Surrender Is Not an Option

The son of a Baltimore firefighter and the first person in his family to go to college, with scholarships to Yale College and Yale Law School, John R. Bolton candidly recounts his sixteen-month tenure as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, his Senate confirmation battle, and the highlights of his career in public service in two prior Republican administrations. He will also provide forward-looking analysis on current foreign policy challenges.Bolton will describe:- How his confirmation battle was a case study in attempted character assassination, particularly by Senator Chris Dodd (D-Connecticut).- Why most work on behalf of the United States at the U.N. is damage control rather than accomplishing anything substantive, and why America's basic role is to pay up and be quiet.- Why practices such as the Oil for Food scandal, procurement fraud, and sexual exploitation and abuse by U.N. peacekeepers are explained away or ignored.- His month as President of the Security Council where he attempted to introduce radical reforms, such as starting meetings on time, and he succeeded in keeping Hugo Chavez's Venezuela from getting a non-permanent seat on the Security Council.- The anti-American and anti-Semitic attitude of the overall membership.- Making sure that U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan did not run for a third term and that another "secular Pope" did not succeed him.- Why the Bush administration's policy to prevent Iran's onward march to achieving a nuclear capability is failing.- Why no country except the United States has done much about ending the genocide in Darfur.- Achievement of important sanctions resolutions against North Korea and why he thinks the Bush administration's February 2007 deal with North Korea is a bad deal.- The month-long negotiation that produced the controversial end of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah.