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The Horseshoe Table: An Inside View of the UN Security Council

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Very few representatives in the Security Council have written about this important forum at length. Lord Carradon did, and his account of how Resolution 242 was hammered out still constitutes essential reading. But the period he describes, marked by the Cold War, is long gone. Cameron Hume (a senior American diplomat at the UN, later ambassador to South Africa) wrote a brilliant account of how work within the Security Council helped bring to an end the murderous Iran-Iraq war in 1987-88, just after Cold War tensions started to dissipate.

Chinmaya Gharekhan picks up where Hume left off, but from a different perspective: that of a non-permanent member, albeit a weighty one in international relations, India, which he represented on the Council with great skill and integrity in the aftermath of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. He views the wrangling among the 5 permanent members (and the frequent vanity of the rest) with wry detachment, but also quite critically in terms of long-term outcomes and consequences. His writing has the clarity of a top-notch diplomatic dispatch, but also contains admirable depth of analysis derived from many years of reflection on the events he discusses before he consigned his thoughts and recollections to the page.

Gharekhan subsequently served as UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali's representative within the key informal consultations of Security Council members, a difficult job of intermediation which again acquainted him with the Permanent 5, not always seen in their best light in the give and take of private negotiation. Gharekhan is more generous in his judgment of Boutros-Ghali than many others have been, but he knew him better than most.

Finally, Gharekhan served as the UN's political envoy in the Middle East during the dog days of the Clinton administration leading up to the (failed) Camp David talks between Israeli PM Barak and the Palestinian Authority's Yassir Arafat. Gharekhan, looking back at the Middle East from these multiple perspectives, provides valuable insights. (He is today the Indian Prime Minister's special envoy to the Middle East, and thus still very much "in the game".)

In sum, while potentially dry at first glance, this slim volume contains a treasure trove of observations and commentary that no serious scholar of multilateral diplomacy should pass up and that the general reader can learn a great deal from with pleasure. Strongly recommended.

"The Horseshoe Table: An Inside View of the UN Security Council" has been written by an insightful and experienced diplomat, Ambassador Chinmaya Gharekhan. It provides an intimate account of how the most powerful organ of the UN - the Security Council - works or fails to work. While much has been written about the Council, no publication comes close to matching Gharekhan's personal knowledge about the Council, having served for many years as a Member, its President and as the Secretary-General's Personal Representative to the Council. Since most of the work of the Council actually takes place in informal sessions, closed to journalists, Gharekhan's notes and perceptions about the issues, personalities and the role of the Secretary-General reveal a heretofore unknown wealth of knowledge about such international crises such as the Balkans, Rwanda and others during the decade of the 1990s. Moreover, it is written in an enjoyable style with considerable tongue in cheek humor. The book is an invaluable contribution to diplomatic history and a highly recommended enjoyable read.