Christos Evangeliou is professor of philosophy at Towson University, Maryland.
Unvanquished: A US–UN Saga
by boutros boutros-ghali
London, I. B. Tauris; New York, Random House, 1999. 352 pages
UK £19.95, US $29.00
In the long history of international politics Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the sixth secretary-general of the United Nations, probably does not merit much of a mention, but in the short life span of the United Nations he is a far more significant, and controversial, figure.
He was the first secretary-general to come from the Arabic world and the African continent. His time in office coincided with the final demise of the Cold War and with US President George Bush’s emergent dream of a “New World Order”, which gave Boutros-Ghali an international mandate to try and forge a new role for the United Nations and its secretary-general. Boutros-Ghali also had to contend with Bill Clinton’s first presidency, which was often criticised for being preoccupied with domestic issues at the expense of foreign policy, much to the exasperation of the UN Secretariat and other UN member states. Most importantly, of the six secretaries-general, Boutros-Ghali was the only one denied the privilege of a second term, when the United States, which had abstained from voting for him the first time in 1991, used its veto to block his re-election in 1996. In so doing, the United States opposed the 14 other members of the Security Council and united in opposition 185 members of the General Assembly. In Unvanquished: A US–UN Saga, Boutros-Ghali suggests that this undemocratic behaviour by the United States was not so much a rejection of his style, personality or policies, as the result of a unfortunate coincidence: he stood for re-election during a US presidential election year, and became the victim of dirty campaigning by American politicians.
This proud Egyptian viewed his humiliating defeat as an insult on every conceivable level. It showed contempt not only for him personally, but also for his country, the Arab world, the African continent and the Third World in general. He did not go quietly. In Unvanquished, Boutros-Ghali hopes to publicise his outrage, enlist our sympathy and take his revenge.
Boutros-Ghali writes with lucidity, candour, dramatic flair and an eye for the ambiguities of diplomacy. His narrative alternates between intense personal feeling and almost stoic detachment. It is presented, like the plot of a classical Greek play, as concerning the inevitable fall of a tragic hero. For the “saga” of Boutros-Ghali’s title is not an abstract dispute between the United States and the United Nations, but a rancorous struggle between the Clinton administration and the UN Secretariat. More specifically, his book often reads like an account of a personal vendetta between two former political science professors who were invested with great political power: Boutros-Ghali himself and Madeleine Albright, the US representative to the United Nations.
The eight chapters that constitute the book fall naturally into three main sections. In the first section (chapter 1), the author describes the difficulties and excitement of his successful campaign for the coveted post of UN secretary-general. He also describes how he gained, and then lost, the vital “American support”—a subject treated more dramatically and extensively in the third section of the book (chapter 8), which covers his messy and bitter departure from the United Nations five years later. The bulk of the book (chapters 2–7) chronicles year by year and region by region his few successes and many failures as he moved between crisis points in Cambodia, Rwanda, Somalia, Bosnia, North Korea and Haiti, trying to ensure that the United Nations could indeed meet the demands of a new world free from superpower conflict.
Boutros-Ghali says his opponents characterised him unfairly as “arrogant”, “corrupt”, “stubborn” and above all as a man who, in the words of Albright’s deputy, Edward “Skip” Gnehm, “would not do what we [the United States] wanted him to do as quickly as we wanted him to do it” (p. 291). The important fact is that by the time he was called upon to assume the mantle of secretary-general, often described as “the world’s most impossible job”, Boutros-Ghali was approaching seventy. He had had a distinguished academic career studying at some of the best European and American universities and had taught for thirty years at the University of Cairo. He had taken part in the Camp David negotiations and was chosen by President Mubarak to serve as Egypt’s vice-prime minister for foreign affairs. Over the years he had cultivated extensive diplomatic and personal relations with the rulers of many African, Arab, Asian, Francophone and Latin American countries. With such an august track record, he seemed to view his position as UN secretary-general as entailing the dignity and majesty of an ancient Egyptian pharaoh. He certainly acted as if he expected representatives of other countries to treat him with the highest degree of respect.
By the time the Clinton administration had settled in, Boutros-Ghali had been secretary-general for more than twelve months. Like his predecessors, he had learned or was learning fast how to manipulate the members of the Security Council and the General Assembly in order to increase the prestige and power of the secretariat. More significantly, following a Security Council summit meeting in January 1992, members had invited the newly elected Boutros-Ghali to find ways of strengthening the role of the United Nations and the secretary-general in the new era of multilaterlism and democratisation which had supposedly dawned. The result was Boutros-Ghali’s Agenda for Peace, a report which covered a wide range of issues including preventive diplomacy, peacekeeping and peacemaking. To effect the changes which would bring the United Nations and his office into areas which just a few years earlier had been almost the sole preserve of the superpowers, Boutros-Ghali badgered the member states to increase, or at least pay, their contributions, especially as the richer nations had started to follow the US example of withholding UN payments, thus creating a permanent financial crisis for the world body’s bloated bureaucracy.
