Bolton: Right Choice for U.N.

From the Cato Institute's Daily Dispatch for April 8, 2005:

"The Bush administration's controversial choice for United Nations ambassador, John Bolton, will face tough questioning before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee next week, and at least two Democrats say they will oppose his nomination," reports USA Today.

"The United Nations is a mess," writes Cato senior fellow Doug Bandow in "Bolton in". "Often corrupt and venal, always inefficient and wasteful, frequently captured by the worst political interests, and commonly motivated by the worst ideological impulses, the organization is anything but 'the last great hope of mankind.' If anyone can push it towards real reform, it is a serious critic, like John Bolton."

In the 1997 Cato book on the United Nations, Delusions of Grandeur: The United Nations and Global Intervention, Bolton writes in his chapter, "The Creation, Fall, Rise, and Fall of the United Nations," that "the U.N. was an admirable concept when conceived" and "is worth keeping alive for future service." But "it is not worth the sacrifice of American troops, American freedom of action, or American national interests. The real question for the future is whether we will know how to keep our priorities straight."