Diplomacy, formerly the art of getting your own way though subtlety and understanding has latterly bastardised into a language of forked tongue, characterised by lies, deceptions, false promises and flattery of some of the most unsavoury characters around.
With the approval of John Bolton to be the US's ambassador to the UN, we can assume that diplomacy is about to get a whole lot less diplomatic, and that can only be a good thing, as something might get done on a global level.
Bolton's appointment is no small controversy, with baggage such as this behind him:
-The U.N.? ''There is no such thing as the United Nations.''
- Reform of the Security Council? ''If I were redoing the Security Council, I'd have one permanent member: the United States.''
- International law? "It is a big mistake for us to grant any validity to international law."
- Offering incentives to rogue states? "I don't do carrots."
Now perhaps our international bureaucrats might actually talk about issues that matter in a frank and meaningful way with a view to actually doing something instead of engaging in mutual tutting and issuing bland statements expressing "concern".
I'm not against having a UN as such, but if we do have one, I want it to do something rather than just talk about doing something. It makes me angry that something that proclaims to be so good does so little for so many. The successive failures of the UN, not least the inaction over the Darfur genocide (having declared in December 04 that "Genocide anywhere is a threat to the security of all and should never be tolerated" the UN commissioned a report in January 05 stating that the 70,000 corpses, all of the same ethnic origin, littering Darfur did not represent a genocide, so the UN were right not to intervene) to separate multilateral idealism from practical action have gone on long enough.
If any administrative body needed shaking up, it's the UN. And Bolton will certainly shake 'em up.
Thanks to
Steyn for the Bolton quotes
