The President Appoints

President Bush has made three appointments to foreign affairs positions that are almost guaranteed to roil the waters of U.S. relations with the rest of the world.

One of these, the appointment of Karen Hughes as Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy has been hailed by Senator Lugar, among others. Indeed, Ms. Hughes bring several unusual strengths to the position. Chief among these is her relationship with the president. She will have access to him that may rival that of her boss, Condoleeza Rice. That she will have his trust can almost go without saying. However, success in her position is far from guaranteed. Her job, as President Bush said, is "to share and communicate America's fundamental values while respecting the cultures and traditions of other nations." Let no one doubt that she can tell the world what our values are. No one in the Bush White Hosue was able to formulate a message more clearly or stick to it more firmly. But she has little experience dealing with her primary audience, which will no longer be the American media and public, but international media and international publics (plural), many of which have biases that she certainly does not share and may well not understand. Can she learn how to address them? Perhaps. However, the Bush White House in which she worked was not known for its ability to seek out people with differing opinions and consider their points of view. To be effective in this job, she will have to draw on other people and to respect and understand differing ideas much more than she has shown herself able to before. If she does not, she is more likely to light fires than to bank them.

John Bolton's appointment as United Nations ambassador presents a similar challenge He knows the United Nations well, it seems, and has a stronger sense of what it can and should do than he is given credit for. But he has a bull-in-a-china-shop quality about him: he tends to speak loudly and, in the UN, will not have a big stick. Even more than Karen Hughes, he has found it easy to ruffle feathers. To get the UN, the Security Council in particular, to work in consonance with the United States, he will have to show an ability to smooth feathers that has not often been evident. If he and the president want to reform the UN, it will not be enough to argue that reform is needed; they will have to use deft diplomacy as well.

Paul Wolfowitz may be a stronger appointment to head the World Bank than it seems at first glance. When ambassador to Indonesia, he was clearly interested in the problems of development. So he has experience in the issues the Bank deals with and has given some thought to them. As he has greater experience with poitical and security issues, he can be expected to continue Wolfensohn's emphasis on democratic development. That is not a bad thing. More of an academic than Hughes or Bolton, he may be more easily able to draw on the expertise that will surround him than either Hughes or Bolton. However, he was not known to be a good administrator at DoD; he will need to be better at the World Bank. Also, on many issues, he will have to be able to synthesize views rather than expound his own. Can he do that without a stronger background in economics? Quite possibly, but it is not a given. If he does not, he, too, like Hughes and Bolton if things do not work well, will be perceived as an American who does not get what the rest of the world is about.

President Bush, in sum, has chosen to appoint people who may challenge the world t change. Hughes will challenge it to view the United States differently. Bolton will challenge the United Nations to become more effective. Wolfowitz may challenge the World Bank and the development community to change how they approach the developing world. The president has not chosen people who will soothe the world, even though the world opinion has been enflamed against us by what the president has done. It is not certain, but it is likely, that our stock in the eyes of the world will not rise, despite some welcome, promising success with democratization in the Middle East.

I should mention one last appointment. Daniel Fried will be an Assistant Secretary for Europe quite capable of smoothing waters that are easily roiled. Not that he will shy away from telling European leaders truths that they would rather not hear. But he has shown an ability to respect and draw on the opinions of others without compromising his own that is rare in any official. He can also be expected to push strongly for democratic development in the far reaches of the area is responsible for, the parts of the former Soviet empire still plagued by the legacy of dictatorship.

Why Not Darfur?

I have ignored Darfur until now. It has been a story about a place far away that holds little natural interest to me. The horrors have seemed both repetitive and endlesn, with no clear solution.

Nicholas Kristof's column in today's New York Times (registration required) brings home how facile these attitudes have been. He writes about an American witness to what has gone on. A village of 25,000 destroyed. Babies shot. Children smashed with rifle butts. The totality of the crimes committed is reminiscent of Rwanda, Cambodia, Srebrenica. There, as in Darfur, the world did little or nothing.

Of course there are things we can do, but have not yet done. The United States is providing humanitarian aid. As Kristof says, we are managing the genocide. But we are not ending it. Perhaps it is not for us, Americans, to provide the troops needed to end this madness. But the terms of the Darfur Accountability Act, which will soon be introduced by Senators Jon Corzine and Sam Brownback, may point to things that we can do (the statements on Darfur by Corzine , Brownback, and Frank Wolf provide suggestions). Whether the terms of the bill can be effective remains to be seen, even if it is passed. All three members of Congress look to the United Nations, especially Kofi Annan and the Security Council for action. The opposition of members of the Security Council make the UN a weak reed at best. But surely direct support of the African Union is a place to start, and useful in other respects as well.

In any case, something will be done. If we don't start to act, the Janjaweed won't stop.