Our Man in the Twilight Zone: An interview with Ambassador John Bolton
Harold's List
BY BRET STEPHENS
Saturday, September 17, 2005
NEW YORK--It is Tuesday morning, Sept. 6, the day before Paul Volcker is to present his full report on the U.N.'s Oil for Food scandal. It's an 847-page catalog of U.N. malfeasance, incompetence, corruption and arrogance. Among other unflattering disclosures: Kofi Annan knew about, but did not report, Iraqi violations of the sanctions regime, a clear breach of his fiduciary duties as secretary-general. But none of this seems to especially distress him or his staff. Instead, their main worry seems to be how to stage-manage the event to keep John Bolton from reaching for the microphone. The secretary-general's office lets it be known that it expects only Mr. Annan and Mr. Volcker to speak. A behind-the-scenes effort is launched to dissuade other Security Council members from making statements, thereby isolating the U.S. Mr. Volcker's press conference is arranged in the middle of the Security Council's public session as a way of distracting the media's attention.
The scheme almost goes according to plan--until the U.S. delegation gets wind of it. "We called the Secretariat and said, 'You're damn right we're speaking,' " recounts a U.S. diplomatic source. Indeed, if Mr. Bolton's shop at the U.N. has a motto, "We're Speaking" is surely it.
In the seven weeks since Mr. Bolton arrived in New York, he has denounced the United Nations Development Program for its "unacceptable" funding of Palestinian propaganda and publicly fingered "dozens of countries who are in a state of denial" about the need for U.N. reform. Working at the U.N., he tells me as we chat over coffee in his nondescript midtown Manhattan office, "feels a little like Rod Serling has suddenly appeared and we're writing episodes from 'The Twilight Zone.' " Does he feel even a little bruised by his five-month confirmation saga, in which hostile witnesses described him as a "kiss-up, kick-down sort of guy" and which ended, after a Democratic filibuster, in a recess appointment? "No way," he answers flatly. In person, the 56-year-old diplomat does not come across as the pit bull of leftist caricature. He is neither brash nor pompous and not remotely oily, though it would be a stretch to describe him as charming.
What comes across, instead, is a kind of relentlessness. He talks about "going 24-7" in negotiations and actually means it: Our interview was initially planned for 7:30 a.m. on Labor Day. (Mercifully, it was pushed back a few hours.) He has a lawyerly regard for fine print, but his basic idea of diplomacy is advocacy. "It's not just a question of stability and relations and calming troubled waters," he says about the role of an ambassador. "I'd like to advance American interests and ideals at the United Nations." In doing so, he's fighting battles on several fronts.
First front: the permanent U.N. bureaucracy headed by Mr. Annan. "The Oil for Food program is, for many Americans, a tangible symbol of what's wrong with management at the United Nations," Mr. Bolton says. "And I think the most troubling lesson is that that kind of activity didn't spring up overnight. It comes from a culture that already exists here at the U.N."
For illustration, Mr. Bolton points to the career of Vladimir Kuznetsov. Until his arrest by the FBI earlier this month, the Russian national was chairman of the U.N.'s Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions, which sounds obscure but is the U.N. equivalent of the White House's Office of Management and Budget. During the course of Mr. Volcker's investigation, it was discovered that another Russian national, a procurement officer named Alexander Yakovlev, had traded secret bidding information for bribes, netting $950,000 from $79 million worth of U.N. business. Mr. Yakovlev's arrest in August led U.S. investigators to Mr. Kuznetsov, who allegedly set up an offshore company to handle his cut of Mr. Yakovlev's spoils.
"Within the U.N. world, arresting Kuznetsov is just an absolute thermonuclear explosion," says a U.S. diplomatic source, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case. "When you have the guy responsible for the good governance of the U.N. system doing this, what does that tell you about the rest of what's going on?"
So what does Mr. Bolton intend to do about the bureaucracy? He wants to rationalize the way it works, eliminate duplication, insist on better oversight, apply some American muscle to make that happen: "We can't be shy when we're giving 22% of the base budget of the United Nations from making clear we have strong feelings about this."
