Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations

by John Bolton

A former ambassador to the United Nations explains his controversial efforts to defend American interests and reform the U.N., presenting his argument for why he believes the United States can enable a greater global security arrangement for modern times. 150,000 first printing.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, History, Audiobook, Military Fiction, Memoir

496 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

John Bolton was named National Security Adviser by Donald Trump. He was appointed by President George W. Bush as United States Permanent Representative to the United Nations in 2005, and served until his appointment expired in December 2006. He was nominated for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for playing a major role in exposing Iran's secret plans to develop nuclear weapons. An attorney who has spent many years in public service and held high-level positions in the administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, Bolton has been a Senior Fellow at American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., and a commentator for Fox News Channel. He lives outside of Baltimore, Maryland, with his wife and daughter.

(source: Amazon)

Reviews

[Nathan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Financial Times review says it better than I can:

Bolton writes badly, cannot tell a story and has no interesting new ideas. Other than that, highly recommended.

[Kenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bolton says, in great detail, what I have long suspected about the United Nations: "There is no doubt that the one-nation-one-vote principle--as fraudulent an analogy to real democracy as has ever been made--completely dominates the UN program, budget, and management decision-making, almost entirely to the detriment of the United States."

Accordingly, he condludes that "only one UN reform is worth the effort, and without it nothing else will succeed: Voluntary contributions must replace assessed contributions. If America insisted it would pay only for what works, and that we get what we pay for, we would revolutionize life throughout the UN system."

In addition, he gives the Department of State a black eye: "Too much of the permanent bureaucracy thinks it is responsible not just for implementing policy, but for setting it, no matter what the president of the moment thinks, certainly not if that president is Republican."

He concludes by saying that the lifelong careerists at State "are overwhelmingly Democratic and liberal, not at all the ideal civil servant," which Bolton describes as "one who faithfully pursues the policies of the incumbent administration, respecting the democratic legitimacy that comes from the president's election."

Can't argue with that. But again, I'm a conservative.

[Jeremiah · Rating 3 out of 5]

If I were purely rating the spirit of this book it would have been 4 or 5 stars, but this is a very academic-style volume with nesting digressions, repetitions, and densely technical prose. That Mr. Bolton is a lawyer is no surprise.

The behind-the-scenes baseball about the UN is the strongest material. There are ways to illustrate the endless meandering, contradictory, hypocritical machinations of the UN bureaucracy without being boring, and there are moments there the prose manages to wriggle out of the morass. Bolton isn't writing to be entertaining, he's writing to be informative, but I really don't see why you can't do both.

[Kenneth · Rating 4 out of 5]

According to goodreads, this book is 366 pages. It's closer to 500. Aside from that, this book is hard to read. There's a lot of policy detail, and I struggled to get through it. It's an important book in illustrating the problems within the U.N., and the problems within the bureaucracy of the United States. While he can be self-serving, he's not afraid to name names. It's a book more Americans need to read if there is ever to be change.

Just don't try reading it all at once.

[jessi · Rating 1 out of 5]

John Bolton rambles arrogantly through this dry account of part of his career. Constantly throwing in useless anecdotes to demonstrate his charm and influence with members of the Bush administration, this needlessly thick account is full of exclamation points and too many acronyms to keep track of. A Cliff's Notes version may have be worth looking into for a look into some foreign policy decisions made during the presidency of George W. Bush, but this book was simply awful.

[Ryota · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s obvious that Bolton is a patriot of the U.S. and a great intelligentsia whose intelligence is superior to any Chinese politicians and bureaucrats of today. However, his misfortune is that he’s always wrongly depicted as a warmonger. In this book, his decision-making and thoughts behind his actions are rational to whom has common sense and a patriotic view.

First, I have to mention one grave ideological issue about Hong Kong related to Bolton or his American patriotism. In short, the true guarantee of the safety of Hong Kong citizens lies in the fact that the majority of Hong Kong citizens are friendly to the West. This is why the U.S. still regards Hongkongers as pro-Americans or at least pro-Westerners, who are not any target of crippling sanctions. Yes, the U.S. establishment doesn’t recognize the Hong Kong population as Syrians, Iranians, Venezuelans or Cubans, which is fortunate. And this is the true guarantee of the political safety of this city until today. Hence, the true guarantor of the safety of this city is not any national security laws but the Western-friendly citizens of this city. In this view, the opposition has a vast advantage in the diplomacy of this city to protect it from the hostility of any Western political forces.

