Can the UN Be Saved? Lessons From a Cold War Diplomat

As the UN endures a crisis of relevance, a new biography recalls a time when it wielded real power.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Lessons from a Cold War Diplomat by Timothy McLoughlin read
by Mike Cooper. Last month, a glum looking United Nations
Secretary General laid bare the organization's staggering bureaucratic sprawl. The
global body supported twenty seven thousand meetings in twenty twenty
four alone, an average of almost seventy four a day,

(00:21):
and is drowning in its own paperwork. Security Council resolutions
are three times longer than they were thirty years ago,
and many among the avalanche of reports eleven hundred produced
by the Secretariat alone go unread. The sheer number of
meetings and reports is pushing the system and all of us,
to the breaking point. Antonio Guterisch said that a briefing
in New York Online, his remarks triggered gleeful derision, as

(00:44):
one headline put it, UN report finds United Nations reports
are not widely read. As the UN turns eighty, its
astonishing bloat is just one of a myriad of challenges.
The organization is strapped for cash and deep funding cuts
by U S President Donald Trump a further straining its resources.
Upstart multilateral groupings led by China have created a new

(01:06):
crop of competitors. Richard Gowan, who oversees the International Crisis
Group's advocacy work at the UN, says the body seems
unsure where it fits in a universe of younger and
more attractive alternatives. Worse still, the UN is failing to
uphold a key tenet of its founding charter to save
succeeding generations from the scourge of war. Hamstrung by great

(01:27):
power competition, it has been unable to halt Russia's war
against Ukraine, stem Israel's pummeling and starvation of Gaza, or
craft a solution to the humanitarian crisis created by the
raging Sudanese Civil War. When the future looks this bleak,
a glance backward can offer not only reprieve and distraction,
but also perhaps a flicker of hope. Peacemaker Utant and

(01:49):
the forgotten Quest for a just World w W. Norton
September ninth, by historian Tanned mint Yew provides exactly that.
The book chronicles the life of Utant, non European, to
lead the UN, he guided the organization for more than
a decade, deftly diffused the Cuban missile crisis, and for
a time was among the most admired men in the world.

(02:10):
Yet he's been largely forgotten or reduced to an exotic
cipher in the historical record. Writing in Harper's Magazine about
the UN's shortcomings earlier this year, journalist Amanda Chicago Lewis
offered a striking example of the sneering orientalism that dog
Tant at the UN and still lingers after his death
in nineteen seventy four. Dismissing him as the Burmese guy

(02:31):
who used astrology to predict world events, Tant mint Yew
draws on extensive archival research to restore Tan to his
rightful place in history, though at times with a pedantic
level of detail that can make passages read like a
daily diary. His personal connection to the subject Tanned was
his grandfather, undoubtedly provides unique access, but it doesn't keep

(02:52):
him from criticizing the UN, and he avoids sliding into hagiography.
Tant grew up in Pantanoor, a ramshackle riverine town in
southwest Burmer, as mien Mar was then known. His family's
substantial wealth was lost in a business dispute, followed shortly
by the sudden death of his father when Tant was fourteen.
Cash strapped, Tant attended Rangoon University for just two years, and,

(03:15):
after returning home, taught at a local school from the
late nineteen twenties until nineteen forty seven. Intensely curious about
the world, he joined a number of influential book clubs
and wrote incessantly, producing books, newspaper pieces, and essays. He
grew to de test colonialism and jettisoned his earlier dreams
of joining the elite Indian civil service, which the British

(03:36):
Empire used to administer Burmer. When Burmer gained independence in
nineteen forty eight, Tant decamped to Rangoon now Yang Gone
with his family to join the new government. He served
as an adviser to Unou, the first Prime Minister, and
in nineteen fifty seven was named Burmer's ambassador to the
u n Tant's wife, who spoke no English, and children,

(03:56):
had never left Burmer before arriving with him in New York,
but they quickly took to city life. While Tant's gentlemanly
air and diplomatic poise risk rendering him flat or even
dull on the page, tamp Mintyeu adds dashes of color
to his descriptions of the buttoned up statesman, revealing his
fascination with UFOs and recounting an impromptu ocean dip with
Nikita Krushchev. The book describes a un striving to forge

(04:20):
a more equitable world order. Agitating for Change was a
cohort of AfroAsian ambassadors whose ranks were growing in the
nineteen sixties. Tamp Mintyeu writes that they were impatient and ambitious,
and envisaged a post imperial age that would see the
rapid economic development of the poorer nations. They envisioned an
international system with the United Nations at its heart, belonging

(04:42):
not just to the white nations, but to the entire world.
Tamp Mintyeu conjures an organization that was Sheikh zestful and
shockingly even cool. The delegate's lounge, appointed with Danish furniture
and Finnish lamps, reflected a more modern world, shifting away
from the stuffy days of Empire. The diplomats, cocktail parties
and dinners were must attend events covered in the pages

(05:03):
of the New York Times. There are cameos by John
Lennon and Yoko Ono, Martin Luther King, junior astronauts Neil
Armstrong and John Glenn, and the French under sea explorer
Jacques Cousteau. Even so, the organization had its struggles. It
was almost one hundred million dollars in debt as Soviet
Bloc countries Fronts and Belgium refused to pay for peacekeeping missions.

