Missing The Forest For The Trees? Bolton and UN Reform
Ivo and Steve Clemons have been squaring off on whether John Bolton is right or wrong to oppose the new (and substantially watered down) UN proposal for a new Human Rights Council. I side with Steve in the sense that we have no business opposing something that General Assembly President Jan Eliasson tried hard to craft to please us when we never made it clear what our real bottom line was. That just breeds further cynicism among other countries -- our allies and everyone else -- that we're not serious about actually moving forward. Shades of the U.S. negotiating position in the International Criminal Court, under Bill Clinton, no less, when the U.S. continually urged further changes in the draft text but was never willing to say: "Do this and we'll sign," with the result that other countries finally concluded we weren't serious about actually creating a court that worked.
