[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 75 (Tuesday, June 13, 2006)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1133]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         ``BLUSTER BACKFIRES''

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                           HON. BARNEY FRANK

                            of massachusetts

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, June 13, 2006

  Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, anyone who doubts the wisdom 
of the constitutional requirement that important officials be confirmed 
by the Senate before taking up their jobs should ponder the disastrous 
example of John Bolton, whom the Senate declined to confirm as 
Ambassador to the U.N., and who received a recess appointment from 
President Bush. His tenure has been disastrous, leading to a diminution 
of American influence and a failure to accomplish legitimate American 
goals.
  Like many other Americans, I greatly regretted the fact that Deputy 
Secretary General Mark Malloch Brown recently gave a speech strongly 
critical of America's role regarding the U.N., but my regret was aimed 
not at Mr. Brown for giving the speech, but at the Bush administration, 
and specifically Ambassador Bolton, for actions that led to the speech. 
As a Member of Congress, I am troubled by the fact that I have to agree 
with the substance of a speech so sharply critical of our Government, 
but I believe that Mr. Brown did us a service in speaking out, because 
it may alert my colleagues in Congress and the American people in 
general of the need to press for a change in the disastrous policies 
that Ambassador Bolton pursues in the President's name.
  In the Washington Post on Monday, June 12, Sebastian Mallaby wrote a 
thoughtful and persuasive piece about the Bolton record. Because the 
current situation regarding our representation of the U.N. does so much 
damage to legitimate American interests, Sebastian Mallaby's column is 
particularly welcome and I hope will be strongly considered by 
President Bush, Secretary Rice, and other policy makers in this 
administration. It is also very important for those of us in Congress 
to understand his points and I ask that his column be printed here.

               [From the Washington Post, June 12, 2006]

                     At the U.N., Bluster Backfires

                         (By Sebastian Mallaby)

       Last month President Bush issued a rare apology. ``Saying 
     `Bring it on,' kind of tough talk, you know, that sent the 
     wrong signal,'' he confessed. ``I think in certain parts of 
     the world it was misinterpreted.''
       Well done, Mr. President, you've understood that bluster 
     can backfire. Now how about sharing this insight with your 
     ambassador to the United Nations?
       John R. Bolton, the ambassador in question, has a rich 
     history of losing friends and failing to influence people. He 
     was notorious, even before arriving at the United Nations 
     last year, for having said that 10 stories of the U.N. 
     headquarters could be demolished without much loss; he had 
     described the United States as the sun around which lesser 
     nations rotate--mere ``asteroids,'' he'd branded them. 
     Perhaps not surprisingly, the Senate refused to confirm 
     Bolton as U.N. ambassador. ``Arrogant,'' ``bullying,'' and 
     ``the poster child of what someone in the diplomatic corps 
     should not be,'' Sen. George Voinovich called him.
       Bush sent Bolton anyway, bypassing the Senate by appointing 
     him during a congressional recess. It soon turned out that 
     dismissing foreign ambassadors as asteroid dwellers was 
     merely a warm-up. As soon as Bolton got to New York, he blew 
     up the preparatory negotiations for a gathering of heads of 
     state, insisting that the other 190 members of the world body 
     immediately agree to hundreds of changes in the summit 
     document.
       If Bolton had picked a fight on a worthwhile issue, this 
     might have been justified. But one of the chief aims of his 
     edits was to eliminate all mention of the anti-poverty 
     Millennium Development Goals, even though these targets for 
     reducing child mortality and so on are inoffensive. After a 
     week of Bolton-induced bureaucratic battles, Secretary of 
     State Condoleezza Rice weighed in, explaining that the 
     administration actually had nothing against the development 
     goals. When the summit convened, Bush himself had to declare 
     during his speech that he supported the targets that his 
     ambassador had repudiated.
       Bolton's next triumph was to demand U.N. reform, or rather 
     to pretend to do so. An effort to create a credible human 
     rights council was underway, but Bolton skipped nearly all of 
     the 30 or so negotiating sessions. Then, when the negotiators 
     produced a blueprint for the new council, Bolton declared it 
     unacceptable, leaving furious American allies to wonder why 
     he hadn't weighed in earlier to secure a better outcome. 
     ``The job now is to get clarity on what the U.S. wants,'' the 
     British ambassador said icily. But what Bolton really wanted 
     was quite clear: to allow the negotiations to falter and then 
     to condemn whatever they produced, throwing red meat to his 
     U.N.-hating allies on the right of the Republican Party.
       Next, Bolton blundered into U.N. management reform, an 
     issue that may soon precipitate a crisis. The top U.N. 
     officials, led by Secretary General Kofi Annan, had laid out 
     a menu of radical changes, designed to eliminate useless 
     conferences and reports and to move staff to departments that 
     most needed them. Bolton added his own brand of bluster to 
     this plan: If poor countries carried on resisting management 
     reforms, rich countries would stop paying for the 
     organization. The deadline for agreeing on reform is the end 
     of this month, but no breakthrough is in sight. Officials are 
     wondering what to do if U.N. checks start bouncing.
       Not many reformers at the United Nations believe that the 
     budget threat achieved anything. To the contrary, Bolton has 
     so poisoned the atmosphere that the cause of management 
     renewal is viewed by many developing countries as an American 
     plot. And if Bolton carries through on his threat to cut off 
     money for the United Nations, the United States will be more 
     isolated than ever. Refusing to fund U.N. officials who are 
     planning for a peacekeeping mission in Darfur is not a 
     winning strategy.
       Last week the U.N. deputy secretary general, a pro-American 
     Briton named Mark Malloch Brown, went public with his Bolton 
     frustrations. He pointed out that the United Nations serves 
     many American objectives, from deploying peacekeepers to 
     helping with Iraq's elections. Given this cooperation, the 
     powers that be in Washington should stick up for the United 
     Nations rather than threatening to blow it up. They should 
     not be passive in the face of ``unchecked U.N.-bashing and 
     stereotyping.''
       This merely stated the obvious. If you doubt that U.N.-
     bashing and stereotyping goes on, ask yourself what gallery 
     Bolton is playing to--or check out the latest cover of the 
     National Rifle Association magazine, which features a wolf 
     with U.N. logos in its eyeballs. But Malloch Brown's speech 
     didn't seem obvious to Bolton. ``This is the worst mistake by 
     a senior U.N. official that I have seen,'' he thundered in 
     response. ``Even though the target of the speech was the 
     United States, the victim, I fear, will be the United 
     Nations.''
       Which would suit Bolton and his allies perfectly. But it 
     should not suit Bush, at least not now that he's grasped that 
     bluster can backfire. Arriving at the U.N. summit last 
     September, a different Bush greeted the secretary general and 
     gestured at Bolton; ``has the place blown up since he's been 
     here?'' he demanded, teasingly. Well, it's now time for the 
     new Bush to acknowledge that Bolton's tactics aren't funny. 
     The United States needs an ambassador who can work with the 
     United Nations. Right now, it doesn't have one.

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