Back in the Spring of 2000, a slightly younger John Bolton, a man we did not need to call Mister Ambassador, who had yet to storm a ballot counting room in Florida, with a mustache I suspect was of a darker hue, declared the following in a law journal article:

A second source of "international law" is the ways in which nations behave, the practices they engage in over the years, a source that evolves and becomes international law. This "state practice" is the basis of what is called "customary international law," which is said to be just as binding on nations n10 as, for example, laws that have passed through the constitutional system of the United States. But this is plainly wrong. Practice is practice, and custom is custom; neither one is law. Customary international law changes under this definition when state practice changes, which led former Attorney General Bill Barr to opine: "Well, as I understand it, what you're saying is the only way to change international law is to break it." n11 This telling remark shows the incoherence of treating "customary international law" as law.

Perversely, with today's news of North Korea's nuclear test, Ambassador Bolton got to prove himself right - America under John Bolton's aggressive foreign policy leadership as UN Ambassador changed the practice of international law, and North Korea was all too happy to follow suit and conduct the first nuclear test explosion since 1998.

You think I'm just looking for things to blame on Bolton now? No - it's much more severe than that. It all goes back to the World Summit outcome document prepared for the 60th Session of the General Assembly of 2005. And who can forget the hundreds of additions and deletions in tracked changes that Ambassador Bolton instituted in that document at the last minute, scuttling months of complicated diplomatic negotiations. One of the changes he insisted on that was not restored once global outrage forced a modification of the US position can be found buried on page 37 of the document, appealing to nuclear weapons-possessing states to:

Maintain a moratorium on nuclear test explosions pending the entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty and call upon all states to sign and ratify the treaty

A year later, the practice of international law has become what states say it is - in this case, the practice of the United States. North Korea has produced a number of outcomes inside the UN Security Council, but not one of them has made reference to the moratorium against nuclear weapons testing, a soft international agreement that has served us well by preventing our closest peers in nuclear arms from refining the destructive capabilities in their arsenals. Instead of having the ability to say that North Korea's threats are out of step with every state's policy in the world, we can only make milquetoast remarks such as "should the DPRK carry out its threat of a nuclear weapon test, it would jeopardize peace, stability and security in the region and beyond."

So, a change Bolton forced in the US position has now been manifested in North Korea's nuclear test. Another fine act of diplomacy by America's Ambassador to the UN.

Just a quick caveat. An obvious response could be that Bolton doesn't make US policy. But in this case, he has. As Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security for four years, he controlled the undermining of America's feeling of being bound by President Clinton's signature of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. He removed the reference to the moratorium against testing from the Summit document. And, he has prevented any such reference from being made to the moratorium in subsequent UN statements.

Moreover, nuclear testing is not US policy. The National Nuclear Security Administration says that its plan through 2030 is "Continuing to work on a Reliable Replacement Warhead to ensure the long-term reliability and safety of the nuclear weapons stockpile and enable a more responsive supporting infrastructure while reducing the possibility that the United States would ever need to return to underground nuclear testing."

Moreover, other states have appreciated the efforts to bind India under the moratorium against nuclear testing in the implementing legislation of the US-India nuclear agreement.

North Korea's nuclear test is ultimately another in the long line of astonishing failures in nonproliferation diplomacy that Ambassador Bolton has been committing since he entered the Bush government in 2000. Hopefully President Bush will be prevailed upon not to send this charlatan back to Turtle Bay for two more years of wreckage.