A clash was simply a matter of time. The United Nations, headed by a man of Boutros-Ghali’s qualifications, ambitions and bearing, was bound to collide with the seemingly inexperienced guardians of US foreign policy, namely, Albright and Secretary of State Warren Christopher. They had been newly selected by President Clinton to manage US foreign policy. In Boutros-Ghali’s judgement, the Christopher–Albright duo failed to acquire, or at least to display, sufficient diplomacy and tact in their dealings with him:
I was beginning to realize that I had no margin of error with either Christopher or Albright. In my diplomatic experience, personal relationships were key. But I had not been able to consolidate a friendship with Christopher because of his immensely heavy schedule and his occluded personality, and because Albright insisted on mediating between us. As for Albright, we had an apparently warm friendship, but warmth turned to fury the instant problems surfaced … They both seemed unsure of their roles. (P. 120)
Reflecting on his encounters with Albright and Christopher, Boutros-Ghali concluded:
It would be some time before I fully realized that the United States sees little need for diplomacy; power is enough. Only the weak rely on diplomacy ... [T]he Roman Empire had no need of diplomacy. Nor does the United States. (P. 198)
It is difficult to believe that this elementary insight into how superpowers behave came to a career diplomat of Boutros-Ghali’s pedigree so late in life and only after his dealings with Madeleine Albright. The allusion to the Roman Empire is particularly significant if we recall the story of Cleopatra, the cultivated, diplomatic Egyptian queen, facing the raw military might of Rome, as represented by Caesar and Octavian, and apply it to Boutros-Ghali’s situation. In his case the genders may be reversed, but the power relations are the same: a humbling position for such a proud man.
With such poor communication between the United States and the United Nations, it is hardly surprising that each blamed the other for the war in Bosnia, the UN fiasco in Somalia and the horrors perpetrated in Rwanda, to mention only the worst crises the United Nations had to confront during Boutros-Ghali’s tenure. The optimism about a rejuvenated, strengthened United Nations which member states had expressed during Boutros-Ghali’s first months in office soon dissipated as the cost and complexity of collective internationalism became clear. The Clinton administration led the way in reflecting this trend. And as if Boutros-Ghali’s difficulties with the US government were not enough, the Republican chorus within and outside Congress found it convenient, entertaining and politically profitable to lambast the United Nations and its secretary-general, even making fun of his name. Boutros-Ghali came under fire from such notables as Bob Dole, the Republican presidential nominee, Jesse Helms, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, and Jeane Kirkpatrick, a former US representative to the United Nations and a sharp editorialist.
According to Boutros-Ghali, the Clinton administration decided not to support him for re-election as early as May 1996, announcing its “irrevocable” decision six months ahead of time and in violation of standard UN procedure. This move certainly irritated the other members of the Security Council, but for Boutros-Ghali it simply confirmed his belief that Albright was determined to destroy him:
She had said nothing, but she had laid her plans well. Long before this election year of 1996 Joseph Verner Reed had heard her say, “I will make Boutros think I am his friend; then I will break his legs!” When this was reported to me, I brushed it aside as ridiculous … I was a good boy, but I was naive. Fortune is a woman, Machiavelli said, and should be treated roughly, but in this case it was the woman who was rough, and fortune favored her. (P. 304)
Boutros-Ghali recounts the end of the final private dinner he had with Albright, shortly before he stood down as secretary-general:
After dinner she seemed eager to leave us. She had accomplished her diplomatic mission with skill. She had carried out her campaign with determination, letting pass no opportunity to demolish my authority and tarnish my image, all the while showing a serene face, wearing a friendly smile, and repeating expressions of friendship and admiration. I recalled what a Hindu scholar once said to me: there is no difference between diplomacy and deception. (P. 334)
Passages such as this make for spicy reading but they are hardly plausible. That “diplomacy and deception” are two names for the same old art of political duplicity is hardly likely to strike an elderly, experienced diplomat in a moment of revelation at a “last supper” with an archenemy. If we are to believe Boutros-Ghali, then we have to conclude that Albright’s sole aim as US ambassador to the United Nations was to frustrate his bid for a second term, and that upon her victory she was rewarded by Clinton with the coveted position of secretary of state. In the process, the “freshman” student at UN college taught the elderly professor a lesson he would never forget. Like Samson, she managed to bring down two pillars at the same time, Boutros-Ghali and Warren Christopher, without hurting herself. It may all turn out to be a Pyrrhic victory for the United States if at the end of her term, which is approaching fast, Madame Secretary has nothing more to show for her achievements than United States’s mini-expansion in Eastern Europe and its messy war in Kosovo.
