4-05-05, 9:09

Imperialism Gone Mad: Or Quotations from 'Ambassador' John Bolton

'There is no such thing as the United Nations. The Secretariat building in New York has 38 stories. If it lost 10 stories, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.'

'There is an international community that occasionally can be led by the only power in the world and that is the United States when it suits our interests and when we can get others to go along.'

What jerk said these things?

A. Rush Limbaugh B. Bill O’Reilly C. John Bolton, Bush’s ambassador designate to the United Nations.

The answer is C, and no reasonable person can believe it. Aside from imperialist witticisms, Bolton also led the campaign against ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, renewal of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972 that Nixon signed and claimed credit for, and the withdrawal from the International Criminal Court (which might prosecute Americans as both financial and war criminals). When Bush did withdraw from the International Criminal Court, Bolton called it his 'happiest day' in government.

It gets worse. Bolton, according to press reports, has a bronzed hand grenade in his office, has referred to the North Korean as 'scum,' and is a champion of IMF-World Bank 'globalization' policies designed to destroy existing economic and social protections in poor countries in the name of 'free and open markets.'

Actually, there is method in Bush’s imperialist madness. Bolton’s appointment, which has been condemned by 62 career diplomats, both Democrats and Republicans, along with the appointment of Paul Wolfowitz, a leading 'neo-conservative' to head the World Bank is part of the administration’s international blitzkrieg to undermine the United Nations, which the ultra-right in the US has despised since its creation after World War II. (Actually, people who preach the sort of militarism and national chauvinism that Wolfowitz and Bolton practice are in Europe sometimes called 'neo-Fascists.')

In the 1930s, people like Bolton were called 'isolationists' in the United States, but that was a misnomer. During the depression, such people, who were most centered in the right-wing of the Republican party, actively supported US government policies of setting up 'protectorates' in Central America and the Caribbean and maintaining for US corporations a 'sphere of influence' throughout the Western Hemisphere. They also supported US corporations’ attempts to gain economic hegemony over rivals for the 'China market' and actively championed the dictatorial regime of Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek. What they opposed was US involvement in global organizations like the League of Nations and the World Court because it might limit US power. They also opposed any US alliance with major European powers, namely England and France, that Washington couldn’t control.

Keeping 'out of European wars,' accepting the Nazis and the Japanese as 'defense mechanisms' against the spread of Communism, and blaming opposition to fascism in Europe on the Communists, the Jews, even the British Empire, were where these 'unilateralists,' who believed in creating a 'fortress America' and from there dominating as much of the world as they could, were coming from.

For Bolton and Wolfowitz, today’s world is 'fortress America.' Wolfowitz, who says he is interested in 'fighting poverty,' which is as realistic as Al Capone announcing his wholehearted support for the prohibition laws, will in his World Bank post at best continue World Bank policies which have greatly escalated poverty through the world. At worst, he will make a very bad situation much worse.

Bolton at the UN, the most important global political organization in human history and one for which he has consistently shown scorn verging on hatred, can only intensify opposition not only to the Bush administration, but to the American people, who, sadly, are increasingly seen abroad as selfish, chauvinistic and willing to turn their government over to a sinister alliance of religious fanatics, militarists and reactionary corporate leaders.

Wolfowitz has already been approved by Bolton has to go through the Senate where the Democrats are making some noise of opposition. Before someone in the Bush administration comes forward to announce, 'today we rule Washington, tomorrow the World,' we must demand that this administration, which was narrowly returned to office in an election that a change of less than 60,000 votes in Ohio would have made John Kerry president, stop in effect spitting on a United Nations organization whose creation after World War II, the greatest war in human history, was seen through the world as humanity’s best long-term hope for peace.



--Norman Markowitz is a contributing editor of Political Affairs. Reach him at pa-letters@politicalaffairs.net.