The Foreign Service Journal, September 2006

moment in my government ser- vice.” Officials inside the U.N., who viewed Bolton as the diplomatic equivalent of Genghis Khan, were horror-struck when President Bush announced Bolton’s nomination in March 2005. Had the president decided to sack the place? A more likely explanation was palace poli- tics: Bolton apparently had hoped to become deputy secretary of State, but new Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who was putting together a team of relatively doctrine-free professionals, had refused. The U.N. job was said to be the consolation prize upon which Bolton’s patron, Vice President Cheney, had insisted. Yet Bolton almost didn’t get this job, either: In the course of hearings before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, former aides and colleagues of Bolton accused him of browbeating underlings and, more seri- ously, of threatening intelligence officials who disputed his (groundless, as it turned out) claims about weapons programs in Cuba and Syria. It became clear that Bolton had lost all the Democrats and one or possibly two Republicans on the committee, forcing Bush to give his candidate a “recess appointment” rather than risk a vote. Bolton’s term began Aug. 1, 2005; he will serve until the end of 2006, when the 109th Congress adjourns, unless he is con- firmed to the position. Bolton’s chief Republican oppo- nent, Senator George Voinovich of Ohio, recently announced his sup- port, significantly easing the way for Senate confirmation. However, the Senate Foreign Relations Commit- tee has postponed a vote on his nom- ination until September, and a Democratic filibuster is still possible. His Way or the Highway Until this past summer, John Bolton’s yearlong tenure as U.N. ambassador has been in many respects a quiet one, largely marked by the Security Council’s ongoing, and painfully inadequate, attempt to grapple with the grave humanitarian and political crisis in Darfur. But in recent months the council has been all but overwhelmed by the need to deal simultaneously with the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea and with the spread- ing conflict pitting Israel against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. In all these matters, Bolton has shown himself to be an exceptionally well-informed and hard-working emissary, which is scarcely surprising. But he has also generally proved to be circumspect and prag- matic, which might not have been predicted. If he has won few unexpected allies on the council, neither has he made unnecessary enemies. He has sparred with reporters without regularly making a meal of them, prov- ing to be a far more accessible figure than his reputation had led them to expect. But Bolton has left his mark, not on the ordinary high politics of the Security Council, but on the extraordinary campaign of reform that Kofi Annan initiated after the demoralizing failure to reach a consensus on Iraq. That process was already far advanced by the time Bolton reached Turtle Bay: Annan had published his reform blueprint, “In Larger Freedom,” to almost universal praise in the West, and his aides had worked with Jean Ping, president of the General Assembly, to produce a document that would also satisfy the concerns of the Group of 77, as the U.N.’s Third World bloc is known. The Ping document was a plum pudding into which the entire developing world’s agenda on economic and social issues had been crammed, but U.N. officials and Western F O C U S 24 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 6 James Traub is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine , where he has worked since 1998. From 1994 to 1997, he was a staff writer for The New Yorker . He has also written for The New York Review of Books , Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic Monthly and The New Republic. His articles about the United Nations and international affairs have been widely reprinted and anthologized. In recent years, he has reported from the Congo, Iran, Iraq, Sierra Leone, East Timor, Vietnam, India, Kosovo and Haiti. The Best Intentions , his forthcoming book about Kofi Annan and the United Nations, will be published in November. His previous books include The Devil’s Playground: A Century of Pleasure and Profit in Times Square , which was published in 2004, and City On A Hill , a book on open admissions at City College that appeared in 1994 and won the Sidney Hillman Award for nonfiction. Most of Bolton’s U.N. tenure has been quiet — at least until this past summer, when he almost torpedoed efforts to reform the institution.