Former Ambassador Bolton shows U.N. no quarter in speech at PU

By David Walter, Special Writer
   In a Monday speech at Princeton University, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton offered an unsparing critique of his former workplace and rejected the notion that the United States must adjust its practices to suit the U.N.’s views.
   ”What you discuss in an international body seems to me as something that should not be used as an end run around domestic political practices, especially in democratic countries,” Mr. Bolton told a capacity audience at the Woodrow Wilson School.
   Mr. Bolton, who served as ambassador from 2005 to 2006, said that “norming” — the idea that all countries should conform to an international consensus created by the U.N. — represented a growing threat to American democracy.
   ”There are elements within the American political system that aren’t getting what they want out of the American political process,” Mr. Bolton said. “And in what I have to say is a pretty ingenious political maneuver, they are trying to take these debates out of the context of our national political debate and internationalize them.”
   The goal, Mr. Bolton said, is to guilt the United States into changing its positions on controversial topics.
   ”They say, ‘How can you be in favor of the death penalty when the U.N. overwhelmingly opposes the death penalty?’ Or, ‘How can you be for abortion when the U.N. overwhelmingly opposes abortion?’”
   Mr. Bolton argued the U.S. only has a responsibility to its own Constitution and political process.
   He said he found “this entire ‘norming’ exercise fundamentally illegitimate, and I’d like to think that the Founding Fathers would have as well.”
   At his time at the U.N., Mr. Bolton made institutional reform a major priority but often found his efforts frustrated.
   One of Mr. Bolton’s biggest projects was a revamping of the U.N.’s Human Rights Commission, which had come under severe criticism for including among its members notoriously oppressive states such as Sudan.
   ”All agreed that the Human Rights Commission was a travesty,” Mr. Bolton said. “So we and our European friends put together a series of institutional changes which together held out the promise of an organization that at least cared about human rights as opposed to a body that defended the record of the world’s grossest human rights abusers.”
   Mr. Bolton said that the Europeans began to back down after a number of countries, including China and Russia, objected to the new plan as too strict in its criteria for accepting members to the new Human Rights Council.
   ”I knew that the game was over when our European friends gave up this procedural reform: We had recommended, and they agreed, that no government should serve on the new Human Rights Council if it was the subject of Security Council sanctions for gross abuses of human rights or support of terrorism.”
   The United States voted against the new council, joining only Israel, Palau and the Marshall Islands in opposition to the plan.
   ”I think it was one of my proudest moments at the U.N.,” he said.
   Mr. Bolton’s vote drew significant criticism from those who argued that even the watered-down changes represented a necessary first step for greater reform. But Mr. Bolton stood by his decision.
   ”We were absolutely right. This new body is as bad or worse than the body that preceded it. And that’s not just my opinion, that’s the opinion of the editorial pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post. So our European friends — you can suck that one up and get used to it,” Mr. Bolton said.
   Mr. Bolton’s frequently blunt language has earned him admirers and enemies alike in both in New York and Washington. President George W. Bush named Mr. Bolton to the U.N. post as a recess appointment after Senate Democrats filibustered his official nomination.
   Now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington think tank, Mr. Bolton said he continues to push for change of an ineffective U.N. system.
   ”There is only one reform that will make any sort of difference. That’s to switch from a system of mandatory or assessed contributions (for nations funding the UN) to a system of voluntary contributions,” he said.
   Mr. Bolton said that organizations such as UNICEF and the World Health Organization, which already rely on voluntary contributions, have been the most transparent and responsible of all U.N. bodies.
   ”My radical reform is that we can pay for what we want, and insist that we get what we pay for,” he said. “How about that?”