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A
This episode is brought to you by Facebook. So you were scrolling on Marketplace and there it was, the bike you'd been searching for. You sent a message and it turned out the seller was super chatty, kind of funny, and an avid cyclist. The next thing you know, you're in a cycling crew. Well, a community cycling group. The thing about Facebook, you might find more than what you're looking for, from a browse to a bike ride this summer. Find more on Facebook. Can the world be governed without empire? After the Second World War, this question was on the minds of a generation of Asian and African statesmen. As European empires collapsed and nuclear superpowers faced each other down, these thinkers hoped the United nations might offer an answer. Not domination by Washington or Moscow, but a just order for the whole world. Few embodied that hope more fully than U Thant, the Burmese schoolteacher who became UN Secretary General. Thant Mint U is a historian, a former UN Peacekeeper, and U Thant's grandson. His book, U Thant and the Forgotten Quest for a Just World, tells the familiar story of the 1960s through the eyes of a Burmese Buddhist diplomat committed to sovereignty, peace, and the possibility that international institutions might restrain power rather than serve it. Yet nuclear brinkmanship, America's war in Vietnam, and the Six Day War would test whether U Than's internationalist realism could overcome the old logic of imperial great power politics. I'm Thomas Small. This is my conflicted conversation with Thant Mint oo. Hello, Thant. It's very nice to meet you, sir. Thank you for coming on the show. It's a great pleasure to have you.
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B
No, it's a pleasure to be on.
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A
Thank you, Thant. You're here to discuss your excellent new book, Peacemaker U Thant and the Forgotten Quest for a Just World. I will obviously ask about the book, which I read and I enjoyed immensely. I learned a huge amount. It's a great book. Well worth reading. Before, though, would you just explain to the listener who your grandfather, the UN Secretary General, U Thant, was? Because I'm afraid to say, I think a lot of people today, even quite educated people, probably have forgotten him, despite the momentous role he played in the 1960s in particular.
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B
No. It's really interesting because I've discovered that many people over, say, 60, 65, have no idea who he was, even though he was actually quite famous back in his day in the 1960s. He was the third UN Secretary General. He served as the head of the UN from 1961 until the end of 1971. He was from what was then called Burma and now is usually called Myanmar. And he was a schoolteacher for most of his life, a school headmaster, entered public service, became the Burmese ambassador to the UN and he was elected or appointed head of the UN in 61 and served through that very tumultuous decade. Decade, through many crises from Cuba to Vietnam to the Six Day War.
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A
Before we get into those crises, could we stay with U Thant for a moment and perhaps you could paint a picture for us of him as a person? You know, I think one of the pleasures of reading your book is that U Thant doesn't, you know, he doesn't come across as, in a way, I think, how people often saw him as a kind of calm and, you know, in that quite racist way, that sort of inscrutable kind of East Asian character. What was he like as a personality? He seems from your book to have been obviously very educated, extremely sociable, I think quite funny, also stubborn, very disciplined. Paint a picture for us of your grandfather as a man.
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B
I think that's all correct. And I think sociable is a very apt way to describe him. My grandmother used to tell a story of when they were in that very small Burmese town and they would go for a long walk. Walk or aim to go for a long walk after an early dinner every evening. And they would never make it past the third house because my grandfather liked to stop and talk to people and chat with them and catch up. And he used to like to host things. I think he was an extrovert. He really enjoyed being around people. And so when he came to New York, it was the same as ambassador, as UN Secretary General. He gave lots of lunches pretty much every day. He invited everyone he knew to different social events. So he was very social. He was very humorous. He liked to tell jokes. In the late 1960s, he had developed, as you sort of indicated, this reputation for this poker face that he maintained in public at the Security Council, in press interviews even, but at home in the late 1950s, I remember reading something where someone had said that he could never win at poker because he couldn't hide his emotions. And so I think what that suggests also is that in that kind of environment of the 1960s, late 50s and 60s, he couldn't really be himself in some way. I think he had to be very guarded. He was the first person of color to be on that international diplomatic stage. And if you think of the Hollywood stereotypes of Asians as either comic or servile or scheming, I think he had to come up with an image and a personality that worked in some way. So I think he was to some extent cultivating that image, the one that he thought might allow people to take him seriously in Washington, in London and elsewhere.
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A
I think that there was also amongst his Western colleagues, interlocutors a basic confusion, because one thing about O Thant is that he was extremely direct. And I think that a lot of the people in the west may be acting from these preconceived notions about the scheming, inscrutable Asian. I think they were often wrong footed by his directness, assuming that it must be hiding something. But I think often it wasn't. He was very direct, wasn't he?
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B
Yeah, not direct in an impolite way, but direct in the way that, you know, pretty much what he said to people was what he. He didn't like to play games and I think he didn't like deceit. I think he didn't like people who he felt were manipulative in different ways. And, and so many people. I mean, in the, in the early 1960s, some people at the UN said that it was his predecessor, the, the Swedish Secretary General Hammarskjold, who was this inscrutable Oriental because he spoke in. In very conv. Phrases and people often didn't understand exactly what he was getting at. Whereas with Udant, what you saw was what you got in terms of his positions on different things.
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A
And if he was by temperament an amiable, congenial character, liked to talk to people, liked to throw dinner parties, to enjoy himself, obviously on the one hand it's an expression of his personality, but it also played a very specific role in his ability as a diplomat. Because around those tables is where the art of diplomacy actually works. You know, how did he use his congeniality and his dinner table savoir faire to help him do the work of diplomacy?
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B
I think it's a couple of different things. I mean, I think in terms of his amiability, his, his ability to. Or his desire to be around people all the time, what he also had was this empathy, this, this moral imagination to sort of get into other people's shoes and try to understand them as well. And I think he was someone who was very much sort of at home or relaxed in speaking to Soviet diplomats, to Americans, to people from North, south, east and West. And I think what that gave him on a daily basis was this special antenna, this sense of what people around the world and leaders around the world were thinking. So when it came to a crisis, when it came to an issue. I think he perhaps, among so many different political figures at the time, he was the one who really had sort of an instinct for what might work and where the compromises might.
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A
L. I think we would do him a great injustice if we didn't talk about his religious formation as a Burmese man, although he did have Muslim ancestry. And he was a kind of combination of Islam, culturally speaking, from the kind of Mogul penetration into Burma on the one hand, and Buddhism on the other hand. Basically, therefore, in his very person, kind of emblematic of the complexity and diversity of Burmese history and society. But nonetheless, Buddhism informed him, I guess, from an early age. Talk about the role that Buddhist practice, Buddhist belief, Buddhist values played in him as a young man, as he's forming his character.
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B
Yeah. So he grew up in this very multicultural, as we might call it today, sort of environment. So his father's ancestors had been Muslim, but his father died when he was still quite young. His mother raised him as a Buddhist. But there would have been Christians, the English and British colonial officials, Chinese people, others around him. But I think Buddhism was quite important to him, and I think it wasn't important in the sense of performing rituals and ceremonies, though there might have been an aspect of that when he was growing up and in his small town, but in New York, I think they gave him the sort of anchor, the values that were really important to him. And I would just mention one in particular, which is a Buddhist concept of upeka, which means trying to find a third way between anger and apathy, that when you're confronted with a problem, a challenge, maybe a huge problem, but also a daily problem, you let anger or frustration or anxieties kind of overwhelm you. At the same time, you don't become entirely indifferent to it and try to ignore it. So it's a way of trying to exercise yourself mentally so that you're able to confront problems but also maintain a certain calm. And that's a Buddhist value. That's something he valued. And I think he tried in a job which really demanded that perhaps more than anything else, to deal with almost impossible problems and incredibly stressful conditions. And I think he appreciated that in other people as well, even non Buddhist people. The people he had around him were people of calm temperament. I think that was really important to
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A
him in the book. When you described this Buddhist value of kind of triangulating between anger and apathy, I must say it really resonated. And I just sort of thought, gosh, couldn't we use more of that in the world? Maybe this is something U thant's, you know, spirit could. Could reintroduce into global politics. Because right now it seems like we're constantly stuck between kind of irrational rage on the one hand, or a kind of cynical who cares on the other hand, but empathy and wisdom. I mean, it would be quite nice.
