The Bolton Edit

September 7, 2005
Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112606129433833629,00.html http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112606129433833629,00.html
What's wrong with the following:
We are encouraged by recent commitments to substantial increases in official development assistance, while recognizing that a substantial increase in ODA is required to achieve the internationally agreed goals including, by 2015, the MDGs.
If your answer is that it's incomprehensible, you're right. But here's another answer: The statement forms part of the document that is Secretary General Kofi Annan's vision for a reformed U.N. and to which world leaders are supposed to affix their names when they meet next week in New York. It is a product of an opaque U.N. process presided over by a former Minister of Information of Gabon.
And it is antithetical to American interests, which is why new U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton has taken a red marker to it and dozens of other misbegotten statements and suggested new language in their place. This is causing consternation in predictable quarters, but we hope Mr. Bolton keeps at it.
On foreign aid, for example, he wants to stress not just the amount of assistance, which is the main concern at the U.N. Mr. Bolton wants the U.N. to acknowledge what leaders of the G-8 nations recently agreed to, which is that the aid should go particularly for countries that are making efforts to use resources wisely, strengthen governance, and reduce poverty through sustainable economic growth.
That is, the aid should go to countries that aren't corrupt and will do something useful with it. By the way, the U.S. has increased its development assistance by 90% since President Bush took office, to $19 billion from $10 billion -- a point rarely mentioned by those who carp about U.S. stinginess.
There's more. In the section on nonproliferation, the U.N. draft offers a windy sentence on the need for progress in disarmament. Mr. Bolton rightly wants to strike that language, which is often used by Iran and other rogue states as an alibi to skirt their nonproliferation commitments. In its place, he suggests: The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery, and the possibility that terrorists might acquire such weapons, remain the greatest threats to international peace and security. As Henry Kissinger likes to say, that has the added advantage of being true.
Some of Mr. Bolton's edits seem small but are literally worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The U.N. draft commends the Secretary General to modernize the United Nations, in particular its headquarters. Mr. Bolton deletes the language about headquarters. Why? The U.N. is seeking to move into temporary Manhattan real estate as it renovates its Turtle Bay facility. Government auditors fear a billion-dollar boondoggle there, and believe millions in savings could be realized if the U.N. alters existing plans.
He also focuses on management reform, which will come into special focus with the release today of Paul Volcker's fourth report on the Oil for Food scandal. The report will stress Mr. Annan's multiple supervisory failures, yet Mr. Annan wants the world's leaders to accept his reform plan as a fait accompli before Mr. Volcker's findings are even read, much less considered.
For years, the U.N. has got by on the assumption that nobody, at least nobody in the U.S., is paying much attention. Its defenders have spun Mr. Bolton's efforts as a last-minute rogue operation designed to hurt the U.N. But in fact Mr. Bolton is doing Turtle Bay the favor of taking its words seriously. Those who want something more than a feckless and corrupt world body should welcome his efforts.