Locke and Load

"Culture Of Inaction"

I knew very little of John Bolton during his confirmation battle in the Senate for U.N. Ambassador, and the whole thing never really made it onto my radar screen. I mean this was for Ambassador to the U.N. BFD.

But this is the best take on the U.N. I have ever heard. This guy not only has that place pegged, but has the right attitude about how to deal with it. First, what it is:

"It's exactly what I expected," he said. "It does move in many ways that lead you to think it's caught in a time warp, with discussions they could have had in the '60s, '70s, '80s."
Referring to obsolete mandates and bodies, he said: "Even though the Cold War is over and many of these issues are over, frankly, the mind-set in the U.N. complex hasn't changed much. I don't think that it's a philosophical point of view. ... There is a culture of inaction."

And what to do?

During a luncheon with reporters and editors at The Washington Times, U.N. Ambassador John R. Bolton said repeatedly that the Bush administration requires nothing less than "a revolution of reform" at the world body, encompassing everything from U.N. Security Council engagement to management changes to a focus on administrative skills in choosing the next secretary-general.
The United Nations, he said, "has got to be a place to solve problems that need solving, rather than a place where problems go, never to emerge."
He added: "In the United States, there is a broadly shared view that the U.N. is one of many potential instruments to advance U.S. issues, and we have to decide whether a particular issue is best done through the U.N. or best done through some other mechanism.

In other words, stop opposing everything we want or we'll work around you.

And this really sums it up from the American perspective:

Mr. Bolton said yesterday that the United States pays 22 percent of the regular U.N. budget, yet has only one vote out of 191 cast.
"We have one-half of 1 percent of the total [votes], meaning we pay 44 times more than our voting power," he said.
"My priority is to give the United States the kind of influence it should have. Everybody pursues their national interests. The only one who gets blamed for it is the United States."

At least for this American.

posted by The Man @ 6:55 PM