Post by POA on Aug 4, 2005 13:56:56 GMT -5
Published on Wednesday, August 3, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
An 800-Pound Gorilla Goes to the U.N.
John Bolton's New Internationalism
by Lila Rajiva
Despite what Joe Biden thinks, John Bolton at the U.N. will be no bumbling bull in a china shop. His abrasive rhetoric is not in the slightest bit unintended. It reflects with complete accuracy his own undemocratic attitude and that of his bosses - kiss-up and kick-down, says Senator Voinovitch (R-Ohio), who compares the way Bolton tears into low-level employees and other little people to an 800-pound gorilla devouring bananas.
His appointment on August 2 to the post of U.N. ambassador thus drives a gruesomely large nail into the metal container in which for the past several years, the Bush administration has been gleefully interring the U.N and every other international body around. Hands, feet, and mouth duct-taped, the U.N. will in due course join all the other legal non-persons created by Bush's contempt for the rule of law within the state and abroad. No wonder that the appointment itself flouted standard procedure and was hustled through while Congress was in recess, a first time for such an important appointment.
Despite what his supporters say, Bolton at the U.N. is also not doing Nixon in China. Nixon's gambit grew at least partly out of a long overdue recognition of the importance of more than a billion people to world affairs. With this appointment, however, Bush is signalling as clearly as possible the very low esteem in which he holds the U.N. as it exists. A list of Bolton's biggest backers reads like a blue-book of hard-core U.N. bashers: Wolfowitz, Rice, Rumsfeld, Cheney, and of course Bush himself.
Some idea of what is in store for the U.N. can be gleaned from Bolton's jaw-breakingly titled opus on the subject, "The creation, fall, rise, and fall of the U.N," which lays out the tenets of "U.N. Reform," the mantra of Bolton-backers. It's not a pretty picture:
Bolton's objective is a U.N. "responsive to the major contributors." Contributions would be entirely voluntary and would be withdrawn if the U.N. didn't do what the donors wanted. And what the major donors want, according to Bolton, is a mop-up operation trailing behind the juggernaut of empire not an "international quota system" engaged in "international social work." Bolton would block any moves to curtail the U.S. veto or expand Security Council membership. And there's more:
Quote: No troops from the five permanent members of the Security Council should be involved in peace-keeping.
Quote: Even in traditional peacekeeping operations, forces under U.N. command should operate under the control of the Security Council, not under that of the Secretary-General.
Quote: The U.N. should be used when and where we choose to use it to advance American national interests.
Quote: The U.N. is only a tool.
Right. First world nations buy control of U.N. policies and third world nations contribute warm bodies to the dirty leg-work of empire.
But that doesn't make Bolton an America Firster and nationalist hawk, as some claim. Instead, his confirmation actually marks another step in the poisonous mushrooming of a selective internationalism where duly constituted international bodies like the U.N. get shown the door while in the backroom foreign elites jostle for their appointed place in the pecking order of empire on the basis of their ability to contribute to the well-being of first-world elites, under a new international law of the jungle. Bolton's appointment is a pay-off for years of dedicated work in the service of that elite internationalism:
As Undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security, he worked hard to create legally binding bilateral agreements with some 70 countries (comprising 40% of the world's population) that would prevent the surrender of American persons to the authority of the International Criminal Court. Since U.S. military forces, civilian personnel, and private citizens are active in peacekeeping and humanitarian missions in almost 100 countries at any given time, Bolton claimed that the United States had to engage in a global campaign to protect U.S. nationals from the ICC's authority. He listed an assortment of protected persons that included the media, contractors working with the military, students in government-sponsored programs, and business men abroad.
Put this laundry- list next to the expansion of domestic and foreign surveillance promised us by Secretary Rumsfeld and something clicks. Recall that in 2002 the Pentagon's Defense Science Board (DSB) urged an increase in "human intelligence (HUMINT) forward/operational presence and... new clandestine technical capabilities." Translated from Pentagon-speak that reads - "We need more spies in foreign countries equipped with secret spy technology." And from where would these new spies be drawn? From a "robust, global cadre of retirees, reservists and others who are trained and qualified to serve on short notice, including expatriates." Selected from among this group, a master spy agency, the Proactive Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG), would launch secret operations aimed at instigating terrorism as a pretext for attacks by US forces.