UN Abassador John Bolton Lecture
US Ambassador to the United Nations spoke at University of Delaware today as part of the Global Agenda Lecture Series. Video and podcast should be available on this page eventually. Here are my thoughts.
Bolton started out by calling the UN a "troubled institution," and that it has strayed far from the UN Charter of 1945, something that I have hinted at previously. He said that reform for the UN must take a pragmatic and not an ideological position, and must start from the Volker report on the Oil-For-Food Scandal. He said even worse than a culture of corruption is a culture of inaction. He said this is what the President and Secretary Rice wish to rectify.
The Ambassador then went on to discuss the three biggest challenges facing the Security Council. Number one on his list is Iran. Bolton dismissed Iran's claims that the nuclear program is purely peaceful, that is it for when their oil and national gas reserves will run out eventually by citing that these will be depleted...in 300-400 years. He also said Iran is akin to a central bank for Islamic terror, and that Iran funneling WMD material to terror groups was not an entirely unrealistic possibility.
He cited Security Council gridlock as one major obstacle to a peaceful resolution to this problem, and that "negotiations are not cost-free," pointing out that the former Iranian nuclear negotiator said that he had been 'fooling the Europeans for two years,' and that Iran was manipulating oil and natural gas prices to affect the behavior of other nations, such as China, Russia, and other Central Asian republics. He said that the resolution to this is all in the hands of Iran. He brought up the Libyan example, whose nuclear program now resides in Oakridge, Tennessee. Mr. Bolton stated that "there is plenty of room at Oakridge next to the Libyan program for Iran's."
The question of Syria/Lebanon was his second challenge, and mentioned how the UN and the US was putting pressure on the Syrian government to try to resolve the 15 assassinations of pro-Lebanese officials in the government of Lebanon. The Ambassador called for a "major shift in the nature of regimes in the Middle East," and declared that democracy was a great opportunity for the people of the Middle East.
Bolton's third names challenge was that of Darfur. He cited the obvious goal of stopping genocide and again cited obstruction on the Security Council on the part of some nations as an obstacle to acting clearly. Sudan, obviously, has lobbied to oppose any action, and any action of the Arab League is hindered, said Bolton, by their placement as the current chair of that organization. Bolton called for the shift of authority of the peacekeeping force from the African Union to the United Nations. He also wanted a resolution "that does not involve fighting the Sudanese government.
All three examples, Ambassador Bolton said, were the United States "attempting what critics of the Bush Administration have been telling them to do for five years." And obviously, those multilateral solutions are working (wouldn't that be nice?).
The first question was by a liberal student, who attempted to use Nuremberg and International Law to say that the Iraq War was a 'crime against peace.' Ralph Begleiter, the moderator of the lecture (who was surprisingly even-handed, not his usual biased self), attempted to keep order and reign in the disruptive student. Bolton answered the question, saying that the US acted justly under Article 51 of the UN Charter.
Other questions involved India and nuclear material, which Bolton rightly answered was due to the world of difference between the nature of the Iranian and Indian regimes. The Ambassador also noted that the US should not have turned away from nuclear power in the 1970s and 1980s. Sadly, I was not able to ask about gun rights as the next international human rights.
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