BOLTONISM.(The Talk of the Town)(John Bolton)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 21-MAR-05

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COPYRIGHT 2005 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

Barring a sudden and improbable outbreak of independent judgment in the Senate, John Bolton will soon be confirmed as President Bush's Ambassador to the United Nations, an institution he openly disdains. "It is a President's prerogative to name his ambassadors," Secretary-General Kofi Annan meekly told reporters last week. When he was asked whether he saw the nomination as a hostile act, he laughed and said, "I'm not sure I want to be drawn on that one." At U.N. headquarters, staffers walked around in a daze of disbelief. They had hoped that Bush's congenial European trip--combined with the U.N.'s moves toward internal reform and its indispensable role in pulling off the Iraqi elections--would spawn a U.S.-U.N. detente. Then came word that Bush was sending them Bolton.

"I'm pro-American," Bolton says, as if that required him to be anti-world. He dismisses the U.N.'s tools for promoting peace and security. International law? "It is a big mistake for us to grant any validity to international...

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