Bolton and his predecessors
Posted by Suzanne Nossel
One question that I have not seen raised is what the choice of Bolton says about the other two people who have held the post of Ambassador to the UN during the Bush Administration. The White House is now saying, in essence, we need someone as tough-minded (and even hostile) as they come to hold down the fort at the U.S. Mission to the UN, so we don't let this organization of rogues run roughshod over American interests. But neither of Bolton's predecessors - Amb. John D. Negroponte and former Senator John Danforth were remotely in that mold. Since the Administration can hardly argue that the challenges at the U.S. Mission have gotten any tougher than during the bitter split over military intervention in Iraq that unfolded in late 2002 and early 2003, its hard to see how the nomination of Bolton is not in some sense an indictment of the type of representation that Negroponte and Danforth provided. If they did the job well why would it be so important to appoint someone with Bolton's hard-hearted attitude toward the world body? If Bolton-style toughness is essential, the implication is that Negroponte and Danforth somehow fell short. Yet although Danforth seems to be heading forth to retirement, Negroponte - who in fact presided over the Iraq impasse - has since been promoted twice to positions that could not be more important, and that require at least as much mettle and determination as the UN job. He has served as U.S. Ambassador to Iraq and was nominated last month to become the country's first Director of National Intelligence. The upshot: there was nothing fundamentally wrong with either Negroponte or Danforth's brands of diplomacy, and nor is there any reason why - as a matter of style or steeliness - that we need Bolton. In fact, the Administration was so happy with the job Negroponte did that they've promoted him to literally the most sensitive jobs they have to fill (part of the reason is, of course, his confirmed confirmability, but they must also have confidence in him). Bolton's nomination is in fact simply a sop to the right, not motivated by any reasoned analysis of how the U.S can be effective at the UN.
Suzanne Nossel is a Senior Fellow at the Security and Peace Institute. She served as Deputy to the Ambassador for UN Management and Reform at the US Mission to the United Nations from 1999 – 2001 under Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke. There she represented the U.S. in the UN’s General Assembly negotiating a deal to settle the U.S.’s arrears to the world body. Prior to that Suzanne served as a Consultant at McKinsey & Company and as a staff attorney at Children’s Rights Inc. During the early 1990s Suzanne worked in Johannesburg, South Africa on the implementation of South Africa’s National Peace Accord, a multi-party agreement aimed at curbing political violence during that country’s transition to democracy. Ms. Nossel has done election monitoring and human rights documentation in Bosnia and Kosovo. She is also the author of Presumed Equal: What America’s Top Women Lawyers Really Think About Their Firms (Career Press, 1998). She writes frequently on foreign policy topics, and a list of her articles appears below. Ms. Nossel is currently an executive in New York City, where she lives with her husband David Greenberg and her son Leo. 
Michael Signer is an attorney who lives and works in Virginia. He is a Principal of the Truman National Security Project and was formerly with the Washington office of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr. He was the Democratic National Committee's voter assistance coordinator for Virginia during the Kerry campaign, and worked on the Wesley Clark for President campaign in Little Rock, Arkansas before becoming that campaign's Virginia State Director. He has worked as an Associate Producer for MSNBC and is the author of the "Law" section of The New York Times Guide to Essential Knowledge. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California at Berkeley, where he was a National Science Foundation Research Fellow, and a J.D. from the University of Virginia. He graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University.
Lorelei is a Senior Associate at the Henry L. Stimson Center, a non-partisan think tank in Washington that specializes in peace and security issues. She also has several years of experience on Capitol Hill, where she has worked in the offices of Representative Elizabeth Furse (OR, ret.) and Representative Lynn Woolsey (CA).