Guest Column
John Bolton’s Appointment Would Destroy State Department Credibility
- 15 December 2004
- By Gabriel Espinosa Gonzalez, COHA Research Associate.
• With court confidante Condoleezza Rice soon to be at the helm of the State Department, the possible ascension of ultraconservative political appointee John Bolton will stress the Bush administration’s conversion of the agency from a relatively passive and ineffective dissenter under Colin Powell, to an aggressive crusader for the administration’s ideologically-driven foreign policy agenda in the second term.
• In conjunction with new CIA director Porter Goss, who has instructed subordinates to “not identify with, support or champion opposition to the administration or its policies,” Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield, Rice and possibly Bolton as the top officials at State, the Bush administration almost certainly will maintain its unilateral and bullying approach to foreign policy making.
• Bolton is ill-suited for the position of Deputy Secretary of State, due to a career characterized by a reflexive animosity for global cooperation, multilateral institutions, alliance building, international law and consensus making.
• Bolton’s constant battering of what he views as the “demonic” forces of the left can only further erode Washington’s deteriorating standing with moderate and more ideological left-of center Latin American governments.
On November 17, 1997,
the Wall Street Journal published an Op-Ed in which the author
expressed, in unequivocal terms, his intemperate and dismissive attitude
towards Washington’s adherence to multilateral international accords,
writing “treaties are law only for U.S. domestic purposes. In their
international operation, treaties are simply political obligations." The
author of this piece, whose conclusions were widely disputed by individuals
far more knowledgeable on the subject than himself, is current
Undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton, the
man now being mentioned to replace Richard Armitage as Deputy Secretary of
State under Condoleezza Rice and an unwavering neoconservative ideologue in
the most ultra sense of the word. Ultraright elements in the White House,
the Pentagon and Congress are strongly pushing for Bolton to be nominated,
for they see in him the ideal candidate to help Rice mold the State
Department to their profile. Such an appointment will assure that State
officials will harmonize their thrust with the rest of the Bush
administration’s ideologically-driven foreign policy agenda.
For a government agency whose stated mission is to “create a more secure,
democratic, and prosperous world for the benefit of the American people and
the international community,” to have as one of its chief policymakers a man
who whose career reads as a what-not-to-do handbook on consensus building
and international diplomacy, would be totally incomprehensible. In fact, it
is nearly unfathomable to imagine a candidate less qualified and more
ill-prepared for the State Department’s second highest-ranking position and
dangerous to long-term U.S. national interests as Bolton.
The singularity of the stand that he has taken over the years on a wide
range of issues underlines this claim. His nomination will signify to the
world that Washington believes
constructive engagement is neither required nor desirable for self-serving
U.S. objectives to prevail.
Talk Forcefully and
Carry a Big Stick
Throughout his career in both the public and private sector, John Bolton has
demonstrated a disturbingly constant tendency to disregard facts, as well as
a self-righteous attitude towards achieving selfish and even dangerous
foreign policy goals, always seen through the prism of a U.S. unilateral
agenda. In 2001, at the onset of the Bush administration, Bolton set the
tone for what would turn out to be his unique contribution when he
pontificated that, “It is a big mistake for us to grant any validity to
international law even when it may seem in our short-term interest to do so
– because, over the long term, the goal of those who think that
international law really means anything are those who want to constrict the
United States.”
Accordingly, in an article published in the Winter 1998 issue of the
conservative journal The National Interest, Bolton
expanded on his vehement opposition to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
In it, he reasoned that if
Washington were to ratify the accord, it would limit this country’s foreign
policy initiatives, since “the president, the cabinet officers who comprise
the National Security Council, and other senior civilian and military
leaders responsible for our defense and foreign policy,” would become “the
potential targets of the politically unaccountable Prosecutor created in
Rome.” What he failed to consider is that prosecution before the ICC would
be reserved as a last resort to redress blatantly criminal behavior such as
genocide; his words suggest that, according to his view, Washington’s
actions should not be restricted by or put to the test of any notion of
international legality or, for that matter, morality.
In support of his position he goes on to criticize Judge Baltasar Garzón for
having the audacity to attempt to detain and extradite Augusto Pinochet
during a trip that the former Chilean dictator was making to the U.K. The
famed Spanish jurist wanted Pinochet to be brought to Spain to stand trial
for a number of Spanish victims among the estimated 3,000 killings and
missing-persons cases blamed on Pinochet’s rule. According to Bolton, after
seventeen years of military dictatorship, several thousand forced
disappearances, institutionalized torture and politically motivated
assassinations under Pinochet, “Chileans made their choice, and have lived
with it.” This type of callous and uninformed assessment of the situation
reflects the type of prescriptive policymaking Bolton
calls for towards the region and indeed the world.
