John
Bolton in Jerusalem
The New
Age of Disarmament Wars
by
Ian Williams
Dissident Voice
February 23, 2003
Much
of the world is worried about the impending war with Iraq, and rightly so. But
this may just the beginning of a new age of disarmament wars.
From the homeland of
Armageddon this week came worrying signs that we should begin worrying about
the even longer and harder wars to follow. John Bolton, U.S. Under Secretary of
State for Disarmament Affairs and International Security, was in Israel this
week, for meetings about "preventing the spread of weapons of mass
destruction."
It seems appropriate for the
U.S. and Israel to meet about disarmament issues. After all, Israel is
universally acknowledged by everyone--excepting the U.S. government--as a
considerable nuclear power, and much of the world regards its prime minister as
a profound threat to international security. However, we can be sure that neither
item was on Bolton's agenda.
Bolton-Sharon Style
Disarmament
While in Israel, Bolton met
Sharon and Netanyahu. He promised that after the U.S. has sorted Iraq "it
will be necessary to deal with threats from Syria, Iran, and North Korea
afterwards." For Bolton and Sharon, disarmament is what you do to other
people, no more and no less.
Unlike most of his
colleagues in Washington, Bolton seems to have kept his counsel on France and
Germany--at least this time. But that should not be taken as any sign of
disagreement with Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld's spat with "Old
Europe." Previously, Bolton had sounded the alert, warning that "the
Europeans can be sure that America's days as a well-bred doormat for EU
political and military protection are coming to an end."
The venue for Bolton's
disarmament talks is significant. Although Israel is agnostic on Kim Jong Il,
there is no doubt that the rest of Bolton's dominoes fall exactly in line with
the eschatological plans of the Likudnik fundamentalists. When they met, Sharon
told him that Israel was "concerned about the security threat posed by
Iran" and that it was important to deal with it even while American
attention is turned toward Iraq. Since it was the Israelis and the Reagan
administration that had conspired to provide weaponry for Iran in the 1980s, we
know how strongly and consistently they feel about this.
Indeed, Bolton and Sharon
have been as one for some time. Soon after George W. Bush's discovery of the
"Axis of Evil," Bolton promptly fingered Cuba and Libya as a sort of
mini-Axis and as potential possessors of missiles and weapons of mass
destruction. Although Sharon was agnostic this time on Cuba, he happily
endorsed adding Libya to the hit list along with Iran and Syria.
John Bolton is one of the
major reasons why few other countries trust the motives, or indeed the
rationality of the U.S. administration (the list of other reasons keeps
growing, but the ravings of Wolfowitz, Perle, Cheney, and Rumsfeld spring
immediately to an apprehensive observer's mind).
These are the people whose
statements scare off the diplomatic ducks that Colin Powell so assiduously
tries to line up. In addition, the continual gaffes of hawks like Bolton make
the U.S. position seem even more hypocritical in the global arena. For example,
the ostensible excuse for attacking Iraq is its defiance of UN resolutions.
However, Bolton has defied the UN's very existence for most of his political
career. He has made it plain that the U.S. government should not abide by any
UN decisions that may prove inconvenient to the U.S. pursuit of its national
interests.
Washington's UN Double-Speak
Last year as the rest of the
world was deciding that Hans Blix, the head of UNMOVIC, was a trustworthy
arbiter, Bolton had the CIA vet him because he suspected him to be unreliable.
One feels sure that he still does, even though the CIA gave the good Doctor
Blix a clean bill of health.
However, Bolton is at least
consistent. His political career began in UN-bashing. In 1994 he asserted that
"there is no such thing as the United Nations" or that "if the
UN Secretariat building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldn't make a bit of
difference." Nonetheless, his firm principles can be malleable when hit by
self interest. Taking ten floors off the 38 of the UN HQ would have left the
27th floor. That's where the UN finance department issued his pay check when he
became James Baker's assistant in the UN mission to abrogate Security Council
resolutions against the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara.
It is difficult to square
his bashing of the UN with the Bush administration's blandishing the Security
Council members to "save" the organization, to preserve its
credibility and relevance--by doing exactly what it is told. Perhaps because
Bolton was absent from Washington, in Israel this week, the administration has
reluctantly accepted the desirability for a second UN resolution to authorize
war. Certainly, this is not due to any abstract attachment to principles.
Rather, Tony Blair persuaded Bush that the few allies the U.S. has need such a
resolution to quell their restive electorates.
Of course electorates do not
always figure well with the White House. Bolton was foisted on a reluctant
Powell by other hardliners in the administration, not least for his role in chad-counting
in Florida before the Supreme Court appointed Bush.
But then he has not always
been so keen on the judicial approach. For the past two years, his
single-handed campaign to destroy the effectiveness of the International
Criminal Court (ICC) has done much to cement European and third world
resentment of U.S. "diplomacy" and unity in advance of the Iraq
issue.
Indeed, his campaign get
bilateral treaties exempting American citizens from the ICC's jurisdiction
precipitated the fissure lines we now see emerging in the global community. His
few successes include the East Europeans, desperate to get into NATO, as well
as the tiny island states, which are, well, just desperate. Even the role of
one less tiny island state--Britain--foreshadows the role it has played over
Iraq. After all, it was Tony Blair who effectively split united EU resistance
to the American campaign.
The Bolton campaign's major
diplomatic "success," however, was that his undiplomatic pressure
provoked a record number of countries into signing and ratifying the Rome
Treaty quickly so that the ICC was actually established several years before
its sponsors anticipated. Bolton is to diplomacy what Jack the Ripper was to
surgery.
Bearing in mind the Middle
East venue for the current combat, Senator Jesse Helms had endorsed Bolton's
appointment with what one hopes was unconscious irony "John Bolton is the
kind of man with whom I would want to stand at Armageddon, if it should be my
lot to be on hand for what is forecast to be the final battle between good and
evil in this world."
Media Silence
Almost as amazing as
Bolton's statements is the relative silence of the U.S. media about him and
other administration hawks. Shouldn't the American public know that senior
administration officials are promising that after a war with Iraq, there will
be one with Iran, and then one with Syria, with Libya, with North Korea, and
with Cuba? Each of these is a scenario that could frighten the American public.
Taken together, George W. Bush is threatening to make the Prussian kings look
like Pacifists. Do those Reservists in the Gulf know how long they will be
away, making the world fertile for terrorism?
Some argued that you can
ignore the likes of Bolton because they are just token eccentrics--there to
appease the right wing of the Republican Party. Such complacency is
ill-grounded. The first two years of Bush foreign policy--with the promulgation
of the Axis of Evil, the campaign against the ICC, the abrogation of Kyoto, the
unlimited support for Ariel Sharon's behavior, and the gratuitous attacks on
long-standing allies who have the temerity to disagree over Iraq--should warn
us to take heed.
We do not have to agree with
those Bible Study classes in the White House on prophetic power to prophesy
that it would be very dangerous to ignore Bolton's statements. These are
harbingers of endless wars. It's a long, long way to Teheran, but these hawks are
putting their heart into going there. Or rather, as most of them did in
Vietnam, sending others.
Ian Williams writes extensively on the UN for publications including The Nation and Foreign Policy in Focus. His regular column,
The Deadline Pundit, can be found at the Globalvision News Network: http://www.gvnews.net/html/pundit.html. Email: uswarreport@igc.org