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B
Yeah. And it's interesting because, you know, in Buddhism, there's always this challenge of not becoming reclusive, of not turning to a monastic sort of life. And the idea that Buddhism can also be something that engages with society and tries to change society as well. And In a way, Uthan's 10 years at the UN was. Was that second kind of Buddhism in practice and trying to do things in this world, but from the basis of these Buddhist ideas and values as well.
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A
If I've understood correctly, Thont you have in your career worn a couple of hats. You are a historian. You've also participated in public service as a diplomat, if I'm not mistaken, working as a UN peacemaker so very much in the line that your grandfather helped to establish all those decades ago. Before we get into the book and your grandfather's life, I thought maybe we could talk a little bit first about your academic work earlier on in your career, because you studied deeply into the degree to which the experience of European colonialization over those century, two centuries, three centuries, depending on the part of the world. We're talking about the degree to which that experience undermined and ultimately led to the kind of destruction of traditional governing elites, traditional governing institutions, and how that. That is not appreciated properly. So in the country that you come from, Burma, Myanmar, that was the case, if I'm not mistaken. I wonder if you'd like to talk a little bit about the trauma of European colonialization from the perspective of traditional governing structures being eroded and replaced with. Well, with what, really?
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B
Yeah. So when I was in my 20s, I decided, I guess, like many people who don't know what else to do, to do a PhD in history. And I was really interested in the British Empire. My family's from Burma. Obviously, I'd never lived there before at that point. And so I came up with a thesis on the Burmese kingdom in the late 18th and 19th century. And this was the time when the British Empire was taking over Burma. So I wrote my thesis, but also wrote my first book about that time when the Burmese kingdom, until the mid-1880s, was trying really hard to modernize, to survive as an independent country in this age of empire that was kind of enveloping all of Asia and Africa. And I studied in depth not just the social structures of the country, but the monarchy, the way in which this attempt at modernization was taking place and the way in which the onset of British colonial rule completely destroyed that. It destroyed hundreds of years of an organically grown Burmese society, social structures, the elites at different levels. It abolished the monarchy. It basically destroyed all of the institutions of. Of government that had grown up over many centuries. And then, because British rule only lasted 60 years, it lasted from the 1880s till the Second World War, essentially. It didn't really replace it with anything that was sustainable. And Burma became independent in 1948. And it's been on this quest to kind of both figure itself out as a nation and to build a nation state. And it's been incredibly difficult. Now, most of the fault of that lies elsewhere. It's the fault of many Burmese rulers, including many Burmese army generals, who've mismanaged the economy and ruled with great repression over many decades. But that colonial experience of really upending decades or centuries actually of local government and then not really replacing it with anything that was lasting had an enormous impact also on the economy and what could happen with the Burmese economy after independence as well.
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A
One of the great pleasures that I had preparing for this interview and preparing to read your book was researching a little bit Burmese history, I'm ashamed to say, Really, I knew very little about it before picking up your book and realizing, oh, I need to just read around the edges at least. And, wow, what a fascinating and, I think, very unknown history. Burma is a very complicated, quite large, very ethnically, religiously, culturally diverse. I think, more so than people know, traditional structures being diffuse across the country traditionally. And then this, as you say, this struggle for how to govern such a landmass with its diversity in the modern period, with the nation state as the primary model. We're going to talk about a lot of that because your grandfather U Thant's own sort of philosophy of politics, of geopolitics, of diplomacy, overlaps with those big questions. But before we do, I would also like you to just comment a little bit on your experience as a UN peacemaker. I think, especially interesting to me in the former Yugoslavia. I mean, you were there, if I'm not mistaken, in the 90s. Is that right when things were getting pretty hairy there? And so you would have seen on the ground the way in which UN peacemaking succeeds, fails its limitations. I mean, how would you characterize that experience?
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B
Yeah, so I was in a few different peacekeeping operations in the 1990s. The first was in Cambodia. And Then I was in the formula Yugoslavia, including in Bosnia and Sarajevo during the war in 1994 and early 1995. And I saw firsthand both the challenge of these kinds of wars and internal conflicts. Obviously, Bosnia was an incredibly bloody conflict in which tens of thousands of people or more were killed. But we saw also very clearly the limitations of what the UN could do. I think it was at a time of US supremacy in the world. I think it was a time when the US actually wanted to. To use the UN in many different ways. You didn't have the big superpower rivalries of before, but I think one big weakness amongst many was that when the UN or the west or the international community, if we want to call it that, through the UN tried to intervene in these countries, whether it was Bosnia or whether it was Cambodia or many others which were even less of a success, the people who came in from the outside, myself included, actually knew very little about these countries. We didn't know about the history of these countries. We didn't know the dynamics, we didn't have the relationships. And so I think that idea of the limits of intervention in this way was something that became incredibly clear to me even after just a few months of being there. At the same time, we were faced with this incredible moral dilemma of whether or not to use force through NATO essentially to stop the bloodshed and end the war.
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A
Well, to talk about your grandfather reading this autobiography of your grandfather reading about that tumultuous decade of the 1960s through the prism of his role in all of those amazing events was totally illuminating. You know, often the 60s, in a way, a high water decade for the great Cold War contest of the age is often told mainly as simply that a Cold War contest between two sides, the United States and the Soviet Union and their allies on both sides. But what your book makes clear is that that is not the whole story, not at all. And in addition to those two, two big superpower blocks, there was this third World, this rest of the world, as your grandfather would sometimes call it, and as Secretary General, increasingly U thant became something like a spokesperson for that part of the world which had everything to lose if the Cold War contest between the superpowers were to erupt in a nuclear conflagration.
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B
Yes, no, absolutely. Because I think sitting here in the uk, but also if you're in the US or in the west, we tend to think of the history of the 20th century as a history of World War I and then World War II and then the Cold War until the 90s. And then the post Cold War period, and then whatever period we might be in now. But of course for the vast majority of humanity, for most of mankind, I mean, the most important thing is the transition from hundreds of years of empire, Atlantic Empires, English, French, Dutch, Portuguese and others basically dominating the whole globe, to the age after empire. And that transition is really what marks the 20th century. And that story of how these countries, like Burma, but also India, Indonesia, most of the African countries and others fought their way to independence and then really not just embraced, but utilized the UN and change the world in the course of that, in the late 50s and 60s and 70s, I think is a story that most people again in the UK and US don't really know. And I think without knowing that context, it's really hard to see or have a clear view of what happened in the 60s, even in the crisis, like the Cuban Missile Crisis that we all think we know.
