After resigning as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations at the end of 2006, John Bolton, an influential advocate of hardline foreign and defense policies closely associated with the neoconservative political faction, returned to his old stomping grounds at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he served as senior vice president before being tagged to serve in the George W. Bush administration in 2001.
Since rejoining AEI, Bolton has continued to advocate the same set of policies he vigorously championed first as the undersecretary of state for arms control and international security affairs, working under then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, and later as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. In op-eds published in a number of high-level media outlets, including the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, Bolton has criticized the United Nations, lambasted U.S. efforts to diplomatically resolve the standoff with North Korea over its nuclear weapons program, and berated the "weak" international response after Iran apprehended several British soldiers for allegedly straying into Iranian waters, which he argued "emboldened" Iran, whose "government today is a theological revolution on the march" (Financial Times, April 9, 2007).
In a January 14, 2007 article for the Washington Post, Bolton criticized UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon for bowing to pressure inside the UN (for backtracking on his view that states have the right to use the death penalty) and for arguing that resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is key to resolving disputes in places like Iran and Syria. Wrote Bolton: "It is unclear whether Ban was articulating his personal view or was merely following the talking points provided by the UN secretariat. The idea that Hezbollah's efforts to destabilize and overthrow the democratically elected government of Lebanon might be curtailed or eliminated by progress on the Israeli-Palestinian front is hard to take seriously. Similarly, believing that peace and stability would emerge in Iraq if only those troublesome Israelis could be brought into line is more a matter of faith than of logic. Ban's reliance on this favorite UN cliché, however, is more than simply a lapse in judgment; it may well reveal his intentions for future involvement in the Middle East ... U.S. policymakers should start working overtime now to correct the misimpression that Ban may have obtained from his briefers. In the even worse case that Ban's comment reflects his own views, the need for corrective action is even more acute."
In early April 2007, Bolton participated in an AEI panel called "A Fair Deal with North Korea?" on the February 13 agreement with North Korea, the most recent product of the six-party talks. Other panelists were Nicholas Eberstadt and Dan Blumenthal. Bolton told the audience: "... if you believe as I do that North Korea will never give up nuclear weapons voluntarily, then the negotiations are ultimately not only going to be futile but potentially dangerous to those that are within range of North Korea's nuclear weapons, or which can be subject to their use if North Korea transfers them to another rogue state or to a terrorist group or to anybody with hard currency, which is pretty much the way North Korea functions on a daily basis. I don't think North Korea will give up nuclear weapons because I think these weapons are integral to the survival of Kim Jong Il's regime" (April 5, 2007, AEI Event).
Bolton's resignation as U.S. ambassador to the UN came at the end of a controversial tenure that was marked by severe criticism from U.S. senators and international diplomats of Bolton's performance at the UN. The announcement of his resignation in December 2006 also came less than three weeks after President Bush resubmitted for the second time in six months Bolton's nomination for Senate confirmation. Bolton became the U.S. ambassador to the UN on August 1, 2005, when Bush named him to the post during the congressional recess, after the Senate blocked his nomination.
During the confirmation hearings in 2005, Bolton's nomination faced resistance from most Democrats and from several Republicans, including members of the Foreign Relations Committee. After a bruising battle, Bolton failed to win support from three-fifths of the Senate, which is required for confirmation.
In accepting Bolton's resignation, Bush blamed a "handful" of senators who were determined to block a full Senate vote on the nomination. Earlier, in July 2006, after the president resubmitted Bolton's nomination, there was hope among Bolton supporters that some key senators had gradually warmed to the nomination, raising the possibility of a successful confirmation. Important among these was Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH), who initially opposed Bolton but wrote in a July 20 Washington Post op-ed that he had had a change of heart: "I cannot imagine a worse message to send to the terrorists—and to other nations deciding whether to engage in this effort—than to drag out a possible renomination process or even replace the person our president has entrusted to lead our nation at the United Nations at a time when we are working on these historic objectives."
In announcing Bolton's renomination a few days later, the White House claimed that the Senate should expedite the nomination because of his successful diplomacy at the United Nations, arguing that the "people have seen the fruits of John Bolton's labor." It was a view shared by few Senate Democrats or U.S. allies.
