The world has become a tiny bit more dangerous today. John Bolton is resigning his post as United Nations Ambassador:

Unable to win Senate confirmation, U.N. Ambassador John Bolton will step down when his temporary appointment expires within weeks, the White House said Monday.

Bolton’s nomination has languished in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for more than a year, blocked by Democrats and several Republicans. Sen. Lincoln Chafee (news, bio, voting record), a moderate Republican who lost in the midterm elections Nov. 7 that swept Democrats to power in both houses of Congress, was adamantly opposed to Bolton.

Critics have questioned Bolton’s brusque style and whether he could be an effective public servant who could help bring reform to the U.N.

His “brusque” style? HIS BRUSQUE STYLE?

Lebanon is in agony. Iraq is bleeding. Iran is blustering. Syria is plotting. Russia is swaggering. Hamas is stewing. Al Qaeda is growing. North Korea is disintegrating. Darfur is screaming.

And we’re worried about “style?”

I’ve said it before. The UN is not a serious place. It is a place of make believe, a gigantic fraud upon the human race. It’s charter is honored in the breach. Its ideals promoted as a cynical flim flam used by thugs and radicals to advance agendas that are the antithesis of the spirit that animated the post-war west to create it in the first place. It is a place where deadly serious matters go to be buried by little men with small minds and gigantic egos. And unless it is reformed drastically, it may prove to be the death of us all.

Bolton’s “style” was confrontational. He discomfited the comfortable. In an age when business as usual at the UN could get a lot of Americans killed, he said the things that needed to be said, that needed to be heard by those who see anti-Americanism as some kind of gigantic game where tweaking the tail of the lion is considered great sport – a sport that wins support back home amongst the ignorant, the paranoid, the easily misled masses seething under the jackboot of dictatorship and authoritarianism. Blaming America for one’s troubles is so much easier than assigning fault for the poverty, oppression, and murderous, thuggish, brutish government most people in the world live under.

Ton Blair saw this as something of a mental disorder:

For us in Europe and for you, this alliance is central. And I want to speak plainly here. I do not always agree with the US.

“Sometimes they can be difficult friends to have. But the strain of, frankly, anti-American feeling in parts of European politics is madness when set against the long-term interests of the world we believe in.

“The danger with America today is not that they are too much involved. The danger is that they decide to pull up the drawbridge and disengage. We need them involved. We want them engaged.”

If true in Europe, then the United Nations should be considered the world’s most prestigious insane asylum.

Bolton’s reformation project at the UN barely got started. Basically, he was bulldogging an effort to reform the organization from the top down. And this got him into immediate trouble with the most powerful and influential elements at the UN - the wonks who work in the UN Secretariat.

It’s budget is a shambles. It’s departments a mish mash of overlap and duplication. No one knows who’s in charge of what because there is no clear delineation of lines of authority. And riding herd on this bunch of kingdom carving bureaucrats was supposed to be the Secretary-General – except even he was not master in his own house.

No one knows how much money is spent by the UN Secretariat’s more than 18,000 employees. A recent survey on integrity initiated by the SG among the Secretariat’s employees found the following:

The results, summed up in a cover letter by Mr. Annan, suggest that the Secretariat’s own employees believe they inhabit a snake pit. Highlights, as Mr. Annan cites them, include such failings as: “integrity and ethical behavior are not taken sufficiently into account in selection, promotion and assessment processes” and “staff believe that not enough action is taken to investigate and address instances of unethical behavior, and that those who expose such breaches may put themselves at risk of reprisal.”

More directly to the point, the report itself, on page 11, notes that “staff members feel unprotected from reprisals for reporting violations of the codes of conduct. This is not a perception confined to a few staff in remote locales and/or dangerous circumstances. Forty-six percent (46%) gave unfavourable response to this item, while only 12% gave favourable responses.”

What was the SG’s response to this shocking news?

Mr. Annan says that most of the problems are now (and forever?) being fixed: “Many of the actions proposed can be linked to actions or processes already under way.” He goes on to propose another action or process, this plan being to convene yet another group “to guide the process of follow-up to the survey.” This bunch—let’s skip the full names of the U.N. agencies and just zip through the acronyms—will include the Deputy Secretary-General and senior U.N. officials from the DPKO, DGACM, DESA, DM, OHRM, UNODC, UNEP and ECLAC, all to be supported by “a consultative group consisting of a wide cross-section of staff at different levels both from New York and from offices away from headquarters.”

In other words, having gone so far as to discover that Secretariat staff don’t trust the top management and are afraid to speak out for fear of reprisals, Mr. Annan’s response will be to convene a group of top managers and invite staff members to speak out. At some point they’ll probably issue another report, and then everyone can do it all again.

For this kind of stupidity, you don’t need a diplomat. You need a bull terrier. And that’s what John Bolton was. The sad fact is, the institution of the United Nations desperately needed John Bolton. He was the one of the only diplomats up there who was actually interested in making the UN a place of action a place where true collective security could be advanced rather than a place of daydreams and denial.

I can understand why some traditional UN supporters bristled at Bolton’s “style.” But if you really believe in style over substance (or worse; that style is substance) then you also aren’t paying very close attention to what is happening on our happy little planet. The world is in big trouble. And if there was ever a reason for the existence of the United Nations, it is now. But none of the mortal dangers facing the planet – rogue nuclear states, nations that coddle and support terrorists, even (if you think it important_ global warming will be solved or settled by the self-important, strutting peacocks who pretend to address the issues of the day but instead search desperately for ways to sweep them under the rug with platitudinous nonsense and wink and a nod at the brutes and thugs who threaten to destroy us all.

Rumor has it that George Mitchell is on the short list to replace Bolton. We could do worse. Mitchell is tough as nails and doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty. I don’t have a link but look for the Atlantic article from a couple of years ago on how Mitchell got the Irish to accept peace. He’s not above bashing heads together to achieve a diplomatic goal. And he has served this country honorably for his entire adult life.

John Bolton tried to reform an institution so resistant to change that they would rather wallow in their own filth and corruption than take even the simplest steps into the light. And when all is said and done, he will have the satisfaction of knowing that he was in the right and that his critics – superficial and shallow as they are – were wrong.