Unvanquished: A U.S. - U.N. Saga [Hardcover]

Boutros Boutros-Ghali (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 1999

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 United Nations to represent their collective interests. This conflict escalated in the fall of 1996, when the United States unilaterally decided to deny Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali a second term.
        In this book Boutros-Ghali argues that U.S. policy toward the United Nations threatens the fragile fabric of the international organization. By selectively consulting the Security Council, the United States has frequently condemned the United Nations to the status of scapegoat in international affairs, notably during peacekeeping missions in Bosnia, Somalia, and Rwanda. Meanwhile, the United Nations's financial crisis persists as the United States fails to pay its bills while seeking to further increase its already considerable influence within the organization.
        In October 1995 President Clinton lavishly praised Boutros-Ghali for his "outstanding leadership," and thanked him for his "vision." Yet, a mere four months later, the Clinton administration decided that Boutros-Ghali would have to go. What happened in that short time to convince the United States that the secretary-general was now a liability? United States domestic electoral politics were decisive: While campaigning for the primaries, Bob Dole was scoring heavily by repeatedly ridiculing Boutros-Ghali. To neutralize Dole's challenge, Clinton denied the controversial secretary-general a second term, vetoing his reelection in the Security Council despite unanimous support from its other members.
        Boutros-Ghali reveals the dramatic conflict and the personalities involved and considers the future of the United Nations in light of American domination.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Boutros Boutros-Ghali offers a frank chronicle of his five years as secretary-general of the United Nations. Although Unvanquished describes ambitious activities in the Middle East, the Balkans, Central America, and elsewhere, its title is clearly a pun (capitalize those first two letters and look at it again), and this is a bitter memoir of hardball diplomacy. The central story line features Boutros-Ghali's confrontations with the United States, with a special focus on how the Clinton administration prevented him from serving a second term as secretary-general--a "rejection of democracy," he calls it, because the United States was the only member of the Security Council to vote against him. The serious trouble began as a result of election-year politics in the United States: "the White House apparently felt a growing need to compete with the GOP over which party was more anti-United Nations." Yet it seems clear that trouble was brewing for much longer. Consider how Boutros-Ghali describes his early impression of Madeleine Albright, who was the U.S. representative to the United Nations before she became secretary of state: "I was puzzled, however, by what seemed her desire to strike attitudes rather than address substantive issues.... She seemed to assume that her mere assertion of a U.S. policy should be sufficient to achieve the support of other nations." Boutros-Ghali is fiercely unapologetic, and his narrative is feisty and engaging. --John J. Miller

From Library Journal

NATO's current struggle to stop runaway Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic lacks a clear UN mandate. Why? Those anxious to understand how the UN went missing in action in Kosovo will find Boutros-Ghali's account of his troubled tenure as UN secretary-general (1991-96) useful. Here he focuses on the often tense relationship between the top multilateral diplomat and the United States. This down-to-earth, "now it's my turn to speak" autobiography takes Boutros-Ghali from the obscurity of the Egyptian Foreign Office to the heights of international diplomacy. Intent on establishing an independent role for the UN Secretary-General, he worked the hard issuesASomalia, Haiti, Iraq, Bosnia. Boutros-Ghali writes with vigor and candor, reflecting angrily on the U.S. veto of his reelection. On the cusp of the 21st century, myriad global problems make world governance a necessity, but nearly 200 sovereign states, vast structural power inequalities, and individual egos are making such governance nearly impossible to achieve. Unvanquished starkly highlights the abyss between the dream and the reality.AJohn Raymond Walser, U.S. Dept. of State, Washington, DC
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1 edition (June 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375500502
• ISBN-13: 978-0375500503
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 6.7 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,970,798 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Boutros-Ghali bites back, June 7, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Unvanquished: A U.S. - U.N. Saga (Hardcover)

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.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Valuable to Leaders and Observers of International Politics., July 8, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Unvanquished: A U.S. - U.N. Saga (Hardcover)

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.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good read exploring the complexities of the US-UN relation, March 14, 2003

By 

A. Prabhu (San Jose, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Unvanquished: A U.S. - U.N. Saga (Paperback)

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!