However, the HKSARG is eradicating the legacy of the pro-Western population by narrow-mindedly importing mainlanders to replace increasingly large portions of the population. This will change the Western attitude to the Hong Kong population. In the end, when the safe guarantee of a pro-Western attitude of most of the population disappears, it will turn into a hostile political confrontation between the West and this city, while jingoism, corporatism, authoritarian elitism, transnational repression, and grotesque nationalism are antagonizing the Hong Kong working class and the pro-Democracy majority of the population. That’s the worst scenario in terms of the true aspect of the safety of this city. Therefore, any anti-Americanism or anti-Westernism is fatally wrong and unfit for the great benefit of the population. This is why any political shift to anti-Americanism or anti-Westernism is disastrous to its population. What I mentioned here is a total blind spot that subsided because of the growing grotesque nationalism at the cost of the traditional safety of this city. One of the reasons for this grotesqueness is that Marxism strongly opposes any kind of nationalism as it essentially forces on people, a class-collaborationist attitude which is a disadvantage for workers. Thus, CCP totally forgets that Marxism is not nationalism, nationalism is not Marxism. This is one of their serious internal contradictions. Therefore, what we are witnessing in Chinese Marxism is Marxism in decay. Besides, it also seems to think that becoming the most brutal or pure neoliberalism to defeat capitalism. On the contrary, it is not the self-negation of capitalism but the self-negation of Marxism itself, because it will totally evaporate the remnant of social trust of workers in the ideology at the end of this extremism. It could only be completion of capitalism, not negation of it.

There are several points in this book.

1. What is the UN like? This means how ambassadors and staff work in it as representatives of their original nations and the UN as a whole. Does the UN simply represent a collective will or somebody else’s will? What problems untaught in schools or media occur in the system? Bolton points out several of them to readers.

2. How do the UN reps interact with each other? Human conversations between UN ambassadors, explicitly, Chinese ambassador and CCP staff talk normally and humanly, not just mechanically read bureaucratic statements like in front of us. The human talks in the UN between UN ambassadors are fresh and lively to readers who are only subject to daily mechanical bureaucratic statements of Chinese officials who don’t see citizens as counterparts of any equal dialogue. This is one big feature of this book written and read by Bolton.

3. How does the U.S. see the UN? The attitude of the U.S. to the UN is from hegemonism or simple patriotism of rational thinking? This is perfectly answered and explained by Bolton classically in the book.

4. What are the bureaucratic issues in the U.S. establishment itself?

These four points are the essence of this book. I cite the relevant part from the book to recommend readers to further read in detail.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably one of the more interesting biographies I have read. You get a TON of behind the scenes info during the Bush 42 years. Really interesting insights into the UN and it begins to make why the UN is so useless and chock full of anti-Semites. Bolton takes us into his relationship with Colin Powell (when he was at State) and how they worked together to improve a few things and get out of some bad ones.

Great book for policy wonks, UN observers and anyone interested in "The Stache." Highly recommended reading.

[Brenden Gallagher · Rating 2 out of 5]

As is often true of the unrepentant ideologue, Bolton wrote a memoir blaming is failures on others. There is a lesson here: incapable of compromise Bolton achieves little to none of his agenda despite decades in the halls of power and the best education imaginable. Ultimately, all of that can be in your favor, but if you are an asshole (he calls Europeans "Euroids" for example), you will run really fast but not get very far. What a prick.

[Phillip · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book started out very dry reading, but it was interesting nonetheless. A tip for how to read the book is one chapter at a time, as they can stand alone on their own content and merit. Not sure if I would read any other books by this author; however, this confession is not a regret in reading this one. Definitely recommend reading this book.

[Will James]

Wow. John Bolton is an unbelievably angry man. 'Surrender Is Not An Option' is surely the most polemical of any memoir I've read coming from the Bush Administration - and it'll take a great deal of effort for any of Bolton's former colleagues to match his utter disdain for liberalism, multilateralism, Europeans (especially, if somewhat surprisingly, the British), the UN, Democrats, centre-ground Republicans, and pretty much anyone who Bolton has found in his crosshairs throughout his life.



John Bolton's 'shoot-from-the-hip' philosophy didn't earned him many friends on the international diplomatic circuit, but you have to admire his determination to follow his own convictions, which he details throughout his career - be during his time at the Reagan Justice Department through to the 2000 Presidential Florida Re-count, up to his most famous posting as George W Bush's UN Ambassador.



However, in spite of Bolton's obvious enthusiasm for the job, his poor sense of humour, and his inability to write a paragraph without including some quite horrendous acronyms (EUroids is a particularly bad example), all serve to detract from the otherwise interesting anecdotes of his time in office - at times making it quite unreadable. In fact, more revealingly about his character, Bolton uses his book as an opportunity to make personal attacks on his opponents in the most unsubtle way, leaving the distinct impression that Bolton is not a very nice person.

[Kristen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bolton was a conservative ambassador to the UN. He also had a lot of jobs at the Department of State. Something about working for the government turns you into a person that writes in endless acronymns. Readers had better pay attention. If they don't, they will soon be deep into paragraphs about the EAP's position papers on the DPRK and they will have to read back a page or two to figure out that the EAP is the East Asia Pacific group and the DPRK is North Korea. And more of the same throughout the book. Bolton's world is one long game of Boggle.