A major component of Bolton’s
foreign policy agenda has focused on a strict advocacy of structural market
reforms meant to further enrich multinational corporations at the expense of
efforts aimed at significantly improving basic living standard in developing
countries. His position on the subject is starkly evident in a June 25, 1995
Op-Ed published in the Washington Times in which he criticized the
Clinton administration for continued funding of “programs on international
population control and environmental matters rather than fundamental
economic policy reforms in developing countries” and further assailed then
Vice-President Al Gore for his “preference for condoms and trees instead of
markets.” These will be the types of initiatives that are sure to gain
credence if Bolton is chosen as the State Department’s second in command.
In the aforementioned The National Interest article, Bolton
also briefly refers to Washington’s
decision to withdraw from the mandatory jurisdiction of the International
Court of Justice (ICJ), the predecessor to the ICC. In 1986, the ICJ ruled
that the U.S. had violated its obligations not to use force against and not
to violate the sovereignty of another state as a result of its continued
“military and paramilitary operations in and against” Nicaragua’s Sandinista
government. Instead of Washington abiding by the ruling – in other words,
accepting responsibility for what was found to be its criminal behavior –
the Reagan administration decided to ignore the court’s decision. Washington
continued to support the Contras’ violent insurgency against a government
with which Washington had full diplomatic relations, until the Sandinistas
were democratically defeated (with the U.S. providing major funding for the
opposition) in the country’s 1990 presidential elections. Bolton
refers to the ICJ’s ruling as “erroneous,” a position that is consistent
with his belief that the White House must be free to act without restriction
or fear of reprisal.
As Assistant Attorney General, a position he held from 1985 to 1989, he was
also instrumental in Justice Department efforts to withhold information
regarding the Iran-Contra affair, which included his own personal notes on
the scandal, and aided Congressional Republicans who were hard at work
attempting to obstruct ongoing investigations into alleged Contra drug
smuggling. He even went as far as to call an unauthorized press conference
in which he lashed out at the investigating special prosecutors, leading
then White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater, acting on behalf of the same
government officials Bolton
was defending, to refer to him and his actions as “intemperate and
contentious.”
No Evidence? Just
Make it Up
One of Bolton’s most outlandish public charges, but one that is
quintessential of his method of operation, was his May 6, 2002 claim that
not only did Cuba possess “at least a limited offensive biological warfare
research development effort,” but that, indeed, it had provided such
technology to “other rogue states.”
Bolton’s career preoccupation with
Cuba-bashing was now aimed at attempting to have the Castro regime included
among President Bush’s infamous Axis of Evil category. In what amounted to
little more than preaching to the choir, Bolton
presented his thesis to an audience at the conservative Heritage Foundation.
As it turned out, his charges were so bereft of any substance or even a
tincture of verisimilitude that even his Bush administration colleagues
rushed to disavow any association with them. In addition to refutations by
both Secretary of State Colin Powell (who said “we didn’t actually say it
[Cuba] had some weapons”) and former commander-in-chief of the U.S. Southern
Command Gen. Charles Wilhelm (who stated he had never received any evidence
to support Bolton’s claim and that he was within the loop for such
privileged information), even Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfield indicated
to reporters that he was unaware of any links connecting Cuba’s biomedical
industry to bio-weaponry research.
Despite being called upon to do so by several Senators, Bolton refused to
attend a Senate hearing where he could present any evidence of Cuba’s
alleged bioweapons program, a rather telltale admission that he would be
unable to substantiate his charge under sworn testimony. The dearth of any
compelling evidence linking Cuba’s
highly lauded pharmaceutical industry to terrorism was eventually confirmed
by a 2004 wide-ranging Congressional investigation into government
intelligence estimates, which peeled away at the last vestiges of
credibility behind Bolton’s
assertions.
Career Highlights
Bolton’s 2002 Cuba charge is emblematic of his contempt for the facts and
his shoot-from-the-hip style for which he has become infamous. In fact, a
scrutiny of Bolton’s professional career reveals why he has become such a
favorite among hardline neoconservatives. Not only are his positions on a
wide range of issues stridently to the right of mainstream opinion – even by
the standards of this administration – he also has shown an uncontrollable
need to engage in hyperbole, and, on more than one occasion, outright
prevarication. Fortunately for his critics, his excesses, coupled with his
possessing perhaps the most radicalized ideological profile in the senior
ranks of the State Department or in indeed perhaps the entire Bush
administration, are predictive of his habitually skewed way of thinking.