A July 23, 2006 New York Times article by Warren Hoge reported deep scorn for John Bolton among UN ambassadors, even from countries close to the United States. According to Hoge, "[M]any diplomats say they see Mr. Bolton as a stand-in for the arrogance of the administration itself." And rather than furthering his stated mission of UN reform, Hoge wrote, "Envoys say he has in fact endangered that effort by alienating traditional allies. They say he combatively asserts American leadership, contests procedures at the mannerly, rules-bound United Nations, and then shrugs off the organization when it does not follow his lead." One unnamed UN ambassador "with close ties" to the administration said: "My initial feeling was, let's see if we can work with [Bolton], and I have done some things to push for consensus on issues that were not easy for my country. But all he gives us in return is, 'It doesn't matter, whatever you do is insufficient'." Added the ambassador: "He's lost me as an ally now, and that's what many other ambassadors who consider themselves friends of the United States are saying."
By late 2006, however, it was clear the balance of forces continued to weigh against confirmation. Then-Sen. Lincoln Chaffee (R-RI), who supported Bolton in 2005, had joined Democrats on the Foreign Relations Committee in opposing the nomination, all but sealing the nomination's fate.
Despite this, Bush still wanted to see his man in the United Nations. According to the Washington Post, "Administration lawyers explored ways of keeping [Bolton] in the job by appointing him to a position that does not require Senate confirmation and then making him 'acting ambassador'" (December 5, 2006). William Kristol, editor of the neoconservative Weekly Standard and a close associate of Bolton's, told the Post that Bolton wanted to avoid putting the administration in the difficult position of continuing to push for him. "More importantly," said Kristol, "he felt he had done a very good job, he defended policies he didn't always agree with, and he did so ably, and so now he can go out on top."
Bolton has been a key Republican Party figure since the early 1980s, when he was tagged to serve in the Reagan administration. He quickly gained a reputation as one of a breed of "New Right lawyers" who operated at the second tier of the State Department or received top policy positions in the Justice Department. Bolton gained entry to the Reagan administration through strong support from Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC) and from New Right strategist Richard Viguerie and his influential Conservative Digest. Years later, during a January 1, 2001 speech at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Helms said of Bolton: "John Bolton is the kind of man with whom I would want to stand at Armageddon."
During Ronald Reagan's second term, Bolton worked closely with a team of Federalist Society lawyers under Attorney General Edwin Meese. With Federalist Society members and activists in top policy positions, the Justice Department for the first time came under the ideological influence of the New Right. (See Philip H. Burch, Reagan, Bush, and Right-Wing Politics: Elites, Think Tanks, Power, and Policy (Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1997, p. 158).)
Bolton's entrée into the administration of George W. Bush began with the Florida vote recount during the 2000 presidential elections. Working closely with his former boss James Baker, Bolton worked to block recount efforts. According to the Wall Street Journal (July 19, 2002), Bolton's "most memorable moment came after the U.S. Supreme Court ordered a halt to the recount, when Mr. Bolton strode into a Tallahassee library, where the count was still going on, and declared: 'I'm with the Bush-Cheney team, and I'm here to stop the count'."
Said Vice President-elect Dick Cheney at the time: "People ask what [job] John should get. My answer is, anything he wants." President Bush nominated Bolton to serve as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security affairs, which the Senate confirmed by a vote of 57-43. All 50 Republican senators voted to confirm Bolton, joined by Democrats Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Zell Miller of Georgia, Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, Mary Landrieu and John Breaux of Louisiana, Russell Feingold of Wisconsin, and Evan Bayh of Indiana.
Bolton quickly confirmed his reputation as a unilateral hardliner while representing the administration in various international fora, serving as the designated treaty basher. Displaying what the Wall Street Journal described as his "combative style," Bolton told an international conference on bioweapons that a hotly disputed verification proposal was "Dead, dead, dead, and I don't want it coming back from the dead."
Bolton was responsible for organizing the administration's Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), which is designed to function as a quasi "coalition of the willing" focused on stopping the transfer of WMD and precursor material. Announced by President Bush while in Poland in May 2003, the PSI is, according to Bolton, "legitimate and will be extremely effective in its efforts against weapons of mass destruction proliferation." Bolton described the PSI—which specifies that partner nations will cooperate with the United States in intercepting and confiscating suspect shipments going or coming from "rogue" countries—as an example of how the United States can "defend its national interests using novel and loose coalitions" (address by John Bolton, 2003 National Lawyers Convention of the Federalist Society, November 13, 2003).
In mid-2001, Bolton announced at the UN Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons that Washington opposed any initiative to regulate trade in small arms or in non-military rifles—or any effort that would "abrogate the constitutional right to bear arms." Accompanying Bolton to the conference were members of the National Rifle Association (NRA). "It is precisely those weapons that Bolton would exclude from the purview of this conference that are actually killing people and endangering communities around the world," said Tamar Gabelnick, director of the Arms Sales Monitoring Project at the Federation of American Scientists (Inter Press Service, August 4, 2003).
