Is there a single good reason to send arch-unilateralist John Bolton to the United Nations? Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice tried to present a few when she announced Bolton’s nomination last week. As we show below, not one holds up to scrutiny:

CONDI’S CLAIM: “John played a key diplomatic role in our sensitive negotiations with Libya when that nation made the wise choice to give up its pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.”
FACT: According to Newsweek, talks with Libya “succeeded only after the British managed to sideline the Bush administration’s top arms-control official, John Bolton. … [A]fter a tense session in London, the British complained that Bolton was obstructing talks. Washington agreed to keep Bolton at home. The assurances that Libya sought were quietly given.”
FACT: Bolton opposed the very strategy eventually used to encourage Libya to disarm. “In a 2000 law review article he warned that the effort to isolate Libya via prosecution of the terrorists it sponsors and the UN sanctions ‘marks the final collapse of United States policy against Libyan terrorism.’”

CONDI’S CLAIM: “John was the chief negotiator of the Treaty of Moscow, which was signed by Presidents Putin and Bush to reduce nuclear warheads by two-thirds.”
FACT: The Moscow Treaty has been harshly condemned by nuclear proliferation experts (in part precisely because it does not reduce nuclear warheads, as Rice claims; it merely requires a change in their operational status). The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists referred to the treaty as the “jettisoning of predictability, verifiability, irreversibility, and mutual accountability as objectives in our nuclear relationship with Russia.” An essay for the prestigious American Acadamy of Arts & Sciences detailing the treaty’s “glaring inadequacies” charges that “If this agreement were seriously expected to carry any burden whatsoever, it would not pass even the most rudimentary scrutiny.” For more on the failings of the Moscow Treaty, read this primer by the Union of Concerned Scientists. Read more

Tensions are escalating between China and Taiwan over issues concerning Taiwanese autonomy. The stakes for the United States are huge because “any outbreak of hostilities could ensnare the United States, which is Taiwan’s biggest arms supplier and is bound by the Taiwan Relations Act to help Taiwan defend itself.”

Efforts by the United States to keep the peace could be severely hampered if John Bolton is confirmed as ambassador to the U.N.

In the mid-1990s, Bolton “was paid $30,000 over three years … by Taiwan’s government for research papers on U.N. membership issues involving Taiwan.” Bolton failed to register as a foreign agent, as required by law, claiming he was exempted because he was “providing legal services.” The papers argued that Taiwan should be recognized as a full member of the United Nations.

Bolton then proceeded to introduce a statement to the House Foreign Affairs Committee that “contained much of the same material that he had provided the Taiwanese” under his lucrative contract. Bolton did not mention his financial connection to the Taiwanese to the House committee.

In short, Bolton’s nomination could damage the ability of the United States to arbitrate the dispute, especially if it requires involving the U.N.