more, as I tried to argue, Bolton was not actually a maximalist when it came to key issues such as Iran or North Korea. Much as his predecessors had, he engaged in give-and-take with the key Council members and reached compromises that Washington could live with.

To be fair to my critics, the Security Council itself is the least offensive part of the UN to Bolton and the forum where his hostility to the organization was least obvious. Unlike in the General Assembly, the U.S. has the veto power and the players are mostly those whose concerns Washington would have to consider in any case.  As my critics correctly point out, there is all the difference in the world between being an ambassador largely following instructions and a Secretary of State drafting instructions for ambassadors around the world. There’s no doubt that as secretary Bolton would have much more leeway to advance his vision than he did as ambassador.