Long before then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made his now-famous distinction between a "New Europe" and an "Old Europe," Bolton had signaled that the post-World War II transatlantic alliance was being overhauled by Washington. Bolton has a long track record working on transatlantic issues. Before joining the Bush administration, Bolton was a member of the New Atlantic Initiative, a bipartisan initiative sponsored by AEI and funded by two right-wing foundations, the Olin Foundation and the Lynde & Harry Bradley Foundation.
In law school and throughout his legal and political career, Bolton gained a reputation as being abrasive, astute, humorless, and relentless in the pursuit of his political agenda, a major focus of which has been to free U.S. military power from international constraint. In his office at the State Department, Bolton displayed a mock grenade with the label: "To John Bolton—World's Greatest Reaganite" (Washington Post, March 8, 2005).
In a 1997 Wall Street Journal op-ed, Bolton articulated his dismissive view of international treaties. "Treaties are law only for U.S. domestic purposes," he wrote. "In their international operation, treaties are simply political obligations." In other words, international treaties signed by the United States should not be considered as a body of law that the United States should respect in its international engagement, but rather just political considerations that can be ignored.
Since the mid-1990s, Bolton has led the attack against the International Criminal Court (ICC). In a 1988 National Interest article, Bolton argued that signing the ICC would make the "president, the cabinet officers who comprise the National Security Council, and other senior civilian and military leaders responsible for our defense and foreign policy ... the potential targets of the politically unaccountable Prosecutor in Rome."
In 1998, when he was senior vice president of AEI, Bolton described the ICC as "a product of fuzzy-minded romanticism [that] is not just naïve, but dangerous" (Newsmax.com, July 19, 2002). Early in the first year of the Bush administration, Bolton prevailed upon Secretary of State Colin Powell to give him the honor of renouncing the Clinton administration's signature of the treaty establishing the ICC. Bolton called the moment he signed the letter rejecting Clinton's signature "the happiest moment in my government service."
Bolton has long dismissed the legitimacy of the United Nations. In a 1994 speech at the liberal World Federalist Association, Bolton declared that "There is no such thing as the United Nations." To underscore his point, Bolton said: "If the UN secretary building in New York lost ten stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference."
In a 1999 article titled "Kofi Annan's Power Grab," Bolton took issue with Annan's description of the United Nations as "the sole source of legitimacy on the use of force." According to Bolton, "If the United States allows that claim to go unchallenged, its discretion in using force to advance its national interests is likely to be inhibited in the future."
In Bolton's view, Annan had put his own legitimacy at risk by expressing his concerns about the NATO bombing campaign over the former Yugoslavia. When visiting the war zone, Annan said: "Unless the Security Council is restored to its preeminent position as the sole source of legitimacy on the use of force, we are on a dangerous path to anarchy." Subsequently, in the secretary general's annual report to the UN membership, Annan wrote that "Enforcement actions without Security Council authorization threaten the very core of the international security system ... Only the [UN] Charter provides a universally legal basis for the use of force." Bolton wrote that these were "sweeping—indeed, breathtaking—assertions."
Bolton is an outspoken hawk on U.S. policy in the Middle East, and has since the mid-1990s been closely associated with a number of neoconservative organizations and pressure groups that are close to the right-wing Likud Party in Israel, including AEI, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), and the Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf (CPSG).
Along with a number of other Bush administration figures, Bolton served on JINSA's board of advisers before joining the administration. JINSA promotes the classic neoconservative fare, such as a "peace through strength" policy to support Israel, and works to build "strategic ties" between the U.S. military and U.S. military contractors with Israel. Other administration figures associated with this militarist organization that aims to strengthen the military-industrial complexes in both Israel and the United States are Cheney, Douglas Feith, and Paul Wolfowitz.
Two months prior to the Iraq invasion, Bolton traveled to Jerusalem to meet with former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to discuss strategies for "preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction." No mention was made of the widely accepted fact that Israel is the only nuclear power in the Middle East. Instead, the undersecretary focused on the Bush administration's disarmament targets following the planned invasion of Iraq. In February 2003, Bolton said that once regime change plans in Iraq were completed, "It will be necessary to deal with threats from Syria, Iran, and North Korea afterwards" (Foreign Policy In Focus, February 20, 2003).
Bolton received strong support from major pro-Israel organizations during the 2005 confirmation hearings, including from the Anti-Defamation League, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, B'nai B'rith International, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, and JINSA.
As the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Bolton continued to champion controversial Israeli military activities. In early July 2006, he spearheaded opposition to a proposed UN Security Council resolution that would have called for Israel to end its attacks and its "disproportionate use of force" in the Gaza Strip. The blocked resolution would have also called for the release of a kidnapped Israeli soldier. The resolution received ten votes, with four abstentions, and with Bolton casting the lone opposition vote. In October 2004, Bolton wielded the U.S. veto to block a similar draft calling for Israel to end all military operations in northern Gaza.
