Last week, the White House and the State Department announced their pick for ambassador to the United Nations. John Bolton, a seasoned member of the Bush administration and a veteran of conservative think tanks, is the new delegate.

Bolton’s appointment is either a humorous prank — the Bush administration is known to have a sense of humor — or a slap in the face to the international diplomatic community, indicative of how the Bush administration is known to not give a damn about how its “allies” feel at times.

Not only does he hate the United Nations, Bolton thinks it should not exist. He is opposed to multilateralism, advocates militarism and is known for being arrogant, self-righteous and confrontational. Essentially, he is the antitheses of a diplomat.

Bolton has made no effort to hide his resentment of the United Nations. “There is no such thing as the United Nations … If the U.N. secretary building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference,” he said at a Federalist Society Forum in 1994.

When he was asked once about the “stick and carrot” approach in diplomacy, he replied: “I don’t do carrots,” only stick, obviously, in reference to his strategy of bullying, intimidation and threat. He is known for making statements accusing some governments of running programs to produce weapons of mass destruction while he has no evidence to support his claims. He is the origin of the claim that Fidel Castro had a germ-weapons program, prompting the rest of the administration to deny his claim.

Similarly, he was due to testify in 2003 that Syria had programs to produce WMDs, prompting a revolt by members of the intelligence community who insisted that there where no evidence to support his claims.

Bolton is more of unilateralist hawk than a diplomat advocating multilateralism. He views the United Nations from that very perspective, as he stated in an interview with National Public Radio, “If I were redoing the Security Council today, I’d have one permanent member because that’s the real reflection of the distribution of power in the world,” explaining that the United States is his choice of the only permanent member of the Security Council.

He also views the United Nations as an institution that follows the lead of the United States and provides legitimacy to its actions. Not attempting to hide his contempt to the United Nations, he said, “When the United States leads, the United Nations will follow. When it suits our interests to do so, we will do so. When it does not suit our interests, we will not.”

To add more irony to the announcement of Bolton’s new job, President Bush had recently returned form a European tour with the intended mission of assuring the United States’ allies of improving international cooperation.

The promises of collaboration included several joint efforts of cooperation and consultation across the Atlantic on issues of foreign policy. Most notably, the Bush administration announced its intention to join the European efforts to negotiate with Iran over its nuclear program. This collaboration appears to have been prematurely aborted, since Bolton’s way of doing business favors confrontation, even if armed, over diplomacy and negotiations, especially knowing that his rationales for confrontation are often based upon conclusions and prediction that he draws regardless of the facts and evidence that may prove otherwise.

Bolton’s line has long infuriated North Korea and Iran, while moderates in the Bush administration have been struggling to reach some common grounds with either of the two countries.

Bolton is the wrong choice for the U.N. job, he is the wrong face of the United States to present to the international community and he is the wrong choice to deal with any potential threats of governments or groups hostile to the United States acquiring destructive capabilities.

He is the wrong choice because, using the words of Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, “He confronts some countries with purported evidence of attempts to acquire nuclear and biological weapons, then he tries to persuade allies to support U.S. efforts to isolate them. John Bolton has been totally unapologetic about his radical prescription for dealing with the proliferation threat. The main problem is that it hasn’t worked anywhere.”

Fayyad Sbaihat ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in chemical engineering.