Newsflash - Bolton's a dick

Steve Clemons points us to a major story by Mark Leon Goldberg soon to be available at The American Prospect which shows how stealth appointee to the UN John Bolton is doing exactly what George Voinovich and others feared: undermining American credibility abroad. The headline:

In his first six months at the UN, John Bolton has offended allies, blocked crucial negotiations, undermined the Secretary of State -- and harmed U.S. interests.

We expected bad; we didn't expect this bad.

We know that Bolton asked for several hundred line-item changes to the Millennium Summit document, inflaming tensions and downing hopes that any meaningful reform would come out of that meeting. But there's a lot of stuff that we didn't know in the article, particularly about the strained relationship between Bolton and Condi Rice:

...the tension between Rice and Bolton has grown dramatically in several areas, most notably with regard to Syria: The Prospect has learned that Bolton was the source of an October leak to the British press that submarined sensitive negotiations Rice was overseeing with that country.

Indeed, it was Rice, not Bolton, who achieved the one significant success of Bolton's first 100 days at the United Nations: a unanimous October 30 Security Council vote requiring Syria to fully cooperate with a UN investigation into the suspected Syria-sponsored assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

The Prospect has learned that in the days and weeks leading up to the late October UN report on Hariri's assassination, Rice sought to sideline Bolton from the negotiations over the Security Council resolution that the report inspired. She also made the State Department, not the U.S. Mission to the UN, the central address for discussions on the resolution.

Many have speculated that Bolton's appointment to the UN was a ploy to get him out of the hair of the State Department. But this next bit suggests that the State Department has had to do his job at the UN as well:

One of the first signs that a bureaucratic battle was brewing between Bolton and Rice over Syria came on October 18, when the State Department press corps was shocked to find that Rice had unexpectedly flown to New York to meet Annan. A State Department spokesman explained that the two met to "compare notes" in advance of a widely anticipated report by Detlev Mehlis, the secretary-general's special investigator for the Hariri assassination.

Yet Bolton, the man in charge of the United States' day-to-day operations at the UN, was conspicuously absent from that meeting. In what appears to have been less of an accident than a matter of intentional timing, Rice made her trip to New York on the very morning that Bolton had to be in Washington, testifying before the Senate on the progress (or lack thereof) of UN reforms.

They're actually sending Bolton out to diplomatic meetings with fucking CHAPERONES, they're so wary of his ability to enrage.

On October 22, a French delegation from the UN traveled to Washington for initial discussions on the Syria resolution (later called Security Council Resolution 1636), of which the French were the original authors.

According to a diplomatic source, Bolton was not initially invited to that meeting. The French, however, insisted on his presence. So Bolton attended, but not without three chaperones: Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs David Welch, Welch's deputy (and vice-presidential daughter) Elizabeth Cheney, and National Security Council Middle East chief Michael Doran.

"It's like they stuck a strong team from the [State Department and National Security Council] to watch him," said the diplomat.

Why do we have a non-functioning UN Ambassador? Why is the State Department so concerned with oversight? Because Bolton stabbed them in the back just when they were making headway with Syria, according to the article:

Bolton and Rice's bureaucratic tiffs over Syria had actually boiled over two weeks prior to the Security Council vote. Journalist Ibrahim Hamidi, writing in the Arabic-language newspaper Al-Hayat, reported -- and the Prospect has independently confirmed -- that Bolton had leaked to British newspapers that the Bush administration had signaled its willingness to offer Syria a "Libya-style deal" -- a reference to Libyan President Muammar Quaddafi's decision last year to give up pursuing weapons of mass destruction and renounce terrorism in return for a restoration of relations with the United States and the United Kingdom.

According to The Times of London, Syria responded positively to the secret U.S. offer, which was made through a third party. But after Bolton publicly aired the details of the potential deal -- which would require Syria to cooperate with the Mehlis investigation, end interference in Lebanese affairs and alleged interference in Iraqi affairs, and cease supporting militant groups like Hamas and Hezbollah -- Damascus quickly denied that such a deal was in the offing.

I question the wisdom of getting Syria to comply with such a Libya-like deal, although I understand you'd rather want them inside the tent than outside. But the fact that the UN Ambassador would sabotage that effort, become a one-man wrecking crew to global diplomacy, is abolutely beyond the pale. It really reinforces the notion that Bolton is likely at the UN to be Dick Cheney's eyes and ears, and to upend anything untoward to the Veep.

There's some other stuff in the story, including Bolton's famously abrasive demeanor to subordinates, and his bullying tactics which have done more harm than good. This article will apparently be available tomorrow. The excerpts are from Steve Clemons' site.