- [20:06]
A
Well, as you said, in 1948, Burma achieved its independence from Britain, having been conquered by Japan in the Second World War, got embroiled in that conflict. Your grandfather Uthant had been a schoolteacher, but in the newly independent Burma, he becomes a diplomat and is initially a participant, a player in the growth of the Non Aligned Movement. So how do you think today listeners should think of the Non Aligned Movement? And how did your grandfather sort of imagine it? What role did he think that it could play in the governing of the world?
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B
I think when a lot of people think about decolonization, that period after empire, as empire was ending, people think of it as something that took place over probably many years and was largely a peaceful transition. And even the word decolonization, I think in some ways sounds very passive, as if it was something that was decided in London or Paris and then handed out to these different countries. And of course from the mid-1940s onwards, there were many incredibly bloody wars in Algeria, in Indonesia, in Indochina and elsewhere which led to the end of empire. So if we go Back to the 1950s, this was a time when some of these countries were finally becoming independent again, sometimes after really vicious fighting and the overthrow of colonial powers. But they were also full of energy. I think many of them, after decades of anti colonial struggle, thought that a new world was possible. And they embraced the UN as a tool in achieving that world. And at Bandung in Indonesia, they met in the mid-19 1950s, the very first time that countries met together without the west, it was African and Asian countries. And in 1961 they met in Belgrade to form an online movement and they didn't want to simply create a new bloc or a bloc that was not allied to the Russians or the Americans. They were anti the whole concept of a cold war. And I think they believed that after the two world wars, after their anti colonial struggles, they couldn't see why people just couldn't live together. And they felt even more that in an atomic age, a nuclear age, people had to kind of put the old kind of global politics of empire, of great power rivalries and everything else behind them and really create something that was radically different. And I think that was the spirit behind the Non Aligned Movement. And he was very much one of that generation that was in these conferences, was part of the founding of the non line movement in 61 and was one of the ambassadors in New York from one of these countries that was trying to reshape the UN and through the UN the rest of the world.
- [22:53]
A
Reading your book, it was sometimes a bit, I mean certainly nostalgic, I suppose maybe a little bit sad to be reminded of the idealism that animated so much of the world after the second World War. I think now it's hard to see much salience to that idealism. It all kind of went wrong or seems to have gone wrong. And even over the course of Uthants career it seemed to be going wrong already. And we can talk about that. He arrived in New York City in 1957 as Burma's UN ambassador. And at the time the UN still pretty new, was being in a way contested by two ways of understanding it. So. So on the one hand some people, the great powers, let's say the European powers, considered the UN essentially to be a perpetuation of the previous imperial age. They thought this is going to be a tool whereby the established imperial powers, most of which were European or European based, though not all, could maintain their dominance of the globe and work out differences between themselves. But then as new nations emerge in the post colonial period and the General assembly becomes larger and larger or more representative of the world, there's another idea that the UN should be a means of governing a truly post colonial world. And between these two perspectives, one as the UN for continuation of something like imperialism and the other UN as a means of governing a truly post imperial world. U thant lands very solidly in the second camp, would you say that's for sure?
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B
Yeah, I think that's right. I mean I think he had this self identity as someone who could be a bridge between these two worlds because he was very much from that new third world. I think he shared the beliefs and the aspirations of people from these newly independent countries. But I think he was also, if not an Anglophile, someone who really liked Western culture. He felt very much at home in reading Western literature, English literature. I think he liked his life in New York and he wasn't a radical. And I think he, like many of his contemporaries, felt that there was no reason why after independence, countries like Burma couldn't become best friends with countries like the uk. So I think he wanted to be a bridge. But yes, he was very much from that third world sort of historical experience and background. And I think for these countries what was really important was to finish the work of decolonization, both in the sense that there was still so much of the world that was under colonial rule. In Southern Africa, for example, most of these countries were under Portuguese or other colonial rule or under white minority governments like in South Africa and Rhodesia. So one was to finish the job of decolonization. But second, and it kind of connects with what you were saying before is that to make sure that these countries were not becoming nominally independent, but within a global structure, a global system that was still dominant, dominated by just a few countries, especially in the economic sphere. And so a lot of these countries were asking, are we really independent if British or French companies still control our economies and how can we change that global system into something that would be more fair?
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A
As you say, U thant was no radical. It was another pleasure and slightly, it made me slightly sad again to see him and that coterie of young energetic diplomats from the third World. You know, I kept thinking and God, I don't want to sound, I don't know, Western centric or anything, but I just thought it seemed like a good group of gentlemen in a non radical way, in a gentlemanly way, trying to create out of the ashes of empire, end the second World War and all of that, and in the midst of potential nuclear conflagration, create something sustainable, something basically liberal, reasonable, equitable, you know, but very gentlemanly, as you say, not like instinctively anti Western or anything like that. And I think Maybe part of Usant's story, part of that tumultuous decade of the 1960s, was a shift in energy as a new left rose and as a kind of radicalism that was, that took postcolonialism in a new direction, rose with it and things, things that gentlemanly liberal vision was sort of upset, at least that's my reading. I don't know if you agree with that.
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B
I think in all of these countries you had, in the course of the anti colonial struggle, especially in countries where they had to fight a big war, you probably had lots of differences of view emerge. You had people who wanted until the very end to find a peaceful transition, who wanted to stay friends with the ex colonial power. And then you had people who felt maybe from the start that they had to fight and take up arms and maybe that was even a good thing to do. So I think you had a spectrum and I think Udant in Burma very much fell on the side of the spectrum where I think he valued the peaceful transition and I think he would have not wanted to see Burma take up arms against the British if it could be avoided at all. But I think you're right. In the 50s you still had in Bandung, in Belgrade, at the UN in New York, you had this whole generation of people who were still, I wouldn't say they were idealistic because in a way they felt they were being super realistic that in a nuclear age we had to find a new way forward. And actually it was the people who were the ones who were idealistic were the cold warriors on both sides who somehow felt that they had to fight to the death even with thousands of nuclear weapons. So I think they felt that they had to take a different way forward. But I think in the 50s, in the course of the 50s and 60s, you also still had a lot of people in Washington who also thought, and I think President Kennedy would have been one of them, for example, who thought that they had to find a way to not just live with, but work with this new nationalism from these newly decolonized countries and find not just an accommodation but a way in which America could be seen as an ally of Indonesian nationalism, Egyptian nationalism, for example, and that would be good for America's rivalry with the Soviet Union. But I think there was an appreciation of the strength of these things as well. So I think there was a moment in the late 50s, and especially maybe in the very early 60s, when America was trying, or at least part of the US establishment at Washington was trying to find some way to connect with this rising third world nationalism in a way that was good for America. But perhaps, I think the thinking was of many, good for the whole world as well.
- [29:46]
A
Certainly President Kennedy's assassination in 1963 came as something in the book. It reads like a real turning point, a real what might have been, given the relationship he had built up with U thant and given his own evolving, evolving ideas about how the world could be maybe better governed. It was quite pregnant that moment. But before that, in 1961. So u thant's been living in in New York for four years. The UN Secretary General Doug Hammerskull dies in very murky circumstances in a plane crash and a bit of horse trading occurs. And at the end of that year, 1961, Uthant becomes Secretary General initially sort of short term appointment. And I think to show his commitment to this new idea of how the world should be governed, he immediately assembles a largely non white leadership team. He's making a statement with that. Now before we get into the history more I'd like to talk about his ideas. So generally U thant was opposed to any fragmentation of former colonies initially. This question comes up over what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo, which was involved in sort of civil war like conditions as different parts of it were breaking off and proclaiming independence. And people like Uthant thought that this was a means for European powers to keep control of bits and pieces of their former colonies. So he was opposed to that. He thought that the former colonies should remain intact. What would you say in retrospect are the pros and cons of that policy? Because it does seem to push against local self determination, especially in the face of the fact that a lot of these colonies, certainly Congo, but even something like Burma, were vast, very large countries. And by trying to prevent them fragmenting at all in the post colonial period, it sort of is conceding to European colonialism that it had the right in a way to construct postcolonial national identities. So those are a couple of of cons I can see about that commitment to keeping the old colonies intact. What do you think about that?
