In what is, frankly, a brilliant essay, nadezhda mounts a "defense of John Bolton," in the wake of my and others' reaction to Bolton's undercutting of the draft proposal at the center of the upcoming UN Summit.
It's a long piece, but the central point seems to be that--beyond the sheer quantity of proposed US changes--the document had so many proposals so utterly incompatible with US positions (on, say, the ICC and the Kyoto Treaty) that it is unbelievable it survived so long in its current form. Apart from that, she offers a deep critique of the UN-centric development approach it proposes, especially when criticisms of the fossilized aid paradigms during the G-8 summit were so bitingly effective. Recreating that paradigm anew, but with the United Nations in the driver's seat, seems to be the wrong recipe.
Beginning with the end:
Unfortunately for the US' diplomatic position, Ambassador Bolton is the wrong person to be making the case for how and why the UN Summit draft needs to be changed. Stygius makes an excellent point -- the draft UN document as it currently stands is exactly the wrong sort of document for a major summit.
From the sound of it, a 39-page declaration of resolutions strikes me as utterly insane, drowning all of the urgent priorities in a sea of diplomatic ejaculation; but the immediate point is that waiting until just before a conference starts before deluging everyone else with proposed changes is a tactical maneuver to castrate the entire project before it even starts.
And that's the problem the US now has with Bolton in this position, because everyone assumes that he's simply engaging in obstructionist tactics. His reputation is such that he has little credibility presenting the American criticisms of what is claimed to represent a broad international consensus, even though such a consensus is bogus.
It is far too easy for those who would like to see the US squirm to make the US look bad via Bolton. I won't go so far as to say that those managing the drafting process at the UN set him (and the US) up with malice aforethought, but the more paranoid could make a case for that, since the inevitable result is going to be a great deal of finger-pointing and blame-casting. And who do you think the rest of the world is going to believe -- John Bolton and George Bush? Riiiiight...
It's more than possible that the document, apparently shepherded by UN General Assembly President Jean Ping, was designed to highlight faultlines between the developed and developing world when it comes to development policies. At first blush, Ping comes across as a genuine UN apparatchik, but I'm no expert on UN politics. Nonetheless, I continue to view the development issues as a sideshow to the more significant game in which Bolton wants to remain a player: policy control with the Bush Administration.
The plot thickens. The Guardian is framing it as the UK leading an international alliance against the Bush/Bolton forces of evil. Heh! I've just done another extensive post. This one less on the development angle and more on the raw-knuckle geopolitics.
Posted by: nadezhda | 28 August 2005 at 11:07 PM
The http://csmonitor.com/2005/0829/dailyUpdate.html target=_blank>CSMonitor has one of their nice roundups. It's looks like Jean Ping is being very responsive to the US, and so it seems he wants a document that will survive the Summit. Like you though, it's unbelievable that anyone would expect the US not to object to the ICC and Kyoto provisions -- even if you disagree with the US positions.
Given Bolton's past stance on genocide, though, I bet the US recommendation defanging a genocide provision will come back to haunt him though, especially if Lugar's SFRC ever gets Bolton back in front of it.
Posted by: Styg | 29 August 2005 at 11:14 AM
Ping will be the good "neutral scrivener" now that the battle has been joined. That's why I find the UK/EU position so interesting -- that's where the game will be played, but I'm quite unclear about what they really think they're going to be able to accomplish. It may be good geopolitics to frame this as US-against-the-world, but it's bogus.
Re genocide, my impression is that both the Russians and Chinese are also far from thrilled with the provision about the Security Council veto. And with "sovereignty" being such a touchy subject for a bunch of South countries, this may be another one of those EU/Canada/Scandinavian do-gooder provisions that actually doesn't have a lot of support.
Regardless of what you think about the proposal, however, if the US is not going to support it, this may be one of those items where Bolton should just let some other members of the Security Council play bad cop. He doesn't have to be Dr Nyet on every last point of contention, even if it may be emotionally satisfying for him personally!
Posted by: nadezhda | 29 August 2005 at 03:56 PM
Just to keep you fully au courant. I've updated my most recent post for coverage from the Economist. It's a pretty balanced piece. None of the breathless prose of the Guardian.
As I explain in my update, the explanation the Economist provides for why the US wants to strike references to the MDGs is consistent with my earlier speculations re the politics of the development agenda, although the Economist doesn't address the Sachs proposals directly.
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