This is a sad story written by a very angry man. Boutros-Ghali's period as secretary-general of the UN (1991-96) coincided almost exactly with the first Clinton administration. This coincidence, together with his own troubled relationship with the US leaders involved-the president, the secretary of state (Warren Christopher) and the US ambassador to the UN (Madeleine Albright)-dominates the book. And it is this which carries the story from high hopes at the outset to tears and recriminations at the end, with Boutros-Ghali denied a second term despite a 14-1 vote in his favour in the Security Council.
The story is a sad one because, while the expectations aroused at the outset of his term were excessive-loose talk of a new world order in itself contributed to the setbacks which followed-it was not absurd to believe that the post-cold war UN was destined to play a more effective role. Relatively successful peacekeeping operations in Namibia, Cambodia and El Salvador were demonstrating what could be achieved; the reversal of Iraq's aggression against Kuwait had shown that the five permanent members of the Security Council were capable of working together as the founding fathers had intended; and, above all, the ending of the great east-west confrontation, with its proxy manifestations all over the third world, and the crumbling of apartheid in South Africa, drew out the two poisoned thorns which had caused the UN to limp through its first 45 years.
But, five years after Boutros-Ghali took office, following crushing setbacks in Somalia, Bosnia and Rwanda, and the debilitating vendetta between Boutros-Ghali and the Clinton administration, the outlook was a lot bleaker. The UN which enters the new millennium looks more like the one which emerges at the end of this book-damaged and marginalised-than the one full of promise depicted at its beginning.
The story is also sad because the vendetta at its heart seems inexplicable and unnecessary. How did a US administration, committed in advance to "assertive multilateralism" and to strengthening the UN, come to inflict much more damage on the organisation than the three Republican administrations which preceded it? How did Boutros-Ghali-that most pro-US of Arab politicians, who had helped build the Camp David agreements-come to be regarded in Washington as the devil incarnate, hell-bent on taking over command of the US armed forces? This book tries to explain the background to these questions. But in the end, the focus on the US relationship damages the book as it damaged Boutros-Ghali's term of office, pushing out such key issues as the UN's role in ending apartheid and in the follow-up to the Gulf War, and distorting others by examining them through an exclusively US/UN prism.
Having said that, here is a crisply written and often fascinating insider's account of five tumultuous years during which a good deal went right as well as wrong. Nor does Boutros-Ghali allow excessive discretion to stand in his way. The story of Fidel Castro's clash with Helmut Kohl at the Queen of Denmark's table during the Copenhagen summit in 1995 is a small gem. (Castro: "On what basis are you sitting at this table? This table is only for the most senior heads of state or government. You eat too much. You should watch your diet. Could you explain the so-called German miracle to me?" Kohl: "Work, Mr Castro, work, not words.")
When it comes to the three disasters-Somalia, Rwanda and Bosnia-the treatment is a bit patchy. On Somalia it is hard to disagree that the UN was the victim of US scapegoating following the death of the US marines in an operation for which the US alone was responsible. The outcome, in which an obscure Somali warlord, Mohammed Aidid, saw off the armed forces of the most powerful state on earth, was humiliating. The unanswered question is whether it was wise to insist, as Boutros-Ghali did, against US qualms, that the Somali clans had to be disarmed. After all, the Cambodian peacekeeping operation was completed without full disarmament-and there are other examples of that approach, risky though it is.
In the case of the Rwandan genocide of 1994, Boutros-Ghali himself joins in the search for scapegoats. But to shift the blame on to the US, with not a word about the roles of Belgium and France in supporting the regime of Juv?nal Habyarimana which permitted the Hutu extremists to prepare the massacres, goes too far. And Boutros-Ghali knows as well as anyone that the Security Council's decision to scale back the UN force in Kigali was not a choice but a simple recognition that, with the forced departure of two-thirds of the troops (the Belgian and Bangladeshi contingents), and with no others prepared to deploy into the midst of the mayhem, there was little alternative.
Bosnia probably knocked more nails into Boutros-Ghali's coffin than any other issue. Whether he could have made a better fist of a bad job is open to question; thanks to the disagreements between the Europeans and the US, he had to soldier on in very unpromising conditions.
Nor does it make a lot of sense to condemn Boutros-Ghali as an obstacle to UN reform. He cut out a number of senior posts; he did his best to strengthen the coordination of the UN's baronies; he tried to amalgamate the plethora of UN offices around the world. He did, admittedly, have a penchant for UN summits and an approach to them which concentrated excessively on the body count of heads of state and government rather than on careful preparation and follow-up. But his record in the salt mines of UN reform was an honourable one, as was his insistence that, if the US would not pay its dues, it would not get the sort of UN it wanted and the world needed.
So the book come back to that poisoned relationship with the US, and to Boutros-Ghali's own dysfunctional relations with its three leading members-the president, who never said a critical word to him but denied him backing at every crucial juncture; the secretary of state, whose "occluded personality" prevented them doing business; and Madeleine Albright, whom Boutros-Ghali patronised but who in the end proved his nemesis.
But behind the personalities, and the spindoctoring, lay a deeper problem which Boutros-Ghali addresses all too briefly at the end. How can the UN work with the US, and vice versa? The UN cannot simply become the mouthpiece of US foreign policy, but neither can it hope to succeed in the teeth of US opposition. A return to the situation following the first world war, when the League of Nations foundered as a result of US isolationism, is too appalling to contemplate. But can the US, with its complex system of constitutional checks and balances (which lies at the root of its failure to pay its dues), ever live comfortably with a sprawling international organisation which has to be persuaded and cajoled rather than ordered about? On one thing we can all agree: it is a disaster when the UN secretary-general and the US president have to be elected in the same month. Fortunately it only happens once every 20 years.
Boutros Boutros-Ghali
IB Tauris 1999, ?19.95