His other way of dealing with the bureaucracy is to talk right past it. Prior to his arrival in New York on Aug. 1, the U.S. had been struggling to make its views known on the so-called Outcome Document--a statement of U.N. goals, methods and principles envisioned as a kind of new U.N. charter. The U.N. had arranged an opaque "facilitation" process to get just the document it wanted.
"We had been consistently making very detailed comments to the facilitators," explains Mr. Bolton, waving a marked-up document predating his arrival. "The problem was the facilitators were not taking our changes. So what I did was write a 'Dear Colleague' letter to all 190 missions. I laid out our general principles, took them through the changes we were proposing, and then showed them the kind of line-by-line changes we were going to make."
All in all, Mr. Bolton's changes numbered in the hundreds. "That's what diplomats do," he says. "When you have disagreements you sit down and negotiate. That's not what we were doing in the facilitator process."
This brings Mr. Bolton to his second front in the struggle for U.N. reform. "A lot of what we have in mind when we talk about U.N. reform is not just better management practices; we're also talking about the conduct of member governments. . . . The U.N. is an international organization and its member governments need to hold the Secretariat accountable." There are two difficulties here, however. First, member governments have shown little or no interest in a well-functioning U.N. bureaucracy--and not a little interest in one that remains dysfunctional and corrupt. Indeed, the main reason the Oil for Food scam grew so vast and lucrative is that countries such as China, France and Russia tacitly conspired with U.N. bureaucrats to turn a blind eye to Saddam Hussein's abuses and avail themselves of his favors.
The second difficulty is ideological. Throughout our interview, Mr. Bolton speaks repeatedly of "old thinking," "age-old controversies" and "decades-old concepts." One such concept is the U.N.'s goal of getting rich countries to spend 0.7% of their GDP on official development assistance. "The levels of ODA assistance don't necessarily tell you anything about the effectiveness of the development policies of the recipient country," he says. "The main thing they need is sound economic policy domestically, not hostile to foreign investment, open to foreign trade and open to international markets."
Mr. Bolton's logic is compelling, especially given how much of past Western largesse to the Third World ended up in numbered Geneva bank accounts. But there's a hiccup: The rest of the world is besotted by 0.7%. The nonaligned movement insists on 0.7% as the price of agreeing to "reform," for reasons that are well-comprehended. The Europeans also like it, in part because some of the smaller countries actually approach the target, in part because it is a handy way of scoring the U.S. (ODA: 0.16%) for its alleged stinginess. Mr. Bolton says it's "fantasy" to think countries are going to agree to what they do not agree with, as the U.S. does not agree with 0.7%. Yet when a fantasy takes place in fantasyland--that is, when the U.N. talks about 0.7%--it acquires a kind of plausibility and even the force of necessity, like a magic broom in a Harry Potter novel.
In other words, it remains to be seen whether it isn't Mr. Bolton who turns out to be the fantasy here, while the U.N. perdures as it has for 60 years and through countless "reform" bids. That's certainly one conclusion to draw from the results of this week's U.N. summit. The Outcome Document to which the administration eventually acquiesced crosses no American red lines: "The main thing about this document is that it's not as bad as it could have been," says a senior administration official. But it's easy to imagine Mr. Bolton gagging over much of it. On management reform, for instance, the document "commends the Secretary General's previous and ongoing efforts to enhance the effective management of the United Nations." Apparently, the Volcker report has already been forgotten. In our interview, Mr. Bolton insists that the current document is just the beginning: "Reform is not a one-night stand," he says. "Reform is forever." It's a good line, and there can be no doubt that while John Bolton remains U.S. ambassador--he has 17 months to go--he'll continue to roll the reform rock up the U.N. mountain. There's a myth about that. It inspires admiration for the hero. It does not inspire hopefulness about the outcome.
John Bolton is Sisyphus in the Twilight Zone.
Mr. Stephens is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board.
