It never surprised me that John Bolton looks like a muppet, given that his ambassadorship to the United Nations was the on-stage production of Right wing string pulling behind the scenes, attempting to derail global multilateralism in favor of American unilateral hegemony. But the demise of Bolton and the continuing downward spiral of the war in Iraq show that international opinion and diplomacy can not be easily -- nor wisely -- dismissed.
"Going it alone," the United States has gone down the wrong path. Cowboy diplomacy has left us high and dry.
Part of admitting our nation's mistakes in Iraq should be to acknowledging the vital role that the United Nations could have played in preventing those mistakes, had we not circumvented the process. Anti-UN crusaders warn that strengthening global democracy decreases American sovereignty. Yet one look at Iraq should make us question whether absolute, unconstrained sovereign power on the part of any nation is ever a good thing.
In our national government, we have checks and balances. The power of the president to command our military forces is kept in line by constitutional boundaries and guidelines, protected by the courts and Congress. These checks and balances are supposed to guarantee against abuses of totalitarian power.
The same principles must apply on the world stage. No one nation must be allowed to run rip shod over the rest of the world without any structures to stop it. But just as Bush has sought to free himself from the protections of the constitution and other limits on his power at home, he has sought to undermine the United Nations, which hold American power accountable abroad. Not only does such bad neighbor behavior create more enemies for the U.S. worldwide, it also hobbles those important checks and balances in the even that other, totalitarian nations gain disproportionate power.
Our short history in the United States has taught us the value of checks and balances in a true democracy, values to which we must return. Our early history with the United Nations and global democracy holds the same lessons. In solving the growing problems of the world and preventing abuses of state power, we need a strong, democratic United Nations -- with the U.S. as a full participant. Let's have an ambassador who is a real, global leader, not a puppet for wiping out all obstacles that stand in Bush's way.