Unvanquished: A U.S. - U.N. Saga

by Boutros Boutros-Ghali

Book Overview

For years the United States has treated the United Nations as an extension of its own foreign policy, while other member states--especially smaller, less influential countries--have looked to the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375500502
• ISBN13: 9780375500503
• Release Date: June 1999
• Publisher: Random House (NY)
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 1.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.5" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

A good read exploring the complexities of the US-UN relation

An excellent book which the focuses mainly on the US - UN relationship. In fact the author exposes some of the main issues related to UN reform and how political the workings are for a Secretary General to implement reforms; even the reforms adopted by the security council. In addition the book demonstrates how critical and powerful a role US plays in the working of the UN (even without having payed the UN dues at the time). To quote Jamie Rubin "The UN can only do what the US Lets it do". However I was a little dissapointed that the author did not bring out how the UN works in terms of how the resolutions are proposed, voted, adopted and implemented. Also all the focus is on the US-UN relationship and all other member relations are viewed through this prism. Also I felt the author was preoccupied with explaining the reader how he was deprived of the second term in the office. The author has singled out Madeline Albright for some special treatment in the book. This personality of Madeline Albright is very different from what the US media has portrayed her. She comes across as very insecure and cunning (For example: what Joseph Verner Reed says he heard her say " I will make Boutros think I am his friend; then I will break his legs").Another thing I want to mention here is in relation to what US keeps saying about how ineffectual the UN is in regards to imposing restrictions on Iraq. But what I realize from the book is that we often forget that US, its allies and its enemies are all part of the UN and the UN can only be as effective as its member states want it to be!

Valuable to Leaders and Observers of International Politics.

Politics is generally way beyond the scope of my field of interest. I did, however, buy the book and I did enjoy it.For someone of very little political background as myself, I found the book very easy to read and even gripping in parts. (you must bear in mind that gripping me by the happenings in Somalia is a superior achievement of a very able author.)Mr. Ghali's writing style is awesome. He makes the complex simple and does so with such grace that reading the book becomes a recreational activity rather than a study of contemporary political events.The book reveals a lot of the "happenings" in the international political scene and points at many "obstacles" that the UN has encountered and describes why he was not re-elected for a "generally given" second term.The book is divided into 8 chapters. Each describes a particular event or string of events that happen during a defined period of time from 1991 till 1996.An enjoyable book. Dr. Ghali takes you by the hand on a tour around the world as the UN saw it in those 5 years.Essentail reading for Statesmen. Enjoyable reading for others.

The reality revealed in this book.

Boutros Boutros Ghali is very courageous and expericence man. In this world if you don"t follow you are out of the way and this is the new policy of world only super-power. Are we going to be hostage of one naation?

Boutros-Ghali bites back

As compelling as a good novel, BB-G's memoir of his service as UN Secretary-General skilfully blends an account of some of the more disastrous episodes of our time -- Iraq, Rwanda, Bosnia -- with one of the more outrageous US assaults on the will of the international community -- its rejection of BB-G's own re-election to a second term as UN chief. What's truly scary is to compare the intense apathy which the US brought to many foreign catastrophes (in the Rwandan case, a kind of criminal disregard as the genocide raged) with the zealousness and fanaticism of Madeleine Albright's campaign against B-G. The passages in which B-G relates Albright's attempt to buy him off with a title -- the hilarious 'Secretary-General Emeritus', as if to acknowledge the vanity of former academics -- are especially compelling. You'll quake with terror as even Barbara Walters is brought into service as an instrument of US diplomacy (or non-diplomacy, as B-G would probably put it).Of course, this book needs to be read carefully. B-G has every reason to be bitter about the treatment he received, and his own lifelong service as a diplomat and privileged list of friends (Ted Turner, George Soros and even Kissinger apparently among them) make it clear that he's hardly an innocent in all this. His persistent emphasis on 'democratization' also clashes uncomfortably with his prior service of Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak, the latter still rigging Egyptian elections during BB-G's term at the UN. However, even these caveats cannot diminish the simple, brutal force of B-G's argument -- that the US frequently acts unilaterally, selfishly and destructively to undermine a genuinely multilateral and effective response to international crises.Of course, this is an imperfect world made up of many players, some far more reprehensible than the likes of Clinton and Albright; but, through B-G's strained prose, we get a real sense of the particular criminality and dereliction of the current US administration, of a gulf between rhetoric and actions which stretches from New York to Sarajevo, from Washington to Kigali.

The truth is coming out

Finally a book that is not afraid to talk about the most poisonous snake of them all: Madeline K. Albright. Favourite line: Labeling Washington an imperial power, Boutros-Ghali said the United States ``sees little need for diplomacy; power is enough. Only the weak rely on diplomacy...the Roman Empire had no need for diplomacy. Nor does the United States.''