THE JOHN BOLTON AGENDA.

For the United Nations, the timing of Bolton's August 1, 2005 recess appointment could hardly have been more inauspicious. For several months prior, diplomats at the UN had been hammering out details of the most ambitious set of institutional reforms since the organizations founding 60 years earlier. The reforms, which were strongly backed by the United States, included replacing the discredited human rights commission with a new Human Rights Council; establishing a "responsibility to protect" populations threatened with genocide or crimes against humanity; creating a new "peace building commission" to help rehabilitate countries recovering from conflict, and, most importantly for the United States, a number of management reforms — championed by Kofi Annan himself — that would streamline the UN's ossified bureaucracy.The deadline to achieve these reforms was September 14, when heads of state would gather at the United Nations World Summit to formally sign off on them. Until Bolton arrived, the strategy to achieve these reforms was twofold. First, the United States and Europe sought to isolate "spoiler" countries like Cuba, Pakistan, and Venezuela, which could be guaranteed to oppose the human rights reforms. Second, the group of 120 developing nations, called the "G-77," needed to be convinced that that the management reforms the United States prioritized would not come at their expense. To do so, it was widely acknowledged that economic development issues would have to also be addressed.That was the plan. Enter John Bolton.