WASHINGTON—Much of the Senate confirmation hearing on John R. Bolton's nomination to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations will center on his writings and statements about the United Nations, international treaties and multilateralism.
Here's a sample:
"There is no such thing as the United Nations ... There is an international community that occasionally can be led by the only real power left in the world and that is the United States when it suits our interests and we can get others to go along. And I think it would be a real mistake to count on the U.N. as if it is some disembodied entity out there that can function on its own." _Global Structures Convocation, Feb. 3 1994.
The European arguments against the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act demonstrate that "some Europeans have never lost faith in appeasement as a way of life. It is clear that Iran is cynically manipulating gullible ... Europeans to advance the development of weapons of mass destruction." _New York Times, July 28, 1996
"The (United Nations) secretariat building in New York has 38 stories. If you lost ten stories today it wouldn't make a bit of difference." _Global Structures Convocation, 1994.
"Life is a hellish nightmare." _Bolton's 2003 assessment of North Korea under Kim Jong Il prior to six-nation talks to persuade Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear program.
"To make `Our Global Neighborhood' hospitable, an important predicate is to restrain the use of force, not in the old-fashioned, balance-of-power way among nation states, but by constraining and limiting nation-states themselves. Since decisions to use military force are the most important that any nation-state faces, limiting their decisions or transferring them to another source of authority is ultimately central to the diminution of sovereignty and the advance of global governance. Here is where the Americanist-Globalist divide is the deepest." _Chicago Journal of International Law, Fall 2000
"As you know, I have over the years written critically about the U.N. Indeed, one highlight of my professional career was the 1991 successful effort to repeal the General Assembly's 1975 resolution equating Zionism with racism, thus removing the greatest stain on the U.N.'s reputation. I have consistently stressed in my writings that American leadership is critical to the success of the U.N., an effective U.N., one that is true to the original intent of its charter's framers." _Remarks after his nomination to become the United States' ambassador to the United Nations, March 7, 2005.
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(c) 2005, Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
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