22 Jul Another Bolton Fight Brewing – Bolton’s Fellow Ambassadors Disparage Him (Anonymously)
As discussed previously, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton will probably be renominated this fall, and at least one key Republican Senator has already said he’ll switch his position to support him. This does not mean Bolton has clear sailing, though. In an extraordinary piece of anonymous backbiting, this NYT story suggests all or most of Bolton’s fellow ambassadors at the U.N. think he is useless. Here is the description of one incident:
Six ambassadors separately offered similar accounts of an incident in June that they said captured the situation. All were from nations in Europe, the Pacific and Latin America that consider themselves close allies of the United States, and they asked to speak anonymously in commenting on a fellow envoy.
Mr. Bolton that day burst into a packed committee hall, produced a cordless microphone and began to lecture envoys from developing nations about their weakening of a proposal to tighten management of the United Nations, his chief goal.
Gaveled to silence, he threw up his hands and said, “Well, so much for trying something different.”
It was not merely rude, the ambassadors said. One recalled that moments later, his BlackBerry flashed a message from another envoy working on management change. “He just busted us apart,” it read.
Even read in full context, I can’t figure out what exactly they are talking about. And it hardly sounds unforgivable. But I guess I’m not a sophisticated U.N. diplomat.
It will be interesting to see if this gambit by U.N. diplomats to undermine Bolton will damage or enhance his chance to gain the support of the Senate.
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