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B
Yeah, I think in the abstract you can look at all these countries, both huge countries like India and Indonesia that include so many different languages and peoples and polities from before or even relatively small countries, but where the borders are really arbitrary and maybe people of an ethnic group or a linguistic group may be on one side of the border as well as on another side of the border. So these are arbitrary borders. And so one could say well after the end of empire, why isn't there a kind of rationalization of this in some way and a willingness to think about the self determination and the separation of some parts of these old empires into independent countries in their own right. So I think in the abstract we could say that. I think in reality that would have meant all out war in many of these countries. I think the idea that that could have happened in a peaceful way and what was 100 plus former colonial possessions becoming hundreds of different polities, I think would have been it's very hard to imagine that happening in a bloodless way. So there's that. But I think the more important point is that I think for many of these countries and the leadership, often the small, educated elite leadership of these countries that were taking over in Jakarta or in Delhi or in different African states as well, they really felt that they were going to be under siege, that they had fought and barely won their independence, that there were new influences that were looking to kind of attenuate their independence, companies trying to come in, maybe plots to overthrow their governments. And the only thing they really had was that outline of a state and those state institutions to fall back on. Or to put it another way, all they had was the third world state and the boundaries as it was to try to push back and challenge. And I think they were extremely wary of anything like separatism, rightly or wrongly, if you look at the specifics of certain cases, because they felt this would open the door to new forms of outside and western European or American intervention. And they saw this in Indonesia, they saw this in South Asia, and they saw this in the Congo most clearly in Katanga. And I'll just for a few seconds on the Congo, because I think it's really important. You had the Belgians giving, achieving Congo independence and then the next day intervening again and then hiving off a third of the country saying that the southern third deserved self determination and then using that as a way to keep their hold over the most lucrative mining operations in the country. And that was exactly the nightmare of many of these new third world states.
- [34:41]
A
Yeah, no, absolutely. And what it meant though, and this is part of what you're interrogating in the story, is that this commitment to the sort of sovereignty of these new nations that had emerged out of the colonial experience by emphasizing their sovereignty, it actually raised, for your grandfather and for that generation of UN diplomats the problem of how does an international organization like the UN where does its true not just legitimacy, but any coercive power whatsoever lie when it's stressing the sovereignty of these nation states. If they're all sovereign, then what powers can the UN have? And I think as the story unfolds, you, you see u thant struggling with this more and more and more, especially when the great powers, the two great superpowers, they speak a good game about sovereignty, but aren't themselves in any way, when it suits their interest, respecting it. So it becomes more and more complicated. But a year after, after USANT becomes Secretary General, so in October 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis breaks out. However, before we get to Cuba, can we just sort of pause on something deeply personal that happened in that same first year, the first year that he was there as the head of the UN in May 1962. So just months into his Secretary Generalship, usant son, son Timmy, died in a bus accident in Rangoon. You know, in the book, it's quite a moving moment. He receives the news at the un. His first thought is how he will tell his wife. And then he has to kind of go on carrying this immense public responsibility in the midst of this great grief. What did Timmy's death reveal about U Thant? You know, as a father, I guess, but also as a Burmese Buddhist?
- [36:40]
B
Yeah, Timmy was his only son. I think Uthant was worried about him for many years. His settling into the US Into American culture, into schools he didn't want to, or he dropped out of university, but then was trying again to go to university. So he was constantly on his mind. And I think he felt a special responsibility, obviously, to his son to make sure that he was going to be doing well. And he was, I think, 2122 at the time. And his death was this incredible psychological blow. Both my grandparents, I think at that time in May, it was the height of the Congo crisis. I think Uthant felt he couldn't even fly to Burma at the time for Timmy's funeral. He only visited his grave at the cemetery a couple of years later. So I think during this entire time at the un, even though he was dealing with all these issues, I know Timmy was still something that was very much on his mind. His school teacher at the International School in New York gave us Thant a series of paintings that Timmy had done in school. And these hung in his special room, his private room at the U.N. throughout his secretary generalship until 1972, it helped
- [37:52]
A
to humanize U thant to the leaders that he was now dealing with in that exalted position. I liked the story you tell about the way Queen Elizabeth expressed her sympathy to him as a mother for the loss of his son. So he. He, of course, it was a great tragedy, but in a way, coming as it did just at the beginning of his Secretary Generalship, the death of his son allowed him to become, I suppose, a figure of sympathy and humanity to his geopolitical interlocutors.
- [38:23]
B
I think many people over that first year had come to know him very well as a human being. And I think the mix of this personal tragedy, I think people Seeing people like President Kennedy and others, seeing him carry on on and do the best he can in office, but that mixed also with this warmer side of him in private. A person who was very humorous, a person who was very engaging, I think that really rounded out his personality. And I think for people like Kennedy, but also others like Khrushchev and Macmillan in London and others, I think they saw him not as this distant Burmese diplomat who they hadn't known before, but really as someone that they could work with. And I think by the time we get to the Cuban crisis he was very well known on the international stage among world leaders.
- [39:06]
A
Those chapters are fantastic for someone like me, it really made it clear to me how I had not fully understood the story of that crisis. Because Uthant's role, you know, I have read about that crisis many times and yet he has never played anything like a major role in it in those accounts. And suddenly you're saying, gosh, he, he was very influential in the resolution of that conflict. So I just wonder if you could tell, you know, briefly tell that story to our listeners, the story of U thant's role in the Cuban Missile crisis.
- [39:51]
B
I think, you know, as most people know, the crisis began with the Soviets deploying missiles in Cuba in September, October of 62 in response to the American deploy missiles in Turkey as well as the American attempted invasion of Cuba around the Bay of Pigs just many months before. And President Kennedy goes on TV on 22 October, he says that he's going to impose a blockade of Cuba in response to this missile deployment. These new missile bases which he announces and we have the crisis and people know that we're on the verge of a showdown between Moscow and Washington which could lead to an all out nuclear war. You have Soviet ships coming towards the blockade line. You have the Americans preparing to enforce that blockade. Uthaint watches it on tv. He spends the entire next day in deep consultation with nonline countries, leaders like Nehru in India, Nkrumah in Ghana, their ambassadors in New York. And he comes up with his plan for intervention. He has no authorization from the Security Council. He knows that if he did the normal thing and waited for the Security Council, he'd be for waiting, waiting forever until the world blew up because of the big power veto and deadlock at the Council. And so instead he begins on that Tuesday, two days after President Kennedy's speech, he gives his own speech at the Security Council outlines what would become the formula for the settlement of the crisis. A trade of the missiles for an American promise Not to invade Cuba. But then more importantly, he sends out over that, I think from that Monday night, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, over those critical few days, he sends series of both public and private or secret messages to both sides, to Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev, whom he had met a few months before, and to President Kennedy, whom he had come to know over that past year and what he was essentially doing. And many things happen over that week, as people see in the book. But essentially what he was trying to do was he understood that this was a political crisis for both men as much as a military crisis. And he was trying to provide both leaders with the time and the space they needed and the steps that they could take for de escalation. So by making himself this neutral point of reference, he was making it easier for both sides to climb down, to de escalate. So for Khrushchev in particular, to say yes to an appeal for peace from a non lined UN Secretary General was much easier than to respond positively to an ultimatum from an American President. And with Kennedy as well, there were many ways in which Udan's intervention became really useful in crafting the way forward that he wanted to. And even with Castro. Luthan flew down to Havana at the height of the crisis, this is towards the end of October. And in a couple of long conversations with Castro over a couple of days, he also persuaded Castro to join in this diplomatic dynamic, maybe not wholeheartedly. Castro was incredibly upset with the Americans, obviously, but with the Soviets as well. And Castro found it really useful also to use us, that neutral point of reference, for him to also take the positive steps that he had to take at that time.