BY BRET STEPHENS
Saturday, September 17, 2005
NEW YORK--It is Tuesday morning, Sept. 6, the day before Paul Volcker is to present his full report on the U.N.'s Oil for Food scandal. It's an 847-page catalog of U.N. malfeasance, incompetence, corruption and arrogance. Among other unflattering disclosures: Kofi Annan knew about, but did not report, Iraqi violations of the sanctions regime, a clear breach of his fiduciary duties as secretary-general. But none of this seems to especially distress him or his staff. Instead, their main worry seems to be how to stage-manage the event to keep John Bolton from reaching for the microphone. The secretary-general's office lets it be known that it expects only Mr. Annan and Mr. Volcker to speak. A behind-the-scenes effort is launched to dissuade other Security Council members from making statements, thereby isolating the U.S. Mr. Volcker's press conference is arranged in the middle of the Security Council's public session as a way of distracting the media's attention.
The scheme almost goes according to plan--until the U.S. delegation gets wind of it. "We called the Secretariat and said, 'You're damn right we're speaking,' " recounts a U.S. diplomatic source. Indeed, if Mr. Bolton's shop at the U.N. has a motto, "We're Speaking" is surely it.
In the seven weeks since Mr. Bolton arrived in New York, he has denounced the United Nations Development Program for its "unacceptable" funding of Palestinian propaganda and publicly fingered "dozens of countries who are in a state of denial" about the need for U.N. reform. Working at the U.N., he tells me as we chat over coffee in his nondescript midtown Manhattan office, "feels a little like Rod Serling has suddenly appeared and we're writing episodes from 'The Twilight Zone.' " Does he feel even a little bruised by his five-month confirmation saga, in which hostile witnesses described him as a "kiss-up, kick-down sort of guy" and which ended, after a Democratic filibuster, in a recess appointment? "No way," he answers flatly. In person, the 56-year-old diplomat does not come across as the pit bull of leftist caricature. He is neither brash nor pompous and not remotely oily, though it would be a stretch to describe him as charming.
What comes across, instead, is a kind of relentlessness. He talks about "going 24-7" in negotiations and actually means it: Our interview was initially planned for 7:30 a.m. on Labor Day. (Mercifully, it was pushed back a few hours.) He has a lawyerly regard for fine print, but his basic idea of diplomacy is advocacy. "It's not just a question of stability and relations and calming troubled waters," he says about the role of an ambassador. "I'd like to advance American interests and ideals at the United Nations." In doing so, he's fighting battles on several fronts.
First front: the permanent U.N. bureaucracy headed by Mr. Annan. "The Oil for Food program is, for many Americans, a tangible symbol of what's wrong with management at the United Nations," Mr. Bolton says. "And I think the most troubling lesson is that that kind of activity didn't spring up overnight. It comes from a culture that already exists here at the U.N."
For illustration, Mr. Bolton points to the career of Vladimir Kuznetsov. Until his arrest by the FBI earlier this month, the Russian national was chairman of the U.N.'s Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions, which sounds obscure but is the U.N. equivalent of the White House's Office of Management and Budget. During the course of Mr. Volcker's investigation, it was discovered that another Russian national, a procurement officer named Alexander Yakovlev, had traded secret bidding information for bribes, netting $950,000 from $79 million worth of U.N. business. Mr. Yakovlev's arrest in August led U.S. investigators to Mr. Kuznetsov, who allegedly set up an offshore company to handle his cut of Mr. Yakovlev's spoils.
"Within the U.N. world, arresting Kuznetsov is just an absolute thermonuclear explosion," says a U.S. diplomatic source, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case. "When you have the guy responsible for the good governance of the U.N. system doing this, what does that tell you about the rest of what's going on?"
So what does Mr. Bolton intend to do about the bureaucracy? He wants to rationalize the way it works, eliminate duplication, insist on better oversight, apply some American muscle to make that happen: "We can't be shy when we're giving 22% of the base budget of the United Nations from making clear we have strong feelings about this."