On July 15, 2006, Bolton also blocked Security Council consideration of a ceasefire resolution in the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict. In a FoxNews interview, Bolton commented: "What our job is in New York is to make sure that that right of self-defense is not abridged arbitrarily. But also, to try and do what we can to help the Lebanese government, which was elected democratically, and to see if we can help remove the cancer" (O'Reilly Factor, July 20, 2006).
Like the White House, Bolton characterizes Israel's campaigns in the Gaza Strip and in Lebanon as part of the global war on terrorism. Rejecting the rising calls for a ceasefire and rejecting criticism of Israel's bombing of Lebanon, Bolton said that there is "no moral equivalence" between Lebanese civilian casualties of Israeli bombing and Israelis killed by "malicious terrorist acts" (AFP, July 17, 2006).
Bolton was also one of the administration's leading hawks on Asia policy and advocates of Taiwan, where he has close professional and personal ties. According to an investigative report by the Washington Post (April 9, 2001), Bolton was on the payroll of the Taiwanese government before joining the Bush administration. Bolton also received $30,000 for "research papers on UN membership issues involving Taiwan" at the same time he was promoting diplomatic recognition of Taiwan before various congressional committees (The Nation, March 7, 2005).
In 1999, Bolton, speaking as an AEI scholar, said: "Diplomatic recognition of Taiwan would be just the kind of demonstration of U.S. leadership that the region needs and that many of its people hope for. The notion that China would actually respond with force is a fantasy." Bolton joined a prominent group of neoconservatives and traditional conservatives who signed a statement jointly sponsored by PNAC and the Heritage Foundation that lambasted the Clinton administration for its failure to offer unequivocal support of Taiwan. The statement—whose signatories included Bill Kristol, Meese, Wolfowitz, Elliott Abrams, Richard Perle, I. Lewis Libby, William Buckley, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Paul Weyrich, and James Woolsey—called for a state-to-state relationship with Taiwan ("Statement on the Defense of Taiwan," PNAC and Heritage, August 20, 1999).
In July 2003, during the run-up to the six-party talks with North Korea, Bolton described North Korean President Kim Jong Il as the "tyrannical dictator" of a country where "life is a hellish nightmare." North Korea responded in kind, saying that "such human scum and bloodsucker is not entitled to take part in the talks ... We have decided not to consider him as an official of the U.S. administration any longer nor to deal with him." The State Department sent a replacement for Bolton to the talks (Associated Press, August 3, 2003).
Bolton has been closely associated, both in and out of government, with a number of controversies regarding alleged abuse of intelligence and malfeasance. When he worked as an assistant attorney general under Edwin Meese, Bolton thwarted the Kerry Commission's efforts to obtain documentation, including Bolton's personal notes, about the Iran-Contra affair and alleged Contra drug smuggling. Working with congressional Republicans, Bolton also stonewalled congressional demands to interview deputies of then-Attorney General Edwin Meese regarding their role in the affair (Inter Press Service, August 4, 2003).
Speaking before an audience at the Heritage Foundation in May 2002, Bolton argued that Cuba should be included among the "axis of evil" countries because of its alleged development of biowarfare capacity. Cuba is world renowned for its biomedical industry, but according to Bolton the industry was concealing a WMD project. Providing no evidence for his allegations, Bolton said that Cuba was involved in the sales of illicit biowarfare technology in part as a way to boost its cash-short economy. Other administration officials, when pressed, declined to support Bolton's accusations (Washington Post, April 22, 2005). Bolton never complied with congressional demands to provide documentation on his Cuba assertion. A congressional investigation of Cuba's alleged WMD program found no evidence to back Bolton's assertions (Inter Press Service, August 4, 2003).
During his first confirmation hearings, Bolton's record as undersecretary of state for arms control came under intense criticism. According to news reports, including from the highly respected Jewish magazine Forward, Bolton met with officials of the Mossad intelligence agency without first seeking "country clearance" from the State Department's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. In its May 6, 2005 article on Bolton's practice of manipulating intelligence and violating government protocol, Forward also noted that Bolton is "known as a strong supporter of Israel's position that Tehran is coming alarmingly close to being able to weaponize its nuclear material" (Forward, May 6, 2005).