- [43:04]
A
Well, yes, as you say, he had no mandate to get involved really, but he did. And I think it's really this sense that the world never came so close to nuclear war in a way than it did in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis. And at that point he just had to, I think, search his soul and think, look the rest of the world, as he thought of it, the world is more than just the United States, the Soviet Union and they start lobbing nuclear bombs at each other, the rest of us will suffer. Someone has to speak up for the global perspective and advocate for peace from that perspective. And in so doing, he showed the role he could play as a mediator in international great power diplomacy.
- [43:49]
B
Yeah, and in a way it wasn't a surprise because I think this idea that we could have this nuclear confrontation was building up over the late 50s. People actually thought it would be In Berlin people were thinking of Cuba until 1962, that the BIR Berlin crisis might lead to a nuclear war between the superpowers. And for these non line countries, especially these African and Asian countries, they were thinking unless we do something and if we leave everything up to the Americans and the Soviets, they're going to blow up the whole world. And they were the ones who felt when Hammarskjold was killed or even before Hammarskjold killed his predecessor, they felt after Hammarskjold one of us has to take over the helm of the UN. And so I think from the start the idea that they, through the un, through U Thant would become the necessary kind of added element that could help to de escalate tensions and find a way forward was always there. And the Cuban Missile crisis in a way proved their thesis. And I think if we think of the way in which we're taught history again, we're taught about the Cold War and the Cuban Missile Crisis within that context. But one way to think about it is these countries fought for their independence, they embraced the UN and one of the first things they did through their aid agent U thant was to prevent a war between the US and the Russians and prevent this nuclear holocaust. And that's a very different way of thinking of the story of those times.
- [45:14]
A
Well, as a result of U thant's work over the Cuban Missile Crisis, he won an appointment to a full five year term as Secretary General. And I think Kennedy, President Kennedy was very impressed and Uthant had helped him develop his ideas towards how the world could be maybe better governed. In June 1963, President Kennedy gave a speech, now very famous at American University, in which he explicitly called for what he called a quote unquote, practical attainable peace founded on the gradual development of international institutions. And reading that again, I had this sense of nostalgia, a sense of sadness given the era we're now living through because we see that generation of statesmen who had gone through the war, who had gone through the post colonial period really thinking we can create a better world using international institutions, international institutions which are now long undermined, weak, you know, themselves implicated in corruption, sometimes maybe, you know, toothless when they should have been fanged and all these things. So it was a bit of a sad, a sad thing to read about as then was Kennedy's assassination only a few months later and then President Johnson coming to power in his place and the Vietnam War kind of heating up. Now Vietnam proved to be a much harder nut for U thant to crack, although he gave it his best. Tell the listeners about his attempts very early on in that conflict in 1964 to mediate a solution in a way, like he did over the Cuban Missile Crisis. But in the case of 1964 in Vietnam, it didn't work out. Tell that story. I didn't know anything about it. It was fascinating. Fascinating, yeah.
- [47:00]
B
So I think if we go back to that time, to early mid 1964, things were really going his way and the UN's way. You had President Kennedy was killed, and that was a tragedy and a disaster for Uthan personally at many levels. But Lyndon Johnson seemed to be someone who was going to continue his foreign policies and said he was going to also support the UN wholeheartedly. You had the Russians who were finally kind of embracing the un, or at least showing that they were. They were happy with Udan's tenure as well. And the idea that the world could then continue and work ever more closely together and put the Cold War behind it was there. And then, as you suggest, Vietnam was the thing that really changed everything. And in writing the book, I was reminded the extent to which Vietnam was really central in pretty much everything that happened in the 1960s, the pivot around which so much changed. And so in 1964, he said to the Johnson administration, so all of these top experts, experts like Dean Rusk and McGeorge Bundy and Robert McNamara, as well as to Lyndon Johnson, he said, if you go to war in Vietnam, you will lose. And this was something they couldn't fathom at that time. And he said the domino theory makes no sense. The Vietnamese are nationalists. They don't want to be under the Chinese or the Russians. And there is a way for America to make a slow, graceful exit from Southeast Asia that maintains America American prestige, and that's good for Vietnam and good for the world. The alternative will be a disaster. And we know from the meeting minutes on the American side and the papers on the American side, Johnson's experts gave that almost no consideration at all. But U than thought he had a yellow light from Johnson to try something, and he had a green light from Nikita Khrushchev to try something. And so he reached out through a KGB connection to Ho Chi Minh, who was the leader of the Communist government, the North Vietnamese government in Hanoi, and proposed secret talks between the US and Vietnam in Rangoon, in Burma. And a couple of weeks after this is in September 1964, Ho Chi Minh agreed. And U Thant passed that message on to Washington through Adlai Stevenson who was the American ambassador in New York and was actually a good friend of U Than's. And after looking at all the files back and forth, including the private papers and everything else, I'm pretty convinced that over those critical few months, no one told the President of this offer for different reasons. His key aides, who knew people like Dean Rusk as well as Adlai Stevenson, no one told the President. And by the time Johnson found out in January, it was too late, essentially, and the Americans had already decided to begin the bombing of North Vietnam, which began, and actually by coincidence, on the same day that the Vietnamese received the notice that the Americans turned down U Thanh's proposal, the bombing of North Vietnam began. And within a few weeks, the Americans were deploying Marines in Da Nang with the idea that after just bombing a country for a while, the Vietnamese would cave in. So the idea that was sold to President Johnson was, if you begin bombing the north, we will get better terms. They will come to the peace table. We will be in a dominant position and we will be able to dictate what we want, which was essentially a permanent division of Vietnam into North Vietnam and South Vietnam. So U thought was incredibly demotivated, but would continue over many years in different ways to try to end the war in Vietnam.
- [50:26]
A
I mean, it's so depressing that what if there. I mean, what if Johnson had received the communication about that possibility of a dignified exit from Southeast Asia as early as 1964? It's sort of. It beggars belief how everything might be different. Also extremely remarkable how U Thant's analysis of the dynamics at play in Vietnam, how prescient they proved to be, you know, that American bombing alone would never soften the Viet Cong or soften the Communists in Hanoi. It would only harden their resolve and that any direct American intervention would only increase Chinese and Soviet support of the Communists. He just sort of knew that this American idea to just bomb the hell out of him was not going to work, was going to create much worse conditions and lead to a situation where America had to double down in order to maintain its prestige. I can't help, given what we've seen in Iran over the last few months, to see sort of, again, a kind of American, what's the word for it? Certainly a non U thant way of thinking.