(05:24):
It was left reeling after the death of Doug Hamersiould
in a plane crash in September nineteen sixty one. The
cause of the crash near En Dolla, then in northern Rhodesia,
remains what the UN has called one of the most
enduring mysteries in its history. Hammersiold was posthumously awarded the
Nobel Peace Prize, and Tant was initially elevated to Acting
Secretary General after a ground swell of support and despite

(05:46):
attacks on his candidacy by the French, who disliked him
for endorsing Algerian independence. One of his first moves was
to head off financial collapse by issuing bonds to be
purchased by member states. At the same time, he was
navigating the conflict in the Congo, which had gained independence
from Belgium in nineteen sixty and relied on a huge
UN peacekeeping force created by Hammersiold to contain the turmoil. Then,

(06:10):
on October the twenty second, nineteen sixty two, US President
John F. Kennedy warned Americans that Soviet ships were motoring
toward Cuba carrying nuclear weapons. In a flurry of diplomacy,
Tan mediated between the two superpowers, a role no Secretary
General before him had attempted. Tant mint Yu reflects on
his grandfather's remarkable life path. Less than fifteen years earlier,

(06:33):
he'd been working as a teacher. Now, as he prepared
to meet with Fidel Castro in Havana, he had forty
eight hours to end the Cold War's biggest crisis. Tan's
role in resolving the Cuban missile crisis, long overdue for
proper recognition, alongside the event's most consequential actors, is described
with granular exact in detail. The episode, the book notes,

(06:53):
demonstrated that, at the height of the Cold War, with
the Council deadlocked, the head of the UN, as the
world's pre eminent day diplomat, could de escalate tensions and
prevent a potentially cataclysmic war. Within two years, Tan meant
You persuasively argues the UN had reached the peak of
its influence. Tand was skillfully maneuvering between global superpowers and

(07:14):
his AfroAsian and non aligned colleagues, who he hoped would
forge a post imperialist world order. Even at the UN's peak, however,
the Secretary General's ambitions sometimes fell short, as demonstrated by
his unsuccessful efforts to end the Vietnam War. The book
conveys how Tan became almost consumed, at times at the
expense of his own health, with trying to bring the

(07:34):
protracted conflict to a close. His relentless criticism of the
war made him numerous enemies in Washington, which continued to
pour soldiers and money into the faltering campaign. Meanwhile, Israel
lambastard Tant when he complied with Egyptian demands to pull
UN peacekeepers from the Sinai in the days leading up
to the Six Day War, one of the most contested

(07:55):
moments of his tenure. Tand had previously enjoyed close ties
with Israel dating back to his years as Boehmer's permanent
representative to the UN. There were also setbacks for Tant's
vision of the UN. The momentum of the AfroAsian movement faded,
in part because of US backed plots to overthrow leaders
in Indonesia and Ghana. An envisioned restructuring of the world

(08:16):
economic system so poorer nations could rapidly industrialize rather than
relying on UNAID ran headlong into opposition from rich nations
who saw no need for change. Tant served as Secretary
General until nineteen seventy two. As his time at the
UN drew to a close, he was concerned about humanity's
capacity for peaceful coexistence and the fragile health of the planet,

(08:38):
questions that remain for a new generation of leaders to address. Unfortunately,
as Tant mint Eu rites today's world of militarism and
armed alliances, derides the proponents of peace as idealistic and
hopelessly naive, the current system is visibly failing. From Ukraine
to Gaza to Sudan, the UN looks paralyzed, its bureaucratic

(08:59):
machines struck to tackle wars, famine and climate catastrophe. Gutai
Esch has become the custodian of an exhausted institution that's
overwhelmed by crises and under delivering on its most fundamental
mission of brokering peace revitalizing It will undoubtedly be made
more difficult by American leadership that happily denigrates the UN
but offers no vision for a more productive organization. What

(09:22):
is the purpose of the United Nations? Trumpasts during his
address to the General Assembly on September twenty third, to
look back at tant and the UN's early ideals may
persuade a new generation of officials that it's an organization
worth reinvigorating and refocusing. To do that, they will need
a leader of comparable pragmatism and talent. With the search

(09:42):
for a new Secretary General coming next year, they may
have a chance to find one.