“Not everyone is going to have her political skill,” said Brett Schaefer, a fellow at the Heritage Foundation. “She established her relationship with Trump early on when H.R. McMaster was national security adviser and Rex Tillerson was secretary of state. Those circumstances have changed, and Ambassador Bolton has very strong views on the U.N.”

The fear in New York and among the more internationally minded members of the Washington foreign policy establishment is that a Bolton-style hard-liner could make strained relations at the United Nations even worse.

“Now, if Bolton wants this to go off the rails, there may be no one stopping that,” said Sheba Crocker, vice president for humanitarian programs and policy at Care USA, who served as the State Department’s assistant secretary for international organization affairs under Obama. “There’s now more risk that will happen.”