- [51:40]
B
I think there's a blind spot. And you're right. You see in Vietnam and then you see it again and again in different interventions and approaches to foreign conflicts. The same kind of thinking. And I think at the Root of it is really a lack of empathy. And I think for U thant especially being from that region. But I think even if he had not been from that region but been from another former colonial state, he would have been easily able to empathize with the Vietnamese and understand that communist or non communist, they were at that time desperately trying to to gain their independence, unify their country and just catch up with the rest of the world, which is actually what they did 30, 40 years later. I think that he was able to put himself in the shoes of people like Ho Chi Minh and the Vietnamese. He understood from the Burmese context that there were radicals on that side as well and that there were ways in which they could be or the situation in Vietnam could be improved. And there are ways in which intervention would just make things worse. And I think for the best and the brightest, the Harvard educated, Ivy League educated, top guys around Johnson, they were just not able to empathize. And I think in so many conflicts we see what we've seen in the 80s in southern Africa, later in Afghanistan, in Iraq, I think we see the same problem of this inability to kind of put yourself as an American in the shoes of people in these faraway, especially non Western countries.
- [53:01]
A
I loved the scene that you portray of. Well, I've written in my notes here, hippies at the Washington dinner where the, the folk band Peter, Paul and Mary play blowing in the wind as President Johnson is there, Uthant is there. There's been some tricky conversations behind the scenes though, in front of the cameras, everyone smiles and smiling. And I think it was it at that event behind the scenes that the Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, says to Uthant, what do you think you are a country. When he's trying to wrangle the Americans into doing something, something peaceful in Vietnam. And it really, that just rang like a gong, you know, what do you think you are a country saying that to the Secretary General of the United nations, revealing the tricky situation he was in.
- [53:49]
B
I think Rusk thought that his own, maybe not his job, but I think his own standing was on the line. Because in August, it was actually just before the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was voted in Congress, which, which the administration took as authorization to use force and intervene in Vietnam. But Johnson in his own way thought that he could win over U than. So he threw for him this enormous dinner at the White House, which Johnson said was the biggest ever that he had given anyone. So it was hundreds of congressmen, senators, governors flown in, people like Walter Cronkite And Gregory Peck and other celebrities were there. And as you say, Peter, Paul and Mary, at the end, close to midnight, sang songs, including Blowing in the Wind to that entire Washington foreign policy establishment on the eve of the Vietnam War. And they had had these conversations early in the day. U thant would go on the next day to talk to people in the State Department and get what he thought was this yellow light. But that comment from Dean Rusk was actually a few months later. So after that failed attempt to broker or facilitate secret talks in Rangoon, Uthant was so frustrated that at a press conference In February of 1960, where are we? 1965. So after the bombing had begun, he said in response to a question that if the great American people actually knew the truth, they would know that there was a way, I'm paraphrasing a little bit, but there was another way forward that they didn't need to do this. They didn't have to bomb Vietnam. And I think to that the right wing crowd in Congress, but also Dean Ross Rusk went ballistic. And I think Dean Rusk was worried that he would be blamed for not having passed on that offer to Johnson a few months before. So he called up one of the very rare times he called him up in the middle of the night. My parents actually who were living with him remember this because he phoned up. It was in the middle of the night, my dad picks up the phone and woke up my grandfather to say, Dean Rusk is on the line. And Dean Rusk basically was incredibly angry. Even though they had a good, you know, a good relationship up until that point.
- [55:54]
A
Well, I think, you know, the fact that at U thant in that press conference, you know, revealed some things that I think maybe the U thant of a couple of years before never would have made public because he, he understood the importance of secrecy. And his role was based, his mediatory role was based on the trust that he would keep these things secret. I think it was the first sign that in his growing frustration, things were going to change a bit. In 1965, there's a crisis between India and Pakistan over Kashmir. That chapter was really interesting. It shows the UN working as intended. Again, we don't have time to go into the details, so dear listeners, you will have to buy the book and read it. It'll. It'll teach you a lot. I'd like to spend what time we have left to really talk about just two things from the book. First, the Six Day War. You know, here on conflicted, we focus on the Middle East. So it's really important to us to kind of understand, understand things like the Six Day War, the echoes of which reverberate down to the present, of course. What a tragedy. My goodness, what a comedy of errors to some extent. But you know, I think U Thant's role in that is not above reproach. I think he kind of got some things wrong. What do you think? Could you tell the story of the Six Day War from U Thant's perspective?
- [57:08]
B
This was not something that he had thought about very much. He was focused on, on Vietnam especially, but other issues. He left the Middle east questions to his deputy, good friend Ralph Bunche, the great American civil rights leader and Nobel laureate. And then one day In May of 1967 he wakes up, goes to the office and is told that 40,000 or 50,000 Egyptian troops have moved into the Sinai Peninsula and have moved towards or past the UN peacekeeping line that separates separated Egypt from the Israeli positions. In 1956, which was 11 years before there had been the Suez crisis and the first UN peacekeeping operation had been established, a very thin line of about 2,000 troops along that entire line from Gaza all the way to Sharm El Sheikh on the Red Sea separating the two sides. And the Egyptians were well away from the border and. And in May of 1967, when tensions were rising on both sides, both sides were saber rattling in a way. Gamal Abdel Nasser, the President of Egypt, asked for UN peacekeepers to be withdrawn from parts of that line between Egyptian positions and Israeli positions. But what actually happened was that Egyptian troops, tens of thousands of Egyptian troops, moved in front of the UN peacekeeping line. Those were 2,000 lightly armed troops and effectively made them redundant.
- [58:35]
A
I think it's important to remind the listeners that Egypt allowed UN peacekeeping troops there. Israel did not. There were no UN peacekeeping troops on the other side of the line. That would have played into Uthant's calculations as he decided what to do in 1967 when Egyptian troops moved into position in front of them.
- [58:55]
B
And once Egyptian troops were in front of the unit UN positions they were already directly adjacent to the idf, the Israeli Defense Forces on the other side of that line. And Nasser I think had moved his troops up to the border in the hope that he would both show his toughness and that this was going to be necessary in making sure that the Israelis were not going to take offensive operations.
- [59:19]
A
It's another indication of just how absolutely complicated the Six Day War. War is not at all easily reducible to black and white dimensions. When we did Our episode on the Six Day War on conflicted a few years ago. We tended to side with the idea that Nasser was kind of overwhelmed by the force of his anti Israeli rhetoric, the whole anti Israeli dimension of his brand of Arab nationalism. In the years running up to it, his military officers in all way were leading the show. He kind of lost control. He was eventually quite desperate to avoid the catastrophe that happened and yet he couldn't really stop it.
