Venezuela's future with the UN may hinge on Bolton's

Michael Roston
Published: Wednesday July 26, 2006

US Ambassador John Bolton is hoping the US Senate will guarantee his return to the United Nations next year. But in 2007, Bolton may find the diplomatic turf he battles on complicated by the looming election of Venezuela to the UN Security Council.

Venezuela has mounted a pitched fight for membership on the UN’s most powerful body. If the Latin American country succeeds in its campaign for a seat on the Council, Ambassador Bolton’s tenure may be a contributing factor in the outcome.

Venezuela has been at loggerheads with the United States since the Bush administration came to power. Its mercurial President Hugo Chávez has become a darling to leftists the world over for his “Bolivarian revolution” that some characterize as socialist.

Buoyed by Venezuela’s oil wealth, Chávez has also aggressively promoted an independent foreign policy out of line with American intentions for both Latin America and other parts of the world. Chávez has forged partnerships with country’s hostile to the US like Iran and Belarus. He has also used the country’s petroleum resources to buy influence throughout Latin America and even to help the poor with fuel donations in American cities like New York.

While Venezuela declares itself to be an independent-minded state, observers in Washington, especially Republicans, have painted a more menacing picture of the country. Indeed, some of the Republican senators who will be leading Thursday’s confirmation hearing for Bolton have warned of the danger the country poses.

Senator Richard Lugar, who will be chairing the proceedings as the senior most Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, declared in a recent statement that the Caracas government, “has made repeated threats to suspend oil supplies, and President Hugo Chávez has tried to use Venezuela’s oil wealth to gain political advantages in this hemisphere. His inflammatory rhetoric and actions…underscore the vulnerability of U.S. national security to the political manipulation of energy.”

Venezuela is also working to make friends at the UN. And some signs suggest that its strategy to get a seat at the table of the UN’s most powerful body, the Security Council, is paying off. The Council is made up of 15 members – the five veto-wielding permanent members, including the US, and ten states that are elected to two-year terms. The Latin American region gets two of those seats, and Venezuela seeks to gain the seat opening in 2007.

Already, Venezuela is trumpeting its successes in receiving commitments to its cause. State-supported newspaper El Universal already claims the support of the Arab League, the Caribbean Community, and the South American trade body Mercosur. A recent Associated Press report adds that many African states are likely to vote for Caracas, while Asian states are split on whether they hope to see Chávez’s emissary on the Council.

Venezuela must receive the support of 128 UN member-states to secure its bid. It is a generally accepted rule at the UN that contestants overstate the support they are receiving, and find the results in the secret balloting process different from what they expected.

To counter Venezuela, the United States has promoted the membership of Guatemala to the Security Council. US officials clarified to the Associated Press that Washington is pro-Guatemala, not anti-Venezuela, but Ambassador Bolton added, “I don’t see anything wrong with stating your position.”

However, AP reported, other states are wary of the US declaring its favored Latin American seat on the Council. The Prime Minister of the island nation Barbados declared, “They should speak to us directly rather than send somebody to us to speak on their behalf,” suggesting a sentiment that the US has lobbied too hard for the Central American country and therefore implied that Guatemala will be a US puppet. Guatemala’s ambassador to the UN was reportedly already worried that the US-Venezuela fight had “poisoned the atmosphere beyond repair.”

Bolton himself is not directly responsible for the US campaign to block Venezuela’s bid. “For many things on UN reform, 80% of that is left to [Bolton and his staff in] New York,” explained Edward Luck, Director of the Center on International Organization at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, to RAW STORY. “On matters of bilateral relationships, the State Department itself is heavily involved, and much of the lobbying occurs in the capitals at a higher level.”

Luck’s observation was reflected in a June BBC report showing that US diplomats had shopped around a document entitled, "Defeating Venezuela in the 2006 non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council." The position paper warned that, "Venezuela has shown that it is more concerned with disrupting international events than in working constructively to achieve common goals,” in areas such as Iran’s nuclear program and peace-making in Sudan.

While Bolton might not be lobbying on a country-by-country basis to stack up votes against Venezuela’s bid, his tenure at the UN may have created an atmosphere that encourages states to favor Chávez’s representation on the Security Council.

“Many states in Asia and Africa feel that the US has gone so far, particularly Bolton, to shut down the UN in their view, and force through changes,” in UN governance, said Jeffrey Laurenti, a Senior Fellow at The Century Foundation who has been critical of Bolton’s tenure at the UN, to RAW STORY. “So this could be a place to show a kind of straw poll, a proxy vote on the US Ambassador.”

The US has grappled in the past with Security Council candidates it opposed, and generally succeeded in blocking them. When Libya and Sudan sought membership in the past decade, the US was able to fend off both by arguing that the states were under Security Council sanctions, and could not serve on the body at the same time. The US also succeeded in blocking Cuba’s ascension to the Council in 1979, although that state later served during the first Gulf War.

Columbia University’s Luck thinks the Bush administration can prevail in its efforts to stop Venezuela. “What I hope will happen is that the Latin American and Caribbean countries won’t be able to choose between the two, and then presumably a third state from that region could step in to cut the deadlock.” He added, “What is [Venezuela’s] positive agenda on the Security Council, what do they want to accomplish? My guess is they cannot make a very good case.”

But, while Laurenti at The Century Foundation also offered the measured prediction that he would “still rate [Venezuela’s prospects] as a little less than 50-50” because of Chávez’s strident behavior, he acknowledged that Venezuela’s candidacy “will be occurring at a time when there is a much greater degree of newfound resentment at US policy, and with an ambassador whom many find to be the embodiment of what is disliked about the US.” He added that in 2005, US-backed Nicaragua lost out to Peru in its bid for a Council seat.

On Thursday, July 27th, Senators like Richard Lugar who have warned of danger from Venezuela will review Bolton’s tenure. It is not yet known whether the prospect of the Latin American country’s membership on the UN’s highest body will be on their agenda.