His other way of dealing with the bureaucracy is to talk right past it. Prior to his arrival in New York on Aug. 1, the U.S. had been struggling to make its views known on the so-called Outcome Document--a statement of U.N. goals, methods and principles envisioned as a kind of new U.N. charter. The U.N. had arranged an opaque "facilitation" process to get just the document it wanted.
"We had been consistently making very detailed comments to the facilitators," explains Mr. Bolton, waving a marked-up document predating his arrival. "The problem was the facilitators were not taking our changes. So what I did was write a 'Dear Colleague' letter to all 190 missions. I laid out our general principles, took them through the changes we were proposing, and then showed them the kind of line-by-line changes we were going to make."
All in all, Mr. Bolton's changes numbered in the hundreds. "That's what diplomats do," he says. "When you have disagreements you sit down and negotiate. That's not what we were doing in the facilitator process."
This brings Mr. Bolton to his second front in the struggle for U.N. reform. "A lot of what we have in mind when we talk about U.N. reform is not just better management practices; we're also talking about the conduct of member governments. . . . The U.N. is an international organization and its member governments need to hold the Secretariat accountable." There are two difficulties here, however. First, member governments have shown little or no interest in a well-functioning U.N. bureaucracy--and not a little interest in one that remains dysfunctional and corrupt. Indeed, the main reason the Oil for Food scam grew so vast and lucrative is that countries such as China, France and Russia tacitly conspired with U.N. bureaucrats to turn a blind eye to Saddam Hussein's abuses and avail themselves of his favors.
The second difficulty is ideological. Throughout our interview, Mr. Bolton speaks repeatedly of "old thinking," "age-old controversies" and "decades-old concepts." One such concept is the U.N.'s goal of getting rich countries to spend 0.7% of their GDP on official development assistance. "The levels of ODA assistance don't necessarily tell you anything about the effectiveness of the development policies of the recipient country," he says. "The main thing they need is sound economic policy domestically, not hostile to foreign investment, open to foreign trade and open to international markets."
Mr. Bolton's logic is compelling, especially given how much of past Western largesse to the Third World ended up in numbered Geneva bank accounts. But there's a hiccup: The rest of the world is besotted by 0.7%. The nonaligned movement insists on 0.7% as the price of agreeing to "reform," for reasons that are well-comprehended. The Europeans also like it, in part because some of the smaller countries actually approach the target, in part because it is a handy way of scoring the U.S. (ODA: 0.16%) for its alleged stinginess. Mr. Bolton says it's "fantasy" to think countries are going to agree to what they do not agree with, as the U.S. does not agree with 0.7%. Yet when a fantasy takes place in fantasyland--that is, when the U.N. talks about 0.7%--it acquires a kind of plausibility and even the force of necessity, like a magic broom in a Harry Potter novel.
In other words, it remains to be seen whether it isn't Mr. Bolton who turns out to be the fantasy here, while the U.N. perdures as it has for 60 years and through countless "reform" bids. That's certainly one conclusion to draw from the results of this week's U.N. summit. The Outcome Document to which the administration eventually acquiesced crosses no American red lines: "The main thing about this document is that it's not as bad as it could have been," says a senior administration official. But it's easy to imagine Mr. Bolton gagging over much of it. On management reform, for instance, the document "commends the Secretary General's previous and ongoing efforts to enhance the effective management of the United Nations." Apparently, the Volcker report has already been forgotten. In our interview, Mr. Bolton insists that the current document is just the beginning: "Reform is not a one-night stand," he says. "Reform is forever." It's a good line, and there can be no doubt that while John Bolton remains U.S. ambassador--he has 17 months to go--he'll continue to roll the reform rock up the U.N. mountain. There's a myth about that. It inspires admiration for the hero. It does not inspire hopefulness about the outcome.
John Bolton is Sisyphus in the Twilight Zone.
Mr. Stephens is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board.
posted by Marko at 9/17/2005 07:25:00 PM
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