At a 1994 panel discussion sponsored by the World Federalist Association,
for example, he stated “There is no such thing as the United Nations,”
spookily adding “'if the U.N. secretary building in New York lost 10
stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference.” If anything, Bolton’s
comments regarding the UN may have been born more out of wishful thinking
than anything else, considering that he has always viewed the world body as
an illegitimate and bothersome restraint on what he believes is Washington’s
inviolable right of unilateral action. In a direct attack on the UN’s
ability to restrict the use of force, published in the Weekly Standard
in 1999 under the title Kofi Annan’s UN Power Grab, he reasserted his
scriptural fidelity to unilateralism, writing that if Washington were to
overly legitimize the UN, “its discretion in using force to advance its
national interests is likely to be inhibited in the future."
Bolton’s unqualified attacks on his chosen targets continued in 1999 when,
following the Senate defeat of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, a
gloating Bolton characterized supporters of the ban as “misguided
individuals following a timid and neo-pacifist line of thought.” In 2002 he
went so far as to directly challenge Washington’s long-standing pledge to
limit a nuclear response only to attacks from a nuclear-armed foe, calling
any such agreement “an unrealistic view of the international situation.”
More recently, Bolton has targeted two prominent and reputable international
figures as part of his vindictive campaign against all those who oppose the
White House’s aggressive unilateral foreign policy agenda. Both Mohamed
ElBaradei, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and
Hans Blix, head of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection
Commission, had criticized the U.S. invasion of Iraq, characterizing it as
premature and unjustified, and consequently Bolton is adamant about their
removal. On December 12, the Washington Post reported that ElBaradei
has earned Bolton’s ire as a result of both his Iraq position as well as for
his commitment to reaching a negotiated settlement regarding Iran nuclear
programs. Bolton has been instrumental in having the CIA and the NSA spy on
both men, hoping to discover evidence that would lead to their removal from
their posts.
Diplomacy: Just Say
No
During a 2001 UN Conference on Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light
Weapons, Bolton once again came out with all guns blazing, telling delegates
that Washington was opposed to any move to restrict civilian access to
weapons or a treaty that would serve to “abrogat[e] the constitutional right
to bear arms.” This extension of NRA-type thinking into the international
sphere effectively undermines even preliminary attempts to demilitarize such
ongoing conflicts like those now seen in Colombia and the Sudan as well as
multilateral efforts to combat astronomically high rates of gun-related
crime in Latin America and elsewhere by curtailing the illegal shipment of
small arms from the U.S. to the region.
His lack of diplomatic tact was again on display later that year, when he
scuttled efforts to add a negotiated verification process to an
international bio-weapons ban, by telling other conference participants that
the provision was, “dead, dead, dead, and I don't want it coming back from
the dead." He saw no discrepancy between his accusations against Cuba and
his negative stand on the international bioweapons ban. Additionally,
following the Bush administration’s decision to withdraw from the ICC,
Bolton asked and was granted permission to sign his name on the letter
notifying the UN of Washington’s actions, which was somewhat bizarre since
he had played no official role in the decision-making process. The move was
simply symbolic, a need for a zealot to be heard: as he later told the Wall
Street Journal, it was “the happiest moment of [his] government service.”
Not surprisingly, according to Bolton’s view, constitutional protections of
the right of free speech do not appear to carry the same weight as the
precious right to bear arms. This is particularly true when political
dissent stands in direct opposition to his myopic worldview. Regarding his
ill-temper towards civic participation in the policymaking process, he
criticized "the promotion of international advocacy activity by
international or non-governmental organizations."
Latin America has
Much to Fear
If Bush nominates Bolton to the second highest-ranking position at the State
Department, and if the latter survives what will likely be a very difficult
Senate confirmation process under the scrutiny of Senate Foreign Relations
Committee Chairman Richard Lugar (R-IN), the decision will have markedly
long-lasting repercussions in Latin America. Washington’s bilateral
relations with the newly emerging coalition of left-of-center governments in
Caracas, Brasilia, Buenos Aires and Montevideo, among others, likely will
rapidly sour, as the latter will accurately interpret Bolton’s ascension as
reflecting a significant shift of U.S. foreign policy much further to the
right than has been in evidence even during the last four difficult years
under Bush. Bolton’s past actions and public record have demonstrated that
he is either oblivious to or unconcerned with the root causes for Latin
America’s many ills, such as its pressing need for socioeconomic and
governmental reforms and its possessing the most skewed wealth distribution
in the world.
Bolton has otherwise focused on counterproductive quick-fix solutions that
usually end up only responding to Washington’s narrow self interests, such
as blind adherence to neoliberal reforms, while leaving a majority of Latin
Americans worse off than before. Furthermore, his overriding obsession with
U.S. dominance and the protection of its power, his nostalgia for Cold
War-era tactics and his fervent backing of every one of Washington’s
frequent interventions in the region will likely signify a quick death for
whatever constructive dialogue might have been possible between Washington
and a continent increasingly skeptical of the former’s goodwill regarding
its basic regional interests.
This analysis was prepared by Gabriel Espinosa Gonzalez, COHA Research Associate.
December 15,
2004
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