Feature

Bolton in a China Shop

It’s entirely possible—likely, even—that if Bolton hadn’t done so, others would have intervened to rewrite the Outcome Document, too, and the United States had made known various objections to the document from the beginning. But as soon as Bolton forced the issue, it was a free-for-all. Libya, Cuba, Iran, Pakistan, Egypt—all of them declared open season on the document, because they objected to its tougher stances on human-rights violations and nuclear proliferation. And Bolton was perfectly content to work with them. “Right from the start,” says Stedman, one of the architects of the document, “Bolton was intent on dealing only with the spoilers.”

By summit’s end, the Secretariat itself had to intervene to produce the compromise Outcome Document, maneuvering around Bolton and instead going directly to Condoleezza Rice and British foreign secretary Jack Straw. The Millennium Development Goals stayed. But the document contained neither a definition of terrorism nor a statement about nuclear proliferation and disarmament, arguably the most urgent concerns of the United States. (Annan called the latter omission “a disgrace.”) Its language about the Human Rights Council, meant to replace the Commission on Human Rights with something that actually worked, got watered down to a few paragraphs.

On a December day, I visit Munir Akram, the ambassador from Pakistan. He has a reputation for being smart and as unyielding as leather, formidable both for his eloquence and the feline softness with which he speaks. I want to know whether it was useful to have the United States in his corner during the World Summit.

“It is always useful to have the United States in your corner,” he says, chuckling. His thick hair is pomaded back in such a way that implies a ponytail at the end of his head, though there is none. He lights a brown cigarette—a Cuban Cohiba.

I ask if this is the only remaining building in New York where one can have a cigarette at one’s desk.

He drags deeply. “Actually,” he says, releasing a long stream of smoke, “it’s illegal.”

“Every country in the world, in a way, defines itself a bit vis-à-vis the United States, so it’s a difficult job to be its ambassador,” says Guéhenno, the undersecretary-general for peacekeeping operations, sitting in his corner office on the 38th floor. “It’s easier to be an ambassador to a small country,” he says, “because not everyone pays attention to your words, moods, and statements.”

Though the United States is hardly popular in the corridors of the U.N. right now, this is hardly the country’s nadir. During the mid-nineties, when we were deep in arrears, animosities toward the United States were just as acute, perhaps even more so. Complicating matters, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the Egyptian secretary-general, had no great love for the U.S. and even less love for our ambassador, Madeleine Albright, whose criticisms he once deemed “vulgar.” The Bush administration has kicked in more money for peacekeeping than Clinton did, mostly because the president has been able to convince the Republican Congress, in a way that Clinton never could, that it’s a good idea. Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley, Bush’s national-security adviser, speak regularly with various people in the Secretariat. And if the U.S. were held in such low esteem, an American judge would not have been reappointed to the International Court of Justice in November.

The truth is, ambassadors come and go. Governments reconstitute themselves; new presidents are elected. “There isn’t one American foreign policy,” says a European ambassador. “Bolton represents one part of the United States. One has to be blind not to see this country contains multitudes.”

Yet in the U.N. at the moment, Bolton is the emblem of American exceptionalism, an attitude that much of the world sees as the problem. He’s delighted to play the role of the Ugly American. And maybe that’s not such a bad thing for the world to see—at least it knows what it’s getting.

For now, the one reform at the U.N. Bolton can be sure of is of the building itself, which is badly in need of repair. The latest renovation plans call for refurbishing it ten floors at a time. When he heard about it, the first thing he did was tell colleagues it wasn’t his idea—and he was happy to see the ten floors at the top restored, just like every floor below.