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CounterPunch
February
22, 2003
John Bolton in Jerusalem
The New Age
of Disarmament Wars
By IAN WILLIAMS
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
is a contributor to Foreign
Policy In Focus on UN and international affairs.) He
can be reached at: uswarreport@igc.org
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