The UN Are Not Amused
Daniel Drezner has his qualms about John Bolton, but they don't extend to one of the Bolton quotes that his opponents reflexively run up as a red flag:
The horror ... the horror. But Drezner says he's right.
Perhaps a useful semantic shift would be to refer to "the United Nations" with a plural pronoun, the way Americans used to refer to "the United States" back before the federal government welded them all into one homogenous mass during the Civil War.
"There is no United Nations."
The horror ... the horror. But Drezner says he's right.
I don't know if Bolton is a serial bully, I don't know if he'd be a great ambassador to the UN, and I share Jonah Goldberg's concern about the moustache, but I will say one thing -- Bolton's assessment of the United Nations was and is 100% correct. He's not saying the organization doesn't exist -- he's saying that thinking of the UN as a single coherent actor is both factually incorrect and counterproductive to U.S. foreign policy. The United Nations acts in a forceful manner if and only if the United States and other great powers agree that such action is necessary. ... It's telling that a few mnths after Bolton made this statement, the U.N. decided not to get involved in the Rwandan genocide -- primarily because the U.S. government wanted no part of getting involved.
Perhaps a useful semantic shift would be to refer to "the United Nations" with a plural pronoun, the way Americans used to refer to "the United States" back before the federal government welded them all into one homogenous mass during the Civil War.
