John Bolton Bloggers Call

One Jerusalem held a bloggers conference call yesterday with Ambassador John Bolton.  The audio of the half-hour call is here, and it is very much worth listening to.

He spoke briefly about his new book “Surrender is Not an Option” and then answered questions about (among other things):

(a) Condoleezza Rice’s Annapolis conference (not only delusional, but detrimental to other U.S. foreign policy interests – for example, instead of highlighting the Syrian nuclear facility assisted by North Korea, the State Department is downplaying it in hopes of drawing Syria to a conference with a dysfunctional Palestinian Authority); (b) the culture at the State Department (moral equivalence and client-itis, producing foreign policy judgments that are consistently over-optimistic and often downright wrong); (c) the Iranian nuclear weapons program (the diplomatic option has just about been played out, and even harsher sanctions will not be either effective or timely); and (d) the foreign policy implications of the 2008 election (which will demonstrate whether we have learned, or forgotten, the lesson of 9/11).

His book has the same qualities of candor and directness, as well as day-by-day accounts of important events. 

Diplomacy too often involves euphemisms intended to mask the real meanings of words, or provide ambiguity that opposing parties can interpret the way they want.  Bolton is an example of a higher form of diplomacy -- the forthright statement of a nation’s interests and views, leaving little doubt in the minds of allies or adversaries and enabling them to act accordingly. 

His book makes it clear that this approach was at times extraordinarily effective, and that the traditional State Department approach was frequently not.  Each chapter of the book begins with an interesting quotation and ends with an eloquent conclusion.  For example, his chapter on the sorry response of the U.N. to Darfur starts with a quote from T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” (“What shall we do tomorrow?  What shall we ever do?”) and ends with this:

My experience with UN peacekeeping projects in Africa shows that even a region that purportedly held the strong personal interest of the secretary general, that was represented by a powerful regional group that always possesses at least three votes on the Security Council, and in which the need for humanitarian assistance predominates, the UN’s record remains disappointing.

In less favorable circumstances, whether pursuing WMD proliferators like Iran and North Korea, or dealing with equally real threats to international peace and security like the continuing assault on Israel, we know from direct experience what the Council’s limitations are.

Thus, the UN has difficulty with high-profile, high-risk international issues, and it also has difficulty with low-profile, low-risk issues, which doesn’t leave much room for optimism at either end or in the middle.

Is that an “undiplomatic” conclusion?  Or is it a forthright statement of a serious problem that can only be solved if confronted directly by a diplomat willing to do so?

Listen to it all and buy the book (and if you need more proof of the eloquence of plain speaking, read this).  Thank you to One Jerusalem for another excellent bloggers call.