To us civilians, Bolton's repeated efforts to meet with foreign officials without first clearing his foreign travel with the relevant State Department offices may seem like a technical infraction, but not too much more. Doug Jehl first reported the story earlier this week, and the AP's Barry Schweid has a story tonight built around an interview with outgoing assistant secretary of state for European Affairs Elizabeth Jones, who had to intervene with Bolton several times over the matter. But in the ways of the US government, this is actually a pretty big deal. Another story I co-reported recently involved a not dissimilar effort by US government officials to hold a secret meeting in a foreign country with a third country's defectors and representatives of that foreign country's intelligence service, that was also not first cleared with the US ambassador there, the State Department or the CIA. It left a lot of confusion in its wake in that country, problems for the US officials involved back home, and major consternation at CIA and State. The US officials' passports start getting checked at that point, and State and CIA complained to the National Security advisor at the highest levels. In other words, a fine -- and completely avoidable -- mess.

It all goes to something one sees again and again with Bolton, and his supporters. Their sense that he and they are representing the real Bush administration foreign policy to places like Iran and North Korea, while everyone else at State was working against the President's policies. But that's not how it works in an administration that has a strong sense of what the President's policies are to places like Iran and North Korea. Bolton's supporters, some of them anyhow, want Bolton to represent the real Bush foreign policy to Iran and North Korea, one that is uncompromising, that refuses to negotiate with dictators, that sees the real solution to those countries' nuclear programs as being changing those countries' leaders. Advocating that inside and outside the bureaucracy is one thing; simply conducting one's own foreign policy as if it were the President's policy is another -- as Bolton apparently was in the habit of doing.

The problem for Bolton and his supporters is that, at least up until this point, regime change in Iran and North Korea has not been the declared or explicit or clear policy President Bush has chosen. And if and until he does so, you can't have US officials running around on their own trying to make it so, by throwing a wrench in six party talks, or convincing European negotiators the Bush administration gives no credence to their negotiations with Tehran, and therefore making those delicate negotiations' failure basically a kind of fait accompli. The accounts coming out about Bolton every day do nothing so much as suggest the Bush administration is a ship that is basically unmoored and directionless on the most pressing foreign policy challenge this country faces, the threat of rogue state nuclear proliferation.

Posted by Laura at April 29, 2005 05:43 PM