"There IS no United Nations" - (who says this? John Bolton?......or someone else?)

REDSTATE.ORG ^ | APRIL 21, 2005 | TREVINO

[CHARLITE]

"There is no United Nations. There is an international community that occasionally can be led by the only real power left in the world -- and that's the United States -- when it suits our interests, and when we can get others to go along...."

This kind of mindless creation of the United Nations as something different from what it's in the United States' interest to do isn't going to sell here or anywhere else.

You know this speaker and his ilk. Or do you? Read on.

One of the primary complaints about John Bolton is that he does indeed believe in a Westphalian world: states are the principle actors; and states act according to state interests; and the ultimate determinant of the efficacy of those actions is the inherent power of the state plus the degree of support that state can mobilize amongst other states. To that end, then, the United Nations is a mere forum, a thing with no existence in itself as an independent actor or arbiter except inasmuch as such qualities are voluntarily imparted by states. The objects of policy ought to therefore be the fonts of those qualities, which is to say, the states themselves, rather than organizations which are too often artificial interpositions between states. This much ought to be self-evident, but we are apparently in an era wherein the United Nations is a sacrosanct thing -- a sort of erratically effectual god of states which, like a video-game deity, has power only inasmuch as it is paid homage and treasure. Bolton is guilty of ripping aside that veil: apparently, to participate in a thing, one must believe in it and in the myths it propagates about itself. For the Democrats, we can at least say that this is consistent: it is the same approach they take to government.

But John Bolton deviates from this norm, and is proud of having done so in his career -- and so we get this:

The nature of the new world system was not so different from the old. It was for the moment more stable, but a reasonable forecast would be that Africa in particular had a century of border wars ahead of it. On the other hand, such was the power of the anticolonial idea that great powers from outside a region had relatively little influence unless they were prepared to use force. China altogether backed Fretilin in Timor, and lost. In Spanish Sahara, Russia just as completely backed Algeria, and its front, known as Polisario, and lost.

In both instances the United States wished things to turn out as they did, and worked to bring this about. The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with not inconsiderable success.

The breathtaking arrogance: the realization that it is the states that matter; the understanding that force counts, and counts foremost; the acceptance that the United Nations is merely a tool; the willingness to stymie that organization at every turn in the advancement of the national interest. It is no wonder indeed that the reflexive multilateralists of the left detest and despise John Bolton.

No, make that Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Is John Bolton the ideological hier of that last of the great Democrats? Certainly not. Does he share Moynihan's approach to the United Nations? Manifestly so. Building a public case that Bolton is personally abrasive doesn't begin to diminish this cardinal qualification.

[tet68]

the realization that it is the states that matter; the understanding that force counts, and counts foremost; the acceptance that the United Nations is merely a tool; the willingness to stymie that organization at every turn in the advancement of the national interest.

The Game of Nations. Miles Copeland Simon And Schuster 1969.
About Nasser, but the rules are still the same today.

[llevrok]

Pat Moynahan was a brilliant person who, by the way, had some common sense about the world in which he lived. Neither attribute - brilliance and common sense - seems to be available to Democrats and, sadly, many Republicans today.

[Paul Ross]

Bump.

[Tailgunner Joe]

Moynihan called the UN "A theater of the absurd, a decomposing corpse, and an insane asylum." and "the most corrupt and corrupting creations in the whole history of human institutions." - LINK

[CHARLITE]

Thanks so much, Tailgunner! What a great addition to the discussion. Thanks for the link. I miss Pat Moynihan. He was one of a kind.

Char :)