Monday, May 12, 2008
The United States goes without a U.N. ambassador while the right wing protects one of its own.
Jul 1, 1999 | Diplomats are people who are sent abroad to lie for their country. The joy of being U.S. ambassador to the United Nations is that instead of lying in some far-off foreign field, you can lie at home, and make the TV chat shows as well. We can be sure that Richard Holbrooke will take full advantage of any such opportunity -- if the Senate finally confirms his position next week, after a year-long holdup by Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., got resolved only to be succeeded by the stonewalling of Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa.
We can also be sure that Secretary of State Madeleine Albright knows it too, since that is how she got her present position. The U.N. ambassadorship is a cabinet post with a highly visible domestic presence. Secretaries of state often have problems with U.N. ambassadors cleverer and more telegenic than themselves. James Baker ditched the highly effective and admired Tom Pickering for that reason, and he was not even in the cabinet. Albright consistently tried to dampen Bill Richardson's enthusiasm for television appearances while he was U.N. ambassador, officially to make sure that the message was coherent -- but mostly for fear of being overshadowed.
In the case of Holbrooke, Albright's fears are soundly based. He is simply several leagues above her -- and a publicity hound to boot. Leaving a well-compensated job with Credit Suisse to become a civil servant implies some considerable degree of ambition: Albright will be lucky to see out the rest of the Clinton term. There is every expectation that Holbrooke will follow in her footsteps, especially if Al Gore is elected.
But while Helms, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, has been converted to support Holbrooke, Grassley has been threatening to hold up his appointment unless the State Department lifts the suspension of Linda Shenwick. You might ask, Linda who? She is a perfect symbol of why even America's best friends roll their eyes when Congress gets involved in foreign policy. Shenwick for many years has been the eyes, ears and oh-so-loud mouth of Jesse Helms at the United Nations.
She is less a whistle-blower, as Grassley thinks, and more a stoolie for the senatorial right. Back in 1987, when she was in charge of U.N. mission housing, she was fingered by GOP representatives on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for buying a plush New York condo with her government housing subsidy. "It's absolutely improper," one of the GOP aides told the New York Post at the time. Shortly afterwards, she was denouncing the United Nations -- and the U.S. mission to the United Nations -- on a regular basis.
Whatever policy the White House, the State Department or the ambassador had, Shenwick only took instructions from Helms and his chum, former South Dakota Republican Sen. Larry Pressler. They let it be known that anyone who interfered with her tenure in any way would find it very difficult to take up an ambassadorship (or, by implication, secretary of stateship).
Under their patronage, she was soon advanced way beyond her abilities -- at least according to diplomatic colleagues. Albright, when U.N. ambassador, wined, dined and canvassed other U.N. envoys to get Shenwick elected to the crucial U.N. budget committee. It was not because the future secretary of state loved her. On the contrary, it was because she wanted to be the future secretary of state, and was well aware that Helms wanted Shenwick there.
Once on the committee, she treated her colleagues to pointless diatribes, like the time that she spent a day haranguing about the cost of haircuts for the peacekeepers on the Iraqi border. Suspicions about the inspiration for her invective, one U.N. source said, were confirmed when records from her U.N. phone revealed that most of the calls that day were to the Foreign Relations Committee, or to Pressler's office.
Her erratic behavior, and her insistence on bypassing U.S. mission and State Department staff, left her with no friends in the U.S. mission, and her distinctive injection of congressional ignorance and arrogance into diplomacy had even America's best friends complaining about her tirades. As a result, European diplomats pledged en masse that they would not support her for another term on the budget committee. She was moved into administration but clearly kept her contacts on Capitol Hill.
Flushed with the success of Kosovo, someone in State finally had the courage to suspend her June 18 for "insubordination," apparently a reference to her continual contacts with congressional aides behind the back of the mission. Now Sen. Grassley proposes to leave the United States without an ambassador to force the State Department to take back the United Nations' least-popular diplomat.
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