New Faces at the UN
Kofi Annan is finishing his service as Secretary General of the United Nations. Annan went to college in the United States and is very friendly to our country. In his first five year term as Secretary General of the UN, he got along quite well with the Clinton Administration. He also won the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize jointly with the UN “for their work for a better organized and more peaceful world”, which was well set out in historical context in the presentation speech by the Nobel Chairman. In his second term he had to contend with the hostile Bush II administration. Here is an interesting NPR interview about Annan with one of his biographers. Annan chose to give his farewell speech at the Truman Library in Missouri, in part as a reminder to Americans that the US was the driving force behind the creation of the UN, during the administration of Harry Truman.
Annan has been compared favorably with the revered second Secretary General of the UN, Dag Hammarskjold of Sweden. Hammarskjoldwas on his way to negotiate a cease fire to an armed conflict in Africa when his plane crashed and he was killed September 18, 1961. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1961, having been nominated before his death. The Prize was accepted on his behalf after his death by the Swedish Ambassador to Norway.
The new Secretary General will be Ban Ki-moon of South Korea, who has 35 years of foreign service experience and enjoyed broad support in the UN to succeed Annan.
Here are the 8 holders of the office of Secretary General of the UN, with links to biographical articles at the UN and Wikipedia for those not discussed above:
1. Trygve Lie (Norway) 1946-1952
UN bio
Wikipedia
2. Dag Hammarskjold (Sweden) 1953-1961
3. U Thant (Burma) 1961-1971
UN bio
Wikipedia
4. Kurt Waldheim (Austria) 1972-1981
UN bio
Wikipedia
5. Javier Perez de Cuellar (Peru) 1982-1991
UN bio
Wikipedia
6. Boutros Boutros-Ghali (Egypt) 1992-1996
UN bio
Wikipedia
7. Kofi Annan (Ghana) 1997-2006
8. Ban Ki-moon (South Korea) 2007
The US has sent 29 Ambassadors to the UN. The last one, recess appointee John Bolton, now fortunately has resigned, knowing he would never be confirmed. Our first UN Ambassador, Edward Stettinius, was an industrialist who was part of the delegation that helped form the UN. In contrast to the people who have served as Secretary General, some of the US Ambassadors have had little or no diplomatic experience. Many have come from political backgrounds (Austin, Bush, Danforth, Lodge, Moynihan, Scranton, Stevenson and Young). Scali and Wiggins came from journalism backgrounds and Jeanne Kirkpatrick, who just died, was an academic. One, Arthur Goldberg, made a terrible career move when he let President Johnson talk him into resigning from the US Supreme Court to take the UN post, a position he left 3 years later in conflict with LBJ over Vietnam. If Goldberg had kept his Court job, he could have remained on the Court an additional 25 years until his death in 1990.
The total UN Budget to run an organization of 191 nations and all its programs, including trying to maintain a peaceful world, is about $5 billion a year, with around 40% going to regular programs and 60% to special programs like particular peace keeping missions. The UN assessment to the United States costs each of us in America $1.42 a year for the regular UN budget, and $2.31 for the special missions. The US is almost a billion dollars in arrears to the UN; we always pay our assessments late, a practice started under the Reagan administration. For financial comparison, the War in Iraq has already cost each one of us about $1,200, enough to fund our UN assessment for over 300 years.
posted by Tom Blake | 1:45 PM
4 Comments:
Tom,
That Arthur Goldberg career move was a mystery at the time and still makes no sense. I have to assume that people, such as Arthur Goldber, who make their careers at that level are rational, intelligent, careful to protect their interests, etc. Sometimes we are astonished when someone chooses government service over a lucrative career in the private sector or a lesser position in government service out of a strong sense of civic responsibility. But who would think that the UN Ambassador is more sacred than a Supreme Court appointment?
The only answer in my mind is that LBJ had something on Goldberg, and that he chose to use that trump card. LBJ does have a reputation for ruthlessness.
John from Phoenix
It sounds like LBJ tricked Goldberg, a Kennedy appointee, into leaving by persuading him he was needed in the UN to help with the Vietnam mess and then maybe he would be in line for a VP slot (and maybe later for a shot at the top of the ticket?). Johnson wanted to put his buddy Abe Fortas on the Court, which he did to replace Goldberg, only to have Fortas resign a couple years later over an ethical matter. I think our ethical standards may have diminshed since that time, to where a Justice might not resign over a Fortas type matter.
Here are a couple of interesting pieces about the "Goldberg Goof". The first one talks about the de facto "Jewish seat" on the Court and how it disappeared when Nixon chose a gentile to replace Abe Fortas, who had replaced Goldberg. The second article says LBJ shares the blame with Reagan for the Court being too conservative, and speculates on what the Court would have been like had Goldberg stayed.
I read the second article. Very interesting what if kind of story. Is Goldberg still alive? Or did he die from humiliation? What did he do for a living after the UN appointment?
John from Phoenix
Golberg died in 1990, age 81. Here is an excerpt from Wikipdia on his last career years:
"In 1970, Goldberg ran for Governor of New York, but proved an underwhelming campaigner and was defeated decisively by incumbent Nelson Rockefeller. Subsequently, Goldberg returned to law practice in Washington, D.C., and served as President of the American Jewish Committee. Under President Jimmy Carter, Goldberg served as United States Ambassador to the Belgrade Conference on Human Rights in 1977, and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1978."
An interesting sidelight on the most widely respected UN Secretary General, Dag Hammarskjold, which you might not have picked up on from the Wikipedia article is that he was an unmarried man with no known "significant other", and was very likely gay.
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