- [60:00]
B
For Uthanta, there was a question of given all the things that we've talked about, it was really important for him to be on the side of Egyptian sovereignty. This is their country. If they want to move troops, this is something that they in principle should be allowed. Then there was the political question of should he simply seem to be caving into Nasser or should he try something else? And I think he made a mistake, or he may have made a mistake in not appealing publicly to Nasser to reconsider what he was asking the UN to do, which was to reposition its forces, not to withdraw the peacekeeping force entirely. I think where he made a mistake was that he didn't send a letter that he had intended to send almost immediately to Nasser, appealing to Nasser to rescind or suspend his decision in the same way that he would send had appealed to Kennedy and Khrushchev during the Cuban Missile crisis, for example. And he was persuaded by Ralph Bunch, his deputy, not to do this because Ralph Bunch thought that by calling Nasser's bluff, he thought it was a bluff, Nasser would change his mind. So Uthant was going to say to Nasser, or he did say to Nasser, we can't move the troops around as you've asked. Basically it's all or nothing. If you tell us we have to move, then we're going to withdraw the whole thing. And Nasser basically, basically stuck to his guns almost literally and told the UN to withdraw the force entirely. So Uthant then flies to Cairo in this emergency attempt to get Nasser to change his mind and manages to extract from Nasser a pledge not to be the first to attack and also to allow for UN mediation. And that was actually a breakthrough of sorts with Nasser agreeing or pledging not to invade, not to be the. The first to invade or attack the other side, to accept UN mediation, to accept a UN mediator and to suspend the Egyptian blockade of the Strait of Tehran, except to Israeli shipping. And Israel had made clear that that was a casus belli. And so he thinks he has something, thought he had a peace process that could start. What he doesn't know which we all know now is that the Americans had already yellow lighted by that time. Time an Israeli invasion of Sinai. Udan didn't know that. Having said that, I think Udan had made a second error in judgment, which is that when he had flown to Cairo, he should have also flown to Tel Aviv at the same time.
- [62:13]
A
Yes. Why didn't he fly to Tel Aviv to tell the Israelis the verbal commitment he had extracted from Nasser not to attack?
- [62:21]
B
I think it was a couple of things. I think one was that from his perspective, and we're talking about just, you know, a week or so between the middle of May and late May, where he thought that because it was Nasser who had moved into Sinai, Nasser who had asked for the removal of peacekeepers, Nasser was sort of the problem that needed to be managed. And that once he had this pledge, once he had this acceptance of UN mediation, that he should go and report that to the Security Council and basically get that in motion in some way. I think he had no idea that the Israelis were that close or had made a decision already. Actually, almost by that time. Time to invade. There may have been a window where, because he had a very good relationship up until that time with the Israelis, he knew Golda Meir very well. He knew the prime Minister very well at that time. But what we now know very clearly is at the same time there was a second track running. The Johnson administration was already deciding to yellow light or secretly green light, a preemptive or an Israeli attack on Egypt and then later on Jordan as well, and Israel. I think, even though there had been people in the government who may have been opposed to this, were already, by the time Uthant was in Cairo, coming around to the decision to launch this offensive. But again, I think he should have gone to Tel Aviv, if for nothing else, then to preserve his sort of image of impartiality. The person who actually advised Uthant not to send the letter to Nasser on May 16, 17, 18, and who also advised Uthan not to send a final round of appeals to Prime Minister Eshkol secretly in Israel and to Nasser on the eve of the Six Day War, was Ralph Bunche. And I think Utah trusted his judgment. But Bunche, by that time was someone who was almost blind with diabetes. He was in failing health. He had just lost his child to a suicide. So I think for Bunch was also not enough his prime and also had made mistakes in his own judgment around that time. So I think both men were trying their best. I think the prime minister himself of Israel was Not someone who wanted to go to war. And maybe if Uthant had seen him in Tel Aviv, the two of them may have come up with some measure or some set of announcements by U thant that would have been helpful to those on the Israeli side also that didn't want to go to war. But that's a conjecture. And maybe, maybe it was already 80% set in stone. But I think another factor in all of this is even if we assume that on the Israeli side there was already this decision or this desire to take the offensive, I think in Washington we have to connect this with Vietnam as well. And I think there was both Johnson's desire to see the Israelis confront and win a war against the Egyptians and American intelligence, basically that the Israelis would win any war very easily. But I think by that time Udant had become such a problem for Johnson in particular on Vietnam, that he wasn't someone that Johnson wanted to preserve whose political capital he wanted to preserve. Or to put it another way, I think an U thant who had sided with Washington on Vietnam would not have been attacked and diminished in the same way around the time of the Six Day War.
- [65:32]
A
And what about the Soviet Union? What was the Soviet dimension in the Six Day War from U thant's perspective? Part of his genius was he had cultivated good relations with, with both sides of the superpower divide in the Cold War. And obviously Nasser was aligned with the Soviet Union. This would have informed America's geostrategic calculation about Israel attacking Egypt as well. So what role did the Soviets play in USant's sort of dimension of the Six Day War?
- [65:57]
B
I think actually very little. Because in that moment, even though the Soviets were closer to Egypt and to Syria, it wasn't like the decades after where it was very clear that the US was supporting Israel and the Soviets were supporting Israel's opponents. I mean, that was what crystallized as a result of the Six Day War. So I think Udan saw it very much as an Egypt, Israel and to some extent US involved conflict. But in the years afterwards, with the passing of Security Council Resolution 242 several months after the war, Udan tried his best at diplomacy over the next couple of years. And he and his envoy, Gunnar Jering in 1970, 1971, actually reached an agreement which the Egyptians, Anwar Sadat was the president at the time, agreed to, which would have meant a much more robust peacekeeping force, Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories, and peace for Israel with its Arab neighbors. But that was undermined to some extent by Henry Kissinger. Who was President Nixon's National Security Advisor at the time. And I think the main point is that the people who are actually pushing for war, the Egyptians in the beginning wanting to rattle their saber and then people on the Israeli side who wanted to take advantage of this crisis to actually occupy the territories they did occupy and the Johnson administration who was actually happy, or Johnson himself who was happy with the war, I mean they were the ones in a way to blame. But in the end it was the UN who got the blame without in particular. And what that's meant is a permanent rupture in Israel's relations with the un. UN and it's highly influenced the US perception of the UN ever since as well.
- [67:28]
A
Yeah, well, absolutely. I growing up in the 80s and 90s in a conservative Republican leaning household, the way I was given to understand the UN as a kind of forum for anti American radicals, a kind of Asio African kind of that a takeover of Third Worldism had occurred in the UN and that for that reason the United States was always being opposed by it, Israel always being opposed by it. The UN would always stand athwart the interests of America. So this idea of what the UN was meant to be when it was founded after the Second World War had been upset by a takeover by Third Worldists. And U thant in a way was like the poster child of that development in the end. And it's downstream of those events in 1960. Yeah.
- [68:16]
B
And it's very strange because Uthan was actually such a good friend of Israel because Burma was a very good friend of Israel. He was personally on very good terms with Golda Meir and Abba Iban and many other Israeli leaders at the time. So I think he felt also personally, if not betrayed, then I think he was incredibly frustrated with Israel's actions from 67 onwards as well. And I think Israel sort of began to become extremely critical of him in the weeks and months after the Six Day War and in the years to come. Not because he had fundamentally changed, because his position back in the 50s was always the Arab states should recognize Israel and accept peace. And in the late 60s and 70s his position was the Arab state should recognize Israel and there should be peace on the same borders of the Pre67 borders. What had changed was that Israel's own positions had shifted to not wanting wanting then to withdraw from those occupied territories, especially Gaza and East Jerusalem and the West Bank. So then he was seen as a former friend of Israel's who was now not remaining pro Israeli enough. And that I think led to sustained media criticism of him over time and the subsequent kind of mythology that developed as well. I think the main thing is that whatever Uthan did, by late May, the us, Washington and the Israelis, especially those who had, even before all of this started, wanted to seize more territory. I think once they had made the decision, there was nothing that he could have done that would have made any difference. So I think there was a window maybe in the first few days after he had received that initial communications from Nasser and that initial Egyptian move into the Sinai, where maybe there was an off chance, and he certainly should have tried everything when things could have gone in a different direction. But then the Six Day War happened and he was really critical in, I think, then, the narrative that was developed later. I think the blame that he was given was important in then kind of creating a story around why the war had to take place.
