...or, not. In the 22nd round, the abstentions went all the way up to 12 - perhaps part of a strategy to bring down the minimum 2/3 of votes required to elect a Member State to the Security Council. But I don't think it's going to be that easy. More than 70 states are still in favor of Venezuela's candidacy, or at least opposed to Guatemala's.

Tomorrow, the Group of Latin American and Caribbean Countries will meet to discuss the circumstances they are in. It's an informal discussion, so no decision is likely to come of it. Thursday, they will go back to the General Assembly and vote some more.

I've seen some spin in the papers that simply blocking Venezuela is victory enough for the United States and Bolton....

...But I don't think that's true. First off, Bolton is showing how ineffective he is when he dares Venezuela to break the record - America's swagger isn't in need as a corrective to Venezuela's posturing, especially when Guatemala's makes its own case in such a low-key manner. This is just eclipsing the idea that Guatemala's candidacy is built out of substantive reasons.

Second, the US is now contributing to the process of holding up the UN's main deliberative body and preventing it from considering other agenda items by backing a state that has a hard core contingent against it. This move says to those states that you will stick a thumb in their eye in other places, too. It's the kind of move that makes it all but impossible for the United States to advance the kind of good-will UN reforms that it does in fact favor.

Now we wait until Thursday. I hope someone inside Dr. Rice's State Department will come to their senses, make a phone call, and get the US to appeal to Guatemala and Venezuela to both come out in favor of a compromise candidate.