By Warren Hoge The New York Times Sunday, July 23, 2006 - Page updated at 12:00 AM
UNITED NATIONS — In recent months, as one international crisis followed another, John Bolton has fulfilled the role of the United Nations' most influential delegate at full strength, firmly articulating the position of the U.S. government regarding Iran, North Korea and the Middle East.
His performance won over at least one crucial critic, Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio. Voinovich's opposition a year ago forced Bolton to take the job as a presidential recess appointment, an arrangement that expires at the end of this Congress in January.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has scheduled a hearing Thursday on Bolton's renomination, and a floor vote could come in September. Voinovich said he would vote for Bolton this time.
The Bush administration is not popular at the United Nations, where it is often perceived as disdainful of diplomacy, and its policies as heedless of the effects on others and single-minded in the willful assertion of U.S. interests. By extension, then, many diplomats say they see Bolton as a stand-in for the arrogance of the administration itself.
But diplomats focus particularly on an area more reflective of Bolton's own personal touch, the mission that he has described as his priority: overhauling the institution's discredited management. Envoys say Bolton has in fact endangered that effort by alienating traditional allies. They say he combatively asserts U.S. leadership, contests procedures at the mannerly, rules-bound United Nations and then shrugs off the organization when it does not follow his lead.
Six nations' chief U.N. delegates separately offered similar accounts of an incident in June that they said illustrated the situation. All were from nations in Europe, the Pacific and Latin America that consider themselves close allies of the United States, and they asked to speak anonymously in commenting on a fellow envoy.
Bolton that day burst into a packed committee hall, produced a cordless microphone and began to lecture envoys from developing nations about their weakening of a proposal to tighten management of the United Nations, his chief goal.
Gaveled to silence, he threw up his hands and said, "Well, so much for trying something different."
Three weeks later, on June 30, the 191-member General Assembly upended Bolton's strategy to force change, lifting a six-month budget cap that he engineered without agreeing to significant management improvements. Dumisani Kumalo, South African ambassador and the leader of the Group of 77, which represents 132 developing nations, said Bolton's "putting on budget caps and being very contentious" had increased his group's resistance.
The envoys will not, of course, have any say about whether Bolton receives Senate appointment to the United Nations. But their concerns over his methods extend to issues that the senators will undoubtedly have to weigh: his ability to build coalitions and reach consensus.
Bolton said he did not believe his manner was confrontational. "It's not a question of personal style so much as it is a way of articulating a position that puts American interests in the best light," he said. "And I think in some cases people are unfamiliar with that, but I don't think that's confrontational. I think that's a matter of clarity."
In particular, he said, in the June episode, he had been simply trying to provoke honest debate.
"I said to myself, maybe there's a way to do something a little unusual here," he said. "I know it didn't work, but I think that's part of what we have to do to shake things up here, to try to do something a little different, a little creative. To try to talk back and forth and engage in a colloquy as if we were on the floor of a parliament."
He has plenty of backers who remain convinced that only that kind of tough presence can alter the institution. Perhaps his strongest and longest-standing supporter is Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., who is a leading critic of the way the United Nations functions.
"What John offers is what the U.S. needs at the U.N. today," he said. "John is the right kind of change agent in a universe that is resistant to change. In order to get reform done, you're going to have to push, you have to be assertive."
Sean McCormack, the State Department spokesman, said, "He has done an extraordinary job representing the U.S. during what has turned out to be an extraordinary time at the U.N., and Secretary Rice thinks he's doing a terrific job."
But over the past month, more than 30 U.N. delegates consulted in the preparation of this article who share the United States' goal of changing U.N. management practices expressed misgivings over Bolton's conduct.
Rep. Bill Delahunt, D-Mass., the top Democrat on an international-relations subcommittee that focuses on the United Nations, said that in a visit here last month he had encountered "frustration and resentment over the U.S. performance at the U.N."
And outside experts also expressed concerns.
"I actually agree with Bolton on what has to be done at the U.N., but his confrontational tactics have been very dysfunctional," said Edward C. Luck, a professor of international affairs at Columbia who has followed the United Nations for three decades. "To be successful at the U.N., you have to build coalitions, and if you take unilateral action the way Bolton has, you're isolated, and if you're isolated, you can't achieve much."
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