Sixteen months: John Bolton serves as U.S. ambassador to the U.N.

IN all honesty, it was amazing that John R. Bolton ever became U.S. ambassador to the U.N. in the first place. He was a committed conservative, a hawk, a skeptic of international organizations. (It might be better to call him a realist about them.) His personality was thought of as mercurial, even hot. Newspapers and magazines liked to refer to him as "Lightning Bolton." But President Bush wanted him at the U.N., and he wanted him so much that he even gave him a recess appointment, when the Senate refused to confirm him--that is, when Democrats blocked a vote on his nomination. Understandably, Bush wanted someone at the U.N. who actually supported his foreign policy. Such partners and aides seem few on the ground.

And it was not the first time that Bush had turned to someone "controversial." After he was sworn in, he nominated Otto Reich to be assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere. The Democrats on the Foreign Relations Committee blocked that nomination, so Bush gave Reich a recess appointment. After a year, he did not resubmit the nomination, however, the obstacles in the Senate remaining. Bush also welcomed Elliott Abrams, but bypassed the Senate altogether. Abrams has served on the National Security Council staff since the beginning of the administration.

And when Bolton resigned as ambassador to the U.N., because the Senate was impossible, it was Bush who expressed the most sorrow, and a portion of bitterness. "You're looking at a man who is deeply disappointed," he told an interviewer, and he also blasted the "shallow politics of the Senate." He knew he had lost a good and valuable man, and that the country had, too. Bolton wound up at the U.N. for 16 months. And you would probably have to go back to the late Jeane Kirkpatrick, in Reagan's first term, for an ambassador so interesting, so effective, and so--there is no better word--exciting.

He was born in Baltimore in 1948, and went to Yale: both the college and the law school. In that first Reagan term, he served in the U.S. Agency for International Development. In the second one, he was an assistant attorney general. When the first Bush was elected, he went to the State Department, where he was assistant secretary for international organizations (the same job a very young Elliott Abrams had had in the first Reagan term). In 1990, NATIONAL REVIEW published a piece on Bolton called--believe it or not--"Jim Baker's Right-Hand Man." Secretary Baker was no favorite of conservatives, then as now. The piece asked, "How does a man who wears Adam Smith ties survive in a Bush administration?" Answer: Pretty well, even darn well. And we learned this charming bit of color: Bolton had in his office a dummy grenade, a gift from his former colleagues at USAID. It bore the words, "John R. Bolton, Truest Reaganaut."

During the Clinton years, Bolton practiced law and worked at the American Enterprise Institute, the conservative think tank in Washington. And when George W. Bush was elected, Bolton went back to the State Department, this time as undersecretary for arms control and international security. His most notable achievement was to lead the diplomatic effort to establish the Proliferation Security Initiative, which has been useful in slowing the spread of nuclear weapons. (It got Qaddafi in Libya, for example.) Bolton is often faulted for being a diplomat lacking in diplomacy; repeatedly, his record contradicts that impression. What trips people up is Bolton's strict pursuit of American interests; they think of diplomacy as multilateralism for its own sake.

So, when President Bush nominated Bolton to be ambassador to the U.N., in March 2005, there was something like panic: mainly among Democrats and their allies in the media. They contended that Bolton was utterly unfit to work at the U.N. A reporter for the Washington Post said a lot when he said that Democrats had "assailed Bolton's knack for making enemies and disparaging the very organization he would serve." Many of us responded that that was exactly the problem: These Democrats thought that the purpose of the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. was to serve the United Nations; in fact, his job was to serve the United States, in the arena of the U.N. Sen. Barbara Boxer, the California Democrat, said of Bolton, "He's been contemptuous of the U.N." Many of us pointed out that there was much to be contemptuous about: Saddam Hussein's chairmanship of the nuclear-disarmament committee; Bashar Assad's chairmanship of the human-rights committee. The presence of the Cuban, Sudanese, and other monstrous regimes on that committee. And so on. Democrats clearly wanted the U.S. ambassador to be a U.N. advocate; they also clearly cherished the international body as a check on Bush foreign policy.

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The way they attacked Bolton, principally, was to attack his character. They said that, while at the State Department, he had manipulated intelligence findings. The Bolton camp neatly dispatched that charge. They further said that he was a stack-blower, temperamentally unsuited. This, too, was easily countered. Not that Bolton could ever be mistaken for a violet, of course. President Bush spoke up for his nominee this way: "John Bolton is a blunt guy; sometimes people say I'm a little too blunt. [He] can get the job done at the United Nations." And "if we expect the United Nations to be effective, it needs to clean up its problems."

FRESH AIR

Once at Turtle Bay, Bolton worked with his usual alacrity and skill. He tirelessly presented the American position, whatever it was, on any subject. A Washington Post article put it well after he resigned: Bolton had "recast the role of ambassador to the United Nations, a post traditionally filled by prominent Americans who helped explain the organization to Washington." This ambassador had been more interested in explaining Washington's views to the organization. His critics liked to paint him as a "rogue," a wild ideological animal--but he certainly never veered from the president. As he put it to a group of journalists last summer, "Some people may find it unfortunate, but I actually follow my instructions." And you were seldom unclear where Bolton, together with the president, stood. When Bolton left, the ambassador from India said of his counterpart's frankness, "It made it easier for us, because we knew exactly what his position was."

