US/UN Analysis

An interesting article from Stratfor on the US/UN:

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Geopolitical Diary: Monday, March 7, 2005 March 08, 2005 0615 GMT
http://www.stratfor.com/GeopoliticalDiary.php

U.S. President George W. Bush has appointed John Bolton, who has been serving as the undersecretary of state for arms control, as the ambassador to the United Nations. Bolton is among the most hawkish of Washington's "neoconservatives," and his appointment immediately triggered a chorus of groans and exasperated forehead-slapping from Democrats and foreign governments alike. The immediate conclusion is that the Bush administration is out to destroy the United Nations -- but if for no other reason than that we're talking about someone Pyongyang has felt necessary to label "human scum," the appointment deserves a closer look.
In fact, there is some extremely deep diplomacy going on here. Bolton belongs to the "put-up-or-shut-up" branch of American neocons, believing that the United Nation's original charter prescribed a much more activist organization -- where resolutions would be strengthened by possible consequences if violated, often including the use of force. In Bolton's mind, the Korean War is precisely the type of military action the United Nations was designed to authorize and carry out.
This is, needless to say, very different from the circumstances surrounding the Iraq war of 2003 -- in which the Bush administration, we believe, hoped that the United Nations would not go along with U.S. requests. The whole point of the war was not to oust Saddam Hussein but to intimidate Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia into acting against al Qaeda on Washington's behalf. Bush wanted to scare regimes that supported or enabled al Qaeda by placing uninvited, unsanctioned American armored divisions -- not a sea of polite blue helmets -- in the sands of Iraq.