John Bolton is a dangerous man

Supporters of John Bolton's nomination to be UN Ambassador would prefer the recent dust up to be about his management style and argue that a tough guy is just what we need at the UN. What they would prefer the rest of us -- especially wavering Republican Senators -- ignore, is that Bolton bullied subordinates to twist and obscure intelligence that did not support his aggressive political positions. And we know just where that leads.

Robert Wright, writing today in The Times, explains an even greater reason why Bolton is not only wrong for the job, but a dangerous impediment to our national security. Giving him the UN job will make him even more dangerous. In addition to sending nuke talks with North Korea to the brink, and being asked off Libya negotiations by none other than Jack Straw, Bolton has consistently undercut proliferation treaties that could serve to keep weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of terrorists. In Bolton's view, American sovereignty is more important than treaties that would enhance American security.

Of course, Osama-era technologies are more menacing than McVeigh-era technologies. That's the point. What today's Internet is to shortwave radio and mailed videotapes, tomorrow's Internet will be to today's. As streaming video penetrates the most remote parts of the world, every Web-cam-equipped terro-vangelist will have global reach. And information technologies, like the advancing weapons technologies whose use they make more likely, are equal-opportunity empowerers: radical Islam, radical environmentalism, neo-Nazism, whatever.

Yet America's war on terror defines the threat more narrowly: out there in the "Muslim world" or the "Arab world," things need to change.

And of course they do. But that won't be enough. Suppose this approach succeeds wildly - that in 15 years, "Muslim rage" has evaporated. If we haven't addressed the generically growing part of the terrorist threat - the technology and its consequences - we still won't be secure. Whether the next unprecedented trauma comes from right or left, from abroad or at home, 9/11 will fade to sepia, as Oklahoma City did after 9/11.

Not everything about America's antiterrorism policy is Muslim-centric. The administration's homeland security policy pays attention to nuclear power plants and biotech labs. But leaving aside whether it does so adequately (short answer: no), you can't secure the homeland by focusing only on the homeland. As President Bush has stressed, we have to worry about weapons of mass destruction abroad, given how hard it is to detect every vial of germs, or even every suitcase nuke, that enters America. Yet his most salient approach to the problem - invade a country if we suspect it has such weapons - is too costly (in various senses) to apply universally.

UNLESS I've overlooked an option, there is ultimately no alternative to international arms control. It will have to be arms control of a creatively astringent, even visionary, sort. And achieving it will be a long haul - incremental, halting progress, over many years, through a series of flawed but improving agreements that are at first less than global in scope. But for now the details don't matter, because the Bush administration opposes the basic idea.

Why? Because John Bolton is not just the undersecretary for arms control, but the guiding spirit, so far, of the administration's arms control philosophy. To get other nations to endure intrusive monitoring, America would have to submit to such monitoring. People of Mr. Bolton's ideological persuasion insist that this amounts to a sacrifice of American sovereignty. And they're right; it's just a less objectionable sacrifice of sovereignty than letting terrorists blow up your cities.

I really don't care if John Bolton is a jerk, a "kiss up, kick down sort of a guy," or even if he stole Yosemite Sam's moustache. The guy is dangerous, and one hopes that Republicans in the Senate will show a spine, recognize a threat when they see one, and do something -- anything -- to put a speed bump in front of the Bush administration's rush to armageddon.

UPDATE: Thanks to an alert reader, and rather than start a war with our ally, post revised to indicate that nuke talks taken to the brink were with North Korea, not our ally south of the 38th parallel.