Friday, August 26, 2005

The Beginning of the Bolton Era . . .

. . . and the end of diplomacy. That, at least, is what Steve Clemons (citing Anne Penketh) sees in this post at Talking Points Memo.

Clemons, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and author of The Washington Note, follows Bolton more closely than Bolton's moustache does. He reported yesterday that Bolton is in the process of gutting the draft document for the Millennium Summit in September, apparently without the approval of his superiors at the State Department. In other words, it sounds like we're already witnessing Bolton's widely reported inability to play nicely with others or even stay in the yard where the adults can watch him.

So now I face a very practical problem as I prepare my syllabus for the International Organizations and Law course that I begin teaching next week: Should I include the usual information about the United Nations or should I assume that Bolton will have dismantled the institution by the time I get to that point in the semester?