As education secretary in the second Reagan term, William Bennett fought what he liked to call "the education blob," or simply "the blob": the teachers' unions, the ed schools, the entire entrenched establishment. As U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Bolton fought the U.N. blob: the permanent bureaucracy at Turtle Bay, the permanent bureaucracy at the U.S. State Department, all of the U.N.'s many apologists and anti-reformers. A prime specimen of the U.N. man was Mark Malloch Brown, the deputy secretary general. Along with his boss, Kofi Annan, he undermined Bolton in every way possible. Last June, Malloch Brown made an extraordinary speech in which he blasted the U.S. government and, in the bargain, American conservatives. He said that Washington had not been faithful to the U.N. and that "much of the public discourse that reaches the U.S. heartland has been largely abandoned to [the U.N.'s] loudest detractors, such as Rush Limbaugh and Fox News." As a result, the utility of the U.N. was "in effect a secret in Middle America."

Bolton pounced all over this speech, saying that an official of the U.N. Secretariat had no business attacking a member state or its people. That is not the role of the institution's servants. When questioned about his reaction later, Bolton said, "Some people in the Secretariat have the idea that they can criticize the United States and get away with it. And the United States should not be a well-bred doormat. I'm going to respond every time they do this."

When Bolton resigned, or was forced to resign, owing chiefly to the implacability of Democratic opposition, the press naturally approached Malloch Brown. He chirped, "No comment, and you can say 'he said it with a smile.'"

And what were Bolton's chief accomplishments as ambassador? You might point to a flurry of resolutions, passed in the Security Council between July and October of this year: No. 1695, on North Korean nukes; No. 1696, on Iranian nukes; No. 1701, on the Hezbollah-Israel war; No. 1706, approving a U.N. force to Darfur; and No. 1718, again on North Korea. All of these resolutions were passed unanimously, except for the one concerning Iran, which Qatar opposed. Of course, you might ask what these resolutions mean if there is no follow-through--no consequence--as Bolton himself has long and eloquently asked. The Security Council acts on Iran, and Tehran thumbs its nose--to which Annan, the Europeans, and the U.N. at large say, "All right." The Security Council acts on Darfur, and Khartoum says, "Nothing doing"--to which the U.N. blob says, "All right." Hezbollah and its allies in Syria and Iran are happily violating Resolution 1701, and hardly anyone cares. No wonder the world's tyrants disregard and snort at the U.N. Security Council. But if you are interested in resolutions and count them as a good, Bolton has succeeded.

TAKING THE RIGHT SHOTS

You might claim that Bolton's real successes have come in smaller, even more psychological, actions. Last February, the United States had the presidency of the Security Council, and Bolton made the absolute most of it. He had meetings start on time (a first). He also had the Secretariat brief members on important U.N. concerns. According to a recent Associated Press report, the punctuality has caught on, but the briefings have been dropped. Bolton held meetings on topics the U.N. would rather avoid: such as sexual exploitation by U.N. peacekeeping forces, and gross financial corruption at Turtle Bay. Bolton and the United States were not able to do much about U.N. corruption, but not for want of trying. They at least shone a spotlight. Neither were they able to get a decently reformed human-rights panel--the new Human Rights Council is as bad as the old Human Rights Commission. But, again, they spoke out strongly.

Bolton would say, "If member countries want the United Nations to be respected, they should begin by making sure it is worthy of respect." Presented with a watery human-rights proposal, he said, "We want a butterfly. We're not going to put lipstick on a caterpillar and declare it a success." The new panel is an unabashedly ugly caterpillar--dedicated, as always, to tarring Israel and the United States. And Bolton, incidentally, was magnificent on Israel, as an ambassador to the U.N. has an opportunity to be. When Hezbollah started its war against Israel, Bolton warned one and all not to "fall into the trap of moral equivalency." As to the tricky question of "proportionality," he expressed puzzlement: "Is Israel entitled only to kidnap two Hezbollah operatives and fire a couple of rockets aimlessly into Lebanon?"

Best about Bolton was the spirit he brought to his work, the clear relish he took in it. He was idealistic and hardheaded in equal measure. He talked to the press constantly, about anything they wanted to talk about. And he was almost always on the record. With the "gaggle," he was informative, entertaining, caustic, charming. His briefings were one of the best shows in town. He felt that public diplomacy was part of his job, so he made sure to be heard on al-Jazeera, the BBC, Japanese television--all over. Some other U.N. diplomats resented his dealings with the press. But they talked too, only off the record, or in leaks and such.

Some of his earlier critics, most prominently Sen. George Voinovich, the Ohio Republican, came to admire Bolton. When the ambassador had to resign, Voinovich said, "John Bolton has risen to the occasion and done a good job under the harshest of circumstances." President Bush remained a fan, and Bolton's biggest defender in the administration, by far. He said, "All Americans owe John Bolton their gratitude for a job well done." That is true. Bolton spent only 16 months at the U.N., but it was an excellent 16 months.