Not likely. Last week Scott Paul reported on these pages that John Bolton is lobbying against US membership on the new Human Rights Council. It seems this effort is gaining some traction. On Friday, Bill Frist submitted a Sense of the Senate resolution urging the administration against seeking membership and calling for US non-cooperation with the new council. Today, 17 countries nominated themselves for membership on the council. The United States was not one of them.

Even House International Relations Chair and UN antagonist par-excellence, Henry Hyde, sees the propriety  of American membership. To be sure, I imagine that Hyde supports US membership for the same cynical reason that Pakistani UN ambassador Munir Akram does: to guide the Council's work away from probing internal domestic human rights violations.  But no matter the underlying motive, the US should seek membership for the single reason that it can augment US efforts to bring basic human rights reforms to places like Belarus, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, and elsewhere. Obviously, the human rights conditions of these countries are not the most pressing issues facing US foreign policy right now. But the Council would be a good place to get the world to gang up on those regimes and have them introduce basic human rights protections, which could be a precursor to more lasting democratic reforms.

With or without the US on the council, I find it hard to believe that it will be used to advance and objectively anti-American agenda, especially if the US controls the purse-strings of the Council.    It's too bad our UN ambassador and senate leader don't see things this way.