- [70:15]
A
Yeah, no, I mean, it's very sad to read that part of the book. He was blamed in many quarters, clearly unjustifiably, but he was blamed. And then, as we know, the consequences of the Six Day War, which we still live with, which the Middle east still lives with, and which is behind so much conflict there. Gosh, what a reminder of just how long running this drama has been over Israel, Palestine, Israel, Arabs, oh, goodness gracious, the un, the us. It is a long story.
- [70:45]
B
I think one of the most persistent myths in international relations history of the past 50, 60 years is this myth that UN peacekeepers were withdrawn from the silent Sinai, that Israel had no alternative but to go on the attack, and that led to the map of the Middle east that we've had more or less ever since in the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the west bank in particular. But the myth isn't true. The peacekeepers were actually not withdrawn and almost all of the peacekeepers were still in place when the Six Day War broke out in June of 1967. So the idea of that a peacekeeping withdrawal somehow triggered the war itself or made it inevitable that Israel had to attack, that's false. But the reason why this myth has been so persistent, I think, is that if one wants to tell the story of an Israel that had to attack the other side, the idea that the peacekeeping withdrawal made it inevitable or made it necessary, and also to downplay the peace efforts that were underway and that could have potentially, potentially work to diffuse the crisis, those had to be downplayed. And so a third element was in the media, both in New York and London, which from the very start, attacked Udan's position constantly and at very high levels. Headlines in the New York Times and other papers every single day from the 16th, 17th of May onwards. That led to this creation of this myth that I think we still have today, even by people, I think, who would sympathize with him now.
- [72:19]
A
He kind of spent the last three, four years of his time as Secretary General trying to deal with that, along with lots of other things. You actually open with this scene. You begin the book with USant's retirement party in 1971, after he decides not to pursue a third term as secretary General. And what a colorful group of people are there. You have kind of old patrician Republicans like Nelson Rockefeller, but pop stars and folk singers. Pete Seeger's there. John Lennon and Yoko Ono are there. LENNON PLAYS I think imagine for the first time in America, at least, Jacques Cousteau, the great ocean, you know, what do you call it? Oceanographer, great marine biologist is there. So there's a sort of sign of the new world. I mean, all the. Well, that world, that idealistic, slightly hippified world, was the world that I recognized very much growing up in California in the 80s, the kind of idealism, a one world idealism. So when at the end of your book, you get back to that retirement party, I just sort of, having read everything that came before, I thought, I've just read the story of how a kind of idealistic conception of how the world might be was built amongst some people in the global governing class, the global elite. U thant participated in that and, and his, his Buddhism played a role that was very interesting. An increasing fascination that he had with aliens and, and astrology. He kind of, I mean, did he kind of go a bit hippie there at the end at the retirement party? He was called Planetary Citizen number number one. How would you make sense of that last phase of U thant's career?
- [74:06]
B
Yeah, I mean, I think you captured it really well. I think in a way, you know, I start with that because it was a. It's a microcosm of a world that we've lost. And you know, you had, you had also Burgess Meredith, who had just played the Penguin on Batman, and the people who had funded the dinner. You had, you know, Jackie Kennedy, but you had people like. Or organizations like the American Amalgamated Laundry Workers of New York, who then were really committed to the UN at the time. But in a way, it was almost the passing of an era. It was the passing of that group and that world that had this idealistic commitment to the UN in New York. And I think what it meant, or what it showed to me to some extent was that Uthad, after 15 years of living in New York and only going home for I think 10 days altogether over those 15 years he took I think 10 days holiday from 61 to 72, some of it in Burma, some of it in the Virginia islands. And I think he had become a New Yorker in some ways. And I think these were the people that he socialized with, that he met with. He had become really good friends with Jackie Kennedy, for example. And so I think he was drawn into that world and aspects of New York culture at the time. He watched American TV every night to relax. He religiously watched the Ed Sullivan show on Sunday nights. He became a big fan of Colombo by the late 60s and early 70s, for example.
- [75:25]
A
Well, who isn't a fan of Colombo? Great, great show.
- [75:28]
B
But then one thing that kind of had disappeared though, or that idealism had kind of replaced was that kind of third world realism from the late 50s and early 60s. And I think if we go to 72, what happened was that so many of these people who he'd worked with, the people in Bandung, the people at the non line conference in Belgrade, they had either died like Nehru, they had become overthrown in right wing coups, they were assassinated did, or they were pressed to the wall and became more radicalized through this pressure to choose sides in the Cold War. So in a way, by end of 71, when he had that party, that retirement party, he was kind of the last man standing of that Bandung generation, of that moderate third world leadership that wanted to see a good relationship with the west as well. And so much had been hollowed out underneath him because of Vietnam and because of the rise of a different kind of thinking about the world by Nixon and Kissinger, who were so different from John F. Kennedy, for example, 10 years earlier.
- [76:28]
A
Yeah, I mean on that side, a new way of thinking of the world, a kind of new realism, or an American muscular realism if you like. But then on the other side too, a new way of thinking of the world, a third Worldism that had become more radical, as we would see across the 70s, a proliferation of militant groups, terrorists groups. I mean, already at the end of his time as Secretary General, he has to deal with the specter of a Palestinian radicalism that's kidnapping and hijacking. And I think he struggled to make sense of that because it seemed so far away from the gentlemanliness of that initial kind of post colonial period where men who had been educated in European colonies, educated to some extent in the Western tradition and found themselves, or felt themselves to be something like participating in a historical development that was going to give dignity and liberality and economic development and everything to their own peoples, their own countries. But something changed. I think he probably felt like he was a bit losing control maybe, I don't know.
- [77:36]
B
I think he knew and in a way, I think what was happening in the third world, if you want to call it that, still in the sense of 70s, was what he would have predicted in the 60s, even the early 60s or late 50s, if the west and especially the US didn't take the path that he wanted them to take. And he said in this speech, I can't remember if it was in 62 or 63, he said to an American audience, he said, be on the side of revolution in the third world. Embrace the tradition of 1776. And that doesn't mean communist resolution. It means social change in these countries, it means reform. It means to democracy, be on the side of revolution in these countries. That's your natural position. And I think he felt that if America went in a different direction and intervened in what he would have seen as the completely wrong way in places like Vietnam and then was part of overthrowing governments in Indonesia and Chile and elsewhere in these right wing coups, not only was that really bad for these third world countries, but it would radicalize people in a way that he, he knew that would radicalize people in his own country, in Burma as well. So I think he was very frustrated and in a way dejected, I think from the path that was taken in Washington with Vietnam at the center by 1972.
- [78:49]
A
Well, Thant Minh. Ooh. Your book, U Thant and the Forgotten Quest for a Just World is an excellent survey from a very unique perspective of what remains a very vital part, part of modern history. And, and you, you tell the story with nuance. But again, from this often underrepresented perspective. Dear listeners, get the book, read the book. Unless you know this history, you won't understand anything. So thank you very much for coming on Conflicted. It's been a great pleasure.
- [79:16]
B
Yeah, it's a pleasure. Thank you so much.
- [79:21]
A
That was Thant Mint oo. His illuminating book Peacemaker is available from all good booksellers sellers. And remember for deeper dives into the ideas we explore on this show, including extended conversations and Q&As with my CO host Eamon Dean. Check the show notes for details on how to join the conflicted community. I'm Thomas Small. Conflicted is a message heard production Our executive producers are Jake William Warren and Max Warren. This episode was produced and edited by Thomas Small.