Here is one intelligent take on the Bolton nomination from the WP:
Svein Melby, a Norwegian expert on trans-Atlantic relations, warned against viewing the selection as a signal that Bush didn't plan to follow through on promises to take a more multilateral approach in his second term.
"It is important to remember that foreign policy is decided by President Bush and the secretary of state. The U.N. ambassador just puts it into practice," said Melby, a research fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs in Oslo. "If it is a signal about anything, it is that the demands from the United States for reforms at the U.N. are serious because they have sent an ambassador who is critical of the U.N."
I think the last part of this claim is correct: it signals an impatience with the UN and a desire for "reform"--though it's unclear what "reform" means.
But the first part of the claim--that the Bush Administration was seeking a friendlier, multilateral approach to international relations, seems unlikely. Does it mean that the US will now sign the Kyoto Protocol and try to save our children from the harm that we are doing to their world? Does it mean that we will join the International Criminal Court or at least consent to the prosecution of Sudanese war criminals there? Does it mean that we will enter FAO treaties about tobacco advertising?
No, all it means is that we will seek international help to go after regimes that we are focused on today. (We should, of course, be focused heavily on Al Queda and its connected bands, and on nuclear material everywhere.)
Bolton is a very smart person. He will bite his tongue and make nice as needed to accomplish the tasks assigned to him. But his contempt for the very idea of international law cannot be hidden. For him, international law is contrary to democracy. So if we are to promote democracy abroad, we must dismantle international legal constraints--at least constraints on the U.S.
This is the subject of my upcoming paper, Globalization and Distrust, where Bolton is my principal target of criticism.