Bolton is also alleged to have used his position as the Bush administration's top arms control official to shield Israel from charges of violating U.S. laws against using U.S. arms for "nondefensive" purposes, when Israel used U.S.-supplied weapons to assassinate Salah Shehada, a top Hamas activist in Gaza City, on July 23, 2000. Israel's air force used a U.S.-made F-16 bomber to drop a 1-ton bomb on a house in a densely populated part of Gaza where the Hamas leader was staying. Fourteen civilians died along with Shehada, and more than 100 Palestinians were injured. Senate staffers investigating Bolton found that he prevented a State Department memo accusing Israel of violating U.S. arms-export laws from reaching the desk of then-Secretary of State Colin Powell (U.S. News & World Report, May 9, 2005).
As an associate at the high-powered Covington law firm, Bolton in 1978 worked with Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC) and the National Congressional Club, the senator's campaign-financing organization, to help form a new campaign finance organization called Jefferson Marketing. According to Legal Times, Jefferson Marketing was established "as a vehicle to supply candidates with such services as advertising and direct mail without having to worry about the federal laws preventing PACs, like the Congressional Club, from contributing more than $5,000 per election to any one candidate's campaign committee." After its formation, Jefferson Marketing became a holding company for three firms—Campaign Management Inc., Computer Operations & Mailing Professionals, and Discount Paper Brokers (Legal Times, February 19, 1990).
In 1987 the National Congressional Club reported a debt of $900,000, with its major creditors being Richard Viguerie, Charles Black Jr., Covington and Burling, and the DC law office of Baker & Hostetler—all of which maintained good relations with the right-wing PAC even as their debts for service offered went unpaid. Jefferson Marketing was the PAC's largest creditor, with more than $676,000 due from the National Congressional Club. By the end of the decade, FEC documents showed that Helms' PAC owed Covington $111,000. But this was not considered a major concern for Covington, according to firm spokesman H. Edward Dunkelberger Jr. (Legal Times, November 23, 1987).
A decade later, Bolton was again entangled in controversial schemes to support Republican candidates, this time involving money channeled from Hong Kong and Taiwan to the Republican Party by way of a "think tank" linked to the Republican National Committee (RNC). In 1995-96 Bolton served as president of the National Policy Forum (NPF), which, according to a congressional investigation, functioned as an intermediary organization to funnel foreign and corporate money to Republicans. (For a complete account of NPF's activities, see "Investigation of Illegal or Improper Activities in Connection with 1996 Federal Election Campaigns," Final Report of the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, March 10, 1998, available at: http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1998_rpt/sgo-sir/index.html.)
The NPF had been established in 1993 in anticipation of the 1994 general election. Founded by the RNC's chairman Haley Barbour a few months after he assumed the party's chairmanship, the forum was organized as a nonprofit, tax-exempt education institute, although the IRS later ruled that NPF was a subsidiary of the RNC and not entitled to its requested tax-exempt status.
A 1996 congressional investigation brought to light the role of the NPF, which, according to a minority report of the congressional committee, channeled $800,000 in foreign money into the 1996 election cycle after having also used the same mechanisms to fund congressional races around the country in 1994.
When Bolton became NPF president in 1995, the forum began organizing "megaconferences" as a hook to raise money for the party. These conferences brought together Republican members of congress, lobbyists, and corporate executives to discuss matters that were frequently the object of pending legislation. An NPF memo laid out the funding strategy: "NPF will continue to recruit new donors through conference sponsorships ... In order for the conferences to take place, they must pay for themselves or turn a profit. Industry and association leaders will be recruited to participate and sponsor those forums, starting at $25,000."
Corporate representatives professed surprise at the size of the contribution request. "It's pretty astounding," said one invitee. "If this doesn't have 'payment for access' [to top GOP lawmakers] written all over it, I don't know what does."
Bolton also made sure that generous contributors received their money's worth. In another NPF memo, two NPF employees told Bolton that, in return for a $200,000 donation by U.S. West, the telecommunications company should be assured that the policy issues that most concern it should be incorporated into the NPF agenda for their upcoming telecommunications "megaconference."
In addition to money laundering, during John Bolton's tenure as NPF president the forum received a $25,000 contribution from the Pacific Cultural Foundation. Both Barbour and Bolton expressed their appreciation in a letter to the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative, which functions as Taiwan's embassy in Washington. According to one communication with Taiwan's official representative in Washington, it was noted that the "generous contribution" would enable the forum "to continue to develop and advocate good international policy."
Bolton left his position at the NPF shortly before Congress launched its probe into whether the group illegally accepted foreign contributions. No charges were ever filed as a result of the congressional hearings, which according to the Democratic minority members of the committee didn't devote adequate resources to the investigation (Final Report of the Committee on Governmental Affairs, Senate, March 10, 1998).
