The World According to Bolton

[andysocial]

The President's nominee to head the United Nations kind of hates international cooperation.

In an interview in 2000 on National Public Radio, Mr. Bolton told Juan Williams, "If I were redoing the Security Council today, I'd have one permanent member because that's the real reflection of the distribution of power in the world."

Yeah, great way to regain any sort of reasonable approach to foreign relations there.

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[ernunnos.livejournal.com]

And the 'reasonable approach' accomplished what, again?

[abz6598.livejournal.com]

I dunno, man....

International cooperation has very little to do with the UN.

[andysocial]

It just seems a really bad idea to put into the UN someone who has publicly (and for an extended period of time) told anyone who cares to listen that the UN is a useless organization that he has virtually no respect for. How is this a good person to have as our delegate to the group?

Not that the UN has no problems; damned if they aren't fucked up like a football bat a great deal of the time. But, if we are to be a part of the group, we should maybe not have someone that denigrates the entire organization as our representative.

[abz6598.livejournal.com]

I would much rather have us represented by someone who is suspicious or disdainful of the UN rather than someone who thinks theyre the solution to whatever the problem du jour is and wind up signing us onto expensive feel-good programs that dont serve US interests or undermine US sovreignty. There seems to be no compelling reason for us to even be in the UN since we need them far far less than they need us.

[andysocial]

Good points. I believe a healthy skepticism is a good thing in dealing with any governmental or super-governmental group. But, this guy sounds actively hostile, which seems like a difficult thing to reconcile with someone whose job is to work with the UN, not against it.

Seems like the UN needs a significant overhaul (I think the concept of an international organization to resolve conflicts is a good thing) to reflect the current global reality. The veto-holding members are not guaranteed to maintain the same level of importance in international relations over the years, but the ones we have are the ones that made sense in the 1950s. Eh.