For months, we have been arguing that the Bush administration has the right substantive agenda for badly needed changes at the UN, but that Ambassador John Bolton’s scorched-earth alternative to diplomacy is undermining the prospects for achieving the reforms. Now it turns out that our criticism has been only half-right in one crucial area — in restoring the UN’s moral authority on rights by excluding egregious violators from a new human rights monitoring council.

The problem with Human Rights Commission is that its members are chosen by a system of regional rotation that fails to take into account the actual human rights performance of prospective members. Bolton wants to defeat the whole purpose of that reform by automatically assuring seats for all five permanent members of the UN Security Council. That would, of course, guarantee a seat every year for the US, despite what other countries may think of Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.

Although Bolton has made it clear that he has little use or respect for the UN and would be happy to see the US walk away from it, we have never questioned his commitment to reform its most dysfunctional institutions. But his behaviour on this issue leaves us questioning his judgment, and that of his bosses in the State Department and the White House.