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Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations | 
 enlarge | Author: John Bolton
Publisher: Threshold Editions
Category: Book
List Price: $27.00
Buy New: $6.49
You Save: $20.51 (76%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  54 reviews
Sales Rank: 50702
Format: Bargain Price
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st Threshold Editions Hardcover Ed
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 496
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 6.2 x 1.6
Dewey Decimal Number: 341.2373
ASIN: B001C2FSGQ
Publication Date: November 6, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
With no-holds-barred candor, the straight-talking former ambassador to the United Nations takes readers behind the scenes at the UN and the U.S. State Department and reveals why his efforts to defend American interests and reform the UN resulted in controversy. A veteran of three Republican administrations and a nominee for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, Bolton shows how the U.S. can lead the way to a more realistic global security arrangement for the twenty-first century and identifies the next generation of threats to America.The son of a Baltimore firefighter and the first person in his family to go to college, with scholarships to Yale University and Yale Law School, John Bolton studied with preeminent conservative thinkers Robert Bork and Ralph Winter. After law school, he experienced the "Reagan Revolution" firsthand in Edwin Meese's justice department -- where the American judiciary was fundamentally reshaped. His diplomatic skills were honed working with Secretary of State James Baker during the presidency of George H. W. Bush, and serving in the administration of President George W. Bush as Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs. In this revealing memoir, he candidly recounts his appointment in 2005 as Ambassador to the United Nations, his headline-making Senate confirmation battle, which resulted in his recess appointment, and his sixteen-month tenure at the United Nations. Bolton offers keen insight into such international crises as North Korea's nuclear test, Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons, the genocide in Darfur, the monthlong negotiation that produced the controversial end of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, and more. Recounting both his successes and frustrations in taking a hard line against weapons-of-mass destruction proliferators, terrorists, and rogue states such as North Korea and Iran, he also exposes the operational inadequacies that hinder the UN's effectiveness in international diplomacy and its bias against Israel and the United States. At home, he criticizes the pernicious bureaucratic inertia in the U.S. State Department that can undermine presidential policy. A fascinating chronicle of the career of a distinguished lawyer and diplomat who has fought to preserve American sovereignty and strength at home and abroad, Surrender Is Not an Option is the candid memoir of one of America's outstanding statesmen that is sure to become required reading for everyone interested in international affairs.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 49 more reviews...
 The United Nations is no friend to the U.S.A... September 11, 2008
An inside look at the obstinate, foot dragging bureacracy inside the U.S. State Department from a man, John Bolton, who (in an ideal world) should be some future (smart) President's Secretary of State. He details a failed United Nations organization that has never been more than an optimistic pie-in-the-sky theory (just like its' predecessor "League of Nations" ancestor)that is fraught with corruption as well as systematic animosity for it's United States host and primary benefactor. Bolton is an expert on diplomatic double-speak and maneuvering and recognizes the pathways through the frustrating maze known as the United Nations. This book is an "early warning" on the insidious intent the United Nations would bring to bear upon our Democratic Republic, and our Constitution, if left to United Nations manipulations and devices.
Interesting Book September 6, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
If you like to read about international relations then I highly recommend this book. It is very insightful and exciting to read. Even if you do not agree with all that is said it is still interesting to see how our nation has worked on international affairs over the past years.
Just the Right Bull for Just the Right China Shop September 2, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
We already knew that "one-man-one-vote" makes for messy domestic politics; now John Bolton shows how messy "one-nation-one-vote" is in international politics. Many of us laughed when President Bush appointed John Bolton to be America's ambassador to the United Nations. Our first thought was that he'd be a bull in a china shop. Bolton's book shows us that he was just the right bull, and that the UN was just the right china shop. In retrospect we have Bolton to thank for a remarkably thorough insider's expose of the dysfunctionalism at the UN's core, and its apathetic, self-absorbed leaderlessness under Kofi Anan. He shows how the UN encourages and enables the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction by consistently yielding to the timid and indecisive in order to obtain consensus. He shows us the UN's "culture of inaction," and "surrender as a matter of high principle." Bolton is a clear thinker and an engaging writer, and no matter what your views of him as a classic Bush administration neocon, the objective reader of his book comes away proud to have had him representing the United States and wondering what he might have accomplished given more time.
Bolton entertains with substance rather than craft, though his editorial humor is ever-present. He notes, for instance that before we wish for reforms that make the UN more effective, we should recognize that its very ineffectiveness is a safeguard against the damage the UN can do. He is a master at capturing his adversaries' deficiencies in a phrase, as when he speaks of the multilateralists' dereliction of duty as "outsourcing our foreign policy." Ambassador Bolton describes in detail his battles in the "twilight zone at Turtle Bay:" the Oil for Food Scandal, the nuclear proliferation of North Korea and Iran, the Peace-Building Commission, Zionism as Racism, the Human Rights Commission, the drafting of "Outcome Documents," and the brawling over the budget. If any American still labors under the misimpression that the UN is a force for the good in the world, this book will be very illuminating. That large numbers of our State Department's "permanent bureaucracy" still hold that view is very disturbing.
Ambassador Bolton distills all of his experience with the UN down to one inescapable conclusion. Among all the reform proposals the UN may consider, one reform alone is worth the effort, changing assessed contributions to voluntary contributions. Only with that change, and with that change only, will the UN become accountable for results, and will the United States have the confidence that its money is well spent. Senator Lincoln Chafee, who put his personal interests above those of the country, will forever carry the stigma of setting back the clock on that effort by obstructing Bolton's reconfirmation.
 Bolton is a genius, like everyone else in the Bush administration August 16, 2008
3 out of 13 found this review helpful
Although he was exposed by Carl Ford, a former chief in the State Department, as "a quintessential kiss-up, kick-down sort of guy" during his U.N. ambassador confirmation, this book demonstrates that he is in fact one of the most brilliant statesmen who ever walked the face of the earth. Bolton has openly admitted that he had no desire to serve in Viet Nam because he was afraid of getting killed. But as undersecratary of something-or-other at the State Department, Bolton was one of the fiercest proponents of going to war with Iraq for no good reason. In this great great book, Bolton chronicles the monumental efforts he undertook to fabricate evidence of WMD in Iraq and of Saddam's connection to 9/11. Bolton's detailed recounting of how the White House and the State Department were determined to go to war with Iraq for no other reason that to demonstrate U.S. military might to the world, is simultaneously chilling and comforting.
Although Bolton and Doug Feith and George Bush and Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz and the many others who took this country to war have never had any desire to fight for their country when they had the opportunity, nobody can deny the patriotism and courage that these brave men have demonstrated in taking this great nation to war for no good reason against a country with a weak military but lots and lots of those Arab looking people who hate our freedoms.
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How I wasted $12 August 6, 2008
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
I bought this book after I heard Mr. Bolton on Michael Medved's talk radio program. I must say, he's much more interesting on a radio interview than in a book.
The first red flag is that this book is over 400 pages. It's hard to dig out the good stuff from all the dry, boring details. Mr. Bolton will detail you to sleep!
"Surrender is Not an Option," huh? I will definitely be Surrendering my book.
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