The best parts of Surrender are the private asides that the government types say to each other, like "Maybe I should act more like Jesse Helms" or "This [committee] isn't worth a bucket of warm spit."

There's just an awful lot wade through, with a wide cast of characters. If Girls' State was the most meaningful experience of your young life, then you might find something interesting in here, but Surrender is nothing I'd risk an overdue fine for.

Plus, it's a little heavy for bathtub reading.

[Barron · Rating 3 out of 5]

Best line:

"His deputy perm rep, Adam Thomson, in one discussion, said plaintively, 'But that's the way we do things at the UN,' Which was not an argument to make to me. Behind his back, staffers at UKUN called Thomson, the son of a British diplomat, 'Harry Potter' because of his resemblance to the character from the series of children's books. Sadly, thereafter, I could never look at or listen to Thomson without immediately thinking Harry and all his little friends."

I read this book expecting to be the worst I'd ever read, but unfortunately it's a lot more articulate and funnier than a lot of conservative hack books--which makes Bolton all the scarier since he's fundamentally nuts. It's certainly better than the film "Red Dawn," which I also watched last night.

Again, I'll cite Ben Crair's impression of my reading material: "that looks like a silly book." And it was.

[Ray · Rating 3 out of 5]

Somewhat of a biographical book about John Bolton, where you'll see Bolton's background as a lawyer as opposed to primarily being a diplomat. Lawyers are trained to argue FOR their clients, while diplomats might seek to find compromises through negotiations. Bolton is clearly of that first group. One gets the clear impression that during his time as U.N. Ambassador, he was an unapologetic advocate of U.S. positions as defined by President Bush, reinforced by his own conservative leanings, and not prone to seek compromise or conciliation. Bolton appears to be a firm believer that his world view is better than their world view, and discusses why in this book.

[Chris Hunt · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love John Bolton, and having spoken to the man personally while at an event in D.C., I can tell you that he is a modest and humble man (though not a weak man). I was expecting a good, rollicking book full of red meat describing how he took the establishment to town. To say the least, I was disappointed when instead, the book was full of detail after detail of what seemed to be unimportant conversations he had with undersecretary of this, that, and the other. If you are interested in diplomacy, though, this might be a good read.

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

While this is rather dense material, Mr. Bolton's detailed account of his time as the US Permanent Representative to the United Nations makes for excellent reading material. Earlier chapters on his time as Undersecretary of State for Arms Control are also quite good. An illuminating portrait of both of George W. Bush's Secretaries of State is painted.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent read. Bolton is very, very, good at what he does. To think that Hilary is doing the job now is scary. You get some insight into what goes on at the UN, Colin Powell, and Condi Rice. None very flattering. Bolton does not come across as an ideologue, but a man who knows his job and does it well.

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bolton, former US ambassador to the United Nations, is a true believer in the conservative ranks. It's a great read about how the UN runs from the perspective of someone who doesn't think it runs well at all.

[Whennen · Rating 5 out of 5]

We pay 27% of the bill, at least we are on the security council. Good book, def a memoir. Shows what happens when we are more worried about feeling good than getting the job done and when people who are in charge of projects do not have to pay the consequences when goals are not met.

[Anthony · Rating 3 out of 5]

One man's perspective of what it was like in the first term of Bush's white house. Intersesting to hear the thoughts of Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld, and Bush himself. Brings into focus what a difficult world it is, as we see what it's like up close and personal with China, North Korea, Iran.

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mr. Bolten is a well spoken person who has proven an effective attorney and diplomat. His ideas may not jive with everyone but his perspective of the State Department and the UN are important for everyone to consider whether conservative or liberal, a US citizen or a citizen of the world.

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bolton is a tough-as-nails diplomat - something of an oxymoron. But we need more like him, especially in the UN. Book is an interesting look behind the scenes at the baloney that got goes on in the UN, and how the Bush II administration dealt with it. A bit self-serving, but still a worth read.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you are a political wonk, especially a conservative one, you'll like this one. A bit too esoteric for me, but informative. Definitely not a page turner.

[Alexandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

A behind the doors look at the UN from an American perspective. John Bolton turns dry facts into readable information.

[Tal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting and shows how ineffective the UN actually is but a difficult read at best.

[Griff · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting political history but too much I

[Terry Moffitt]

A must for American citizens to read.

[Fredrick Danysh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Designed following World War II to prevent wars, the United Nations has become very anti-United States with the intent of becoming a world government subjugating the US Constitution.

[Don · Rating 5 out of 5]

UN funded as optional fee for service perhaps, non-political foreign service is a dream, curious perceptions of Baker Powell and Rice, a worthy read of worldly issues.

[Jonathan]

Whatever you think of him this does give insights into his crazy paranoid brain. He's smart. He's mean. He's driven to defend his idea of America whatever the cost. He has the ear of Trump. Worth worrying about.