There remains an unanswered question: why would a man who was then seventy-five years old have wanted a second term as secretary-general, with all the responsibilities and constant crises which that office entails? Throughout Unvanquished: A US–UN Saga, Boutros-Ghali would have us believe that matters of principle were his sole motivation for seeking and retaining power. He wanted to preserve and strengthen the integrity and independence of the secretary-general’s office, and that necessitated a second term. He would then also have been able to continue his campaign to make the United Nations the main force behind the political ideal of “democratisation”, which was to be applied equally within and between states, regardless of size, wealth, power and international status. All these are undeniably worthy aims, but certain passages must lead us to question his sincerity and to recall the equation of diplomacy and deception he himself cites. Boutros-Ghali’s account of his first meeting with Christopher and Albright suggests that deception was a game at which he too could play, even if ultimately Albright proved to be the better player.
“Mr. Secretary, Madame Ambassador,” I said, “I am deeply aware that the U.S. is the major actor on the world scene. I know that I must have U.S. support if I am to succeed. I will always seek and try to deserve that support. But,” I said, “please allow me from time to time to differ publicly from U.S. policy. This would help the United Nations reinforce its own personality and maintain its integrity. It will help dispel the image among many member states that the UN is just a tool of the U.S.” To do so, I said, “would be in the interest of the U.S. It would give the U.S. more options in its foreign policy if on some occasions it were to use the UN credibly.”
I was sure that Christopher and Albright would understand my point of view. I was completely wrong. My words appeared to shock them. Christopher and Albright looked at each other as though the fish I had served was rotten. They didn’t speak. I was horrified and changed the subject. (Pp. 197–8)
This revealing passage tells us Boutros-Ghali’s true intentions. He wanted to have it both ways: to appear that he was openly disagreeing with the world’s only superpower, and yet allow the United States to use the United Nations as a tool with his blessing. Principle appears to have had little place here.
There is no doubt that Boutros-Ghali tried hard to defuse serious ethnic and interstate conflicts. But neither from his actions as secretary-general nor from his memoir is it clear that he assumed his office with a definite agenda in mind for reform of the UN Charter. Given the United Nations’ complexity and hypertrophied nature, some reduction in personnel and some consolidation of different branches in the bloated bureaucracy were inevitable, whoever was secretary-general.
Credit should be given to Boutros-Ghali for having made some moves in the right direction. His agendas on peace, development and democratisation contain valuable insights into the interconnected ideals of lasting peace, economic growth, international trade, free markets and democratic institutions. But with the end of the Cold War and the call for a New World Order, the time was ripe for a far more radical overhaul of the United Nations. The necessary changes did not occur and for that all those involved must share the responsibility, including Albright and Boutros-Ghali.
If we believe that it was the United Nations and not just the terror of nuclear deterrence that helped maintain the peace for the nearly fifty years of the Cold War, then we must also believe that we should provide the United Nations with a vital and viable future. The United Nations at present simply cannot function effectively because it has failed to absorb changes in the wealth, power and roles of its member states. Below are some reforms that the United Nations would have done well to adopt before it celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 1995, while Boutros-Ghali was at the helm:
1. The veto power of the five permanent members of the Security Council should be abolished as archaic and undemocratic.
2. European Union countries should lose their individual permanent seats on the council and, like other unions of states, be represented by a single collective permanent seat.
3. The permanent seat thus vacated should go to another country, to be determined on the basis of wealth (e.g., Japan), population (e.g., India), or geographical size (e.g., Brazil).
4. To avoid any conflict (arising from 2 and 3), the number of permanent members may be raised to eight or ten, making the alternate members seven or five respectively.
5. The United States must be thanked properly and honoured for its generous contributions in the past.
6. The present financial burden of maintaining the United Nations should be shared more equitably.
7. The same rule of equity should be observed in the distribution of UN honours and offices.
8. No UN secretary-general should serve more than one term. If the present five-year term is judged insufficient, it could be extended to a seven- or eight-year single term.
9. The man or woman elected as secretary-general should be more than thirty and less than seventy years of age at the time of appointment.
10. Any superpower, like any free state, may consider the merit of unilateral and multilateral approaches to common problems facing humanity and choose accordingly.
With the exception of Senator Helms and a few other misguided minds, the overwhelming majority of Americans could be persuaded to see the value of such changes. So could most of the other nations that make up the United Nations. It goes almost without saying, however, that, for such reforms to take place, the United States and the United Nations would have to be blessed with representatives who are more philosophical and less egotistical than the protagonists so vividly portrayed in Boutros-Ghali’s Unvanquished: A US–UN Saga.
