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US hawks face defeat in Bolton
debacle
By Jim Lobe
NEW
DELHI - Demands by a key Republican senator for a
two-week delay in the vote by the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee on John Bolton as Washington's
next UN ambassador mark a significant and
potentially strategic defeat for Vice President
Dick Cheney and the administration hawks he led
during George W Bush's first presidential term.
If Bolton's bid is defeated or if, more
likely, he is forced to withdraw, chief
beneficiaries will likely be the administration's
realist forces led by Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice and her deputy, Robert Zoellick.
Despite their public support for the nominee,
according to reports over the weekend by the
Washington Post, the two had excluded Bolton from
internal discussions on key issues that would
normally fall within his domain.
Democrats, who emerged from the November
elections dispirited and dejected, also stand to
gain politically if the delay translates into
Bolton's defeat because it shatters the air of
invincibility that the White House has tried so
hard to perpetuate. In what some considered a
risky move, the Democratic leadership decided to
oppose Bolton early in the confirmation process.
Bolton, a long-standing unilateralist with
frankly extreme right-wing views about the United
Nations and indeed international law in general,
had been expected to be approved on a 10-8,
party-line vote by the committee this past
Tuesday.
Anti-Bolton forces had focused
their lobbying efforts on the most moderate
Republican committee member, Rhode Island Senator
Lincoln Chafee, to oppose the nomination, ensuring
a tie vote, which, under Senate rules, meant that
the nomination would be defeated. But Chafee,
under intense White House pressure, refused to
waver, while the committee chairman, Richard
Lugar, who had privately objected to the
appointment, repeatedly rejected Democratic
requests to put off the vote.
It thus came
as a major surprise when Senator George Voinovich,
who had been absent for the confirmation hearings
leading up to Tuesday's meeting, said he was not
prepared to vote for the nominee based on what he
heard about Bolton from his colleagues.
Without the assurance that he would have a
majority voting "aye", Lugar announced that the
vote would be put off until at least the week of
May 7, a move that drew expressions of relief from
two other moderate Republicans, Senators Chuck
Hagel and Chafee, who had reluctantly pledged to
vote for the nomination in committee.
It
was noted that no Republican during the often
rancorous committee debate offered a positive
reason for voting for Bolton, insisting instead
that the president was entitled to his choice as
UN ambassador and that senators should not
interfere.
While the delay does not
necessarily mean that Bolton ultimately will be
defeated, it makes that outcome far more likely,
particularly given the virtually daily appearance
in the media of more damaging revelations about
Bolton's record by former diplomats, including
Republican appointees, and current officials
willing to speak to reporters on background.
As Bolton's most important backer by far,
Cheney has the most to lose from his defeat, if
only because of his apparent failure to anticipate
the controversy that Bolton's attitudes and past
behavior would provoke. The White House was
reportedly assured by Cheney that it would not
have to spend much political capital on securing
Bolton's approval, but, what with an apparent
mutiny by one Republican and great discomfort with
the nomination shown by three others, this now
appears to have been a major miscalculation that
could prove deeply embarrassing to Bush.
Conversely, Bolton's defeat would mark a
big win for Rice and Zoellick, who appear to be
building a major power center at the State
Department that is clearly capable of challenging
the often-decisive foreign-policy role played by
Cheney during Bush's first term.
Bolton,
who served as under secretary of state for arms
control and international security under Rice's
predecessor, Colin Powell, was seen as far more
responsive to Cheney and neo-conservative and
nationalist hawks in the Pentagon during the first
term than to his putative boss, particularly with
respect to frustrating the State Department's
efforts to persuade the administration to engage
Iran and North Korea.
It was thought that
Bolton would eventually find a home either on
Cheney's huge foreign-policy staff or in the
Pentagon, but the vice president prevailed on Bush
to make him UN ambassador, which was Bolton's
second choice.
That Bush, who had just
spent more than a week in Europe trying to
reassure allies there that Washington was
committed to the UN, multilateralism more
generally, and international law, went along with
Cheney's proposal was particularly shocking
because, of all of the administration's senior
officials, Bolton probably has the longest track
record of open contempt for all three, and for
Washington's European allies as well.
Known for his belligerence, ideological
certainty, self-righteousness, and a total lack of
a sense of humor, Bolton, it has since been
revealed, also has a history of excluding,
verbally abusing, and trying to remove
subordinates who disagree with him - precisely the
kind of behavior that Voinovich has repeatedly
complained about in confirmation hearings of other
nominees, both Democrats and Republicans.
Worse, particularly in light of the
administration's false claims about prewar Iraq,
disclosures about Bolton's manipulation and
exaggeration of intelligence data relating to Iran
and Cuba, for example, and his peculiar interest
in highly classified transcripts of electronic
intercepts concerning colleagues in whom he
apparently lacked confidence, appear to have
planted serious doubts with some Republican
senators about his personal and professional
integrity.
Indeed, Bolton's nomination
even appears to have divided some of the
administration's most ardent neo-conservative
supporters. While hardline neo-cons, including the
American Enterprise Institute's (AEI) Richard
Perle and David Frum, former Central Intelligence
Agency director James Woolsey, and even Weekly
Standard editor Bill Kristol publicly supported
the nomination, other prominent neo-cons,
including Kristol's longtime foreign-policy
sidekick, Robert Kagan, as well as some of Perle's
AEI associates, such as Joshua Muravchik,
apparently decided to stay out of the fray.
With neo-conservatives and the Christian
Right already in some disarray due to splits in
their respective ranks over the Bush
administration's support for Israel's
disengagement plan and its opposition to the
expansion of Jewish settlements on the West Bank,
the hawks who led the drive to war in Iraq have
been able to gain real traction on any of their
pet issues since the new term began, despite
Powell's departure.
If Bolton is now
defeated or forced by the White House to withdraw
his name, the perception in Washington will almost
certainly be that the hawks' influence, and
particularly that of Cheney, are on the wane not
only within the administration but also among
Republican lawmakers for whom Cheney is still a
much-feared figure.
With so much at stake,
Cheney will be very reluctant to give up, and
statements by the White House since the Tuesday
debacle so far have stressed that Bush retains
full confidence in Bolton and believes he will win
confirmation.
But given the unexpectedly
heavy political price already paid by the White
House in the form of very unhappy Republican
moderates, Bush may decide that it's best to pull
the plug sooner rather than later so as to avoid
spending any more capital on an ill-advised
appointment.
(Inter Press
Service) |
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