One of Laura Rozen’s readers at War and Piece asks a stunningly simple question about the effect of John Bolton on the “New York Channel” with North Korea:
Recent days have seen the “New York channel” used to great success to provide some hopes of reviving the Six Party Talks and bring North Korea back to the table. [snip] Predictably, Administration hardliners have wanted to shut this down, afraid that our State Department negotiators are implicitly promising concessions to the DPRK during their talks there.
So what happens when John Bolton gets confirmed and heads up the U.S. Mission to the United Nations? He may well seek to assert his authority as head of mission to outright block those meetings from occuring in the first place. Alternatively, if Rice puts her foot down and insists that they still take place, Bolton could well torpedo them anyway simply by insisting that he be present (and it would be hard to prevent the U.S. Ambassador to the UN from sitting in on a meeting occuring at his mission.)
I wonder if Condi has a very short leash to match that Dominatrix get-up?