A Word on Words; 3525; James Traub

or no liz from nashville studio way celebrating offers literature ideas for more than three decades this is word on words ellen johnson dollar welcome once again to word on words are destinations trial is a contributing writer for the new york times magazine author of the new book the best intentions kofi annan

the un in the era of american world power welcome john jenrette a heavier to talk about about this institution that is a there has make such a difference in the world and it is a controversy on a time says not made an adequate defense and this work and you write about all that and and you receive the un through the prism of the secretary general kofi annan and gun and is his trials and summers drives you know you begin and you give us based on her phone a sudden negative take somalia rwanda bosnia you and had not performed very well and quite often it muddled through and that these of runs through

will talk about this institution is but then show and that's a benefit of well you know one thing that we tend to forget is that the un is the conference we talk about the un is if the word this this thing that had a wholly independent existence from the countries that are and then of course yes it has a secretary that does lots of things but its limitations ten to be the limitations of the world in which it lives and so opera for four decades after its founding and forty six the winner was powerless to even teach and he's big our global conflicts because the united states and russia between the two of them basically divided everything and they warn about to let the un handle any of that stuff and in my book actually history in my book doesn't really even begin until the cold war and it's because until the time the un is effectively powerless and we can even say we're disappointed in that because we didn't even have such expectations after the cold war suddenly

there was this burst of possibility and in fact it's george bush sr colin powell others were members of his team who defers talk about the un in terms of the new world order in tremendous sense of we can use this institution for the most important foreign policy issues because after all the security council vote in favor the first gulf war that was considered a tremendous diplomatic triumph so then there's this sense yes the un and so there's all these ambitious peacekeeping attacks which begin with the first bush administration in somalia and then later when bosnia well the un was completely incapable of handling the situation's this was not one country going to war with another and then they sign a peace treaty in a bunch of peacekeepers in blue eyed stand between this was the chaos of the post cold war world un wasn't up to handle that kind of the peacekeeping couldn't do them and so as you

said we have these for years kozol in some cases are unspeakable tragedies right one after the other ninety two ninety three ninety four somalia bosnia rwanda hedy to some extent also added a lot of people at that point said ah i get the un can't do it i mean they're there they're committed to peace in a you know in a hostile world and they're just not keep on acting in the world with them and that that was a valid choice than i do think that if you look today and you just think about this question of peacekeeping which is a lot of what we judge the human body it's actually gotten better i mean one thing i point out in the book is that if you look at what the us has done in recent years mostly in africa that for most the peacekeeping takes place op they're only in horrible situations like the congo sierra leone liberia places where nobody else wants to go and so you would never say it's a triumph look at the great thing and i don't know if they can if the country can survive and maybe have an election sunday that's effective so there i say yes the

un has actually has done some good things is doing good things is getting better at a very hard thing that's one area that's one from the book the other frame is guilty and one dollar a child of the solar chieftain who was to be a businessman that always worries about a work of art coffee is a bright student studies on the foreground here the carnegie great day in geneva marries young wants to do well and goeman improve this country winds up in the pecking order you and he is professional un bureaucrats but one with imagination and an episode sense of mission yeah i mean he

is very much defined or we should say was a sea obviously is no longer secretary general very much defined by the institution which is to say he has these ideals which are the ideals of the institution it's also true that the family has the limits of the limits of the institution i mean this was especially when he was coming up the ranks the sixties seventies and eighties it was such a profoundly bureaucratic place was so little was accomplished and so it is true that you know i said to him when you had some job in person out somewhere in the bowels of the institutional with kurt waldheim is that austrian was secretary general who we later discovered actually was a fairly prominent member of the nazi party i want to state because you would think anybody you had eike a sufficient amount of view you know we're even self regard to go somewhere else and he said well i always believed in the ideals of the institution i thought i could get

better at it so i mean that that's a sincere response but it also tells you that he very much is a creature of the institution and so part of the drama of his decade as secretary general was somebody who on the one hand had those deep ideals on the other hand had those imitation struggled against those limitations try to reform the place but i think maybe i had it some of myopic view of of its limitations and fully see its limitations but also and this is in a way what mason worth writing as much about as i do turned out to be a larger figure in a more ambitious figure out a better figure and the people who would know him for all those years as a kind of green eyeshade guys would fall ill you say that a book is because colley his predecessor was perhaps as well qualified for the job has anybody but he just couldn't go along with the communist regime of metal out all right with richard

holbrooke karen bass united nations she was particularly matt on our i particularly upset because he was a bastard came to dealing with congress that there isn't in the book is loaded with scenes that really will fascinate and our viewers think that holbrooke bringing jesse helms the ultraconservative right way and value in a critic but the judge to speak at that moment is one that i'd totally forgotten until until you describe talk about a little bit of a about that phrase the united nations where we are really given jail and then in particular jesse helms i don't know about the violin so with the oath but it was a ploy but work that you know we forget we think this big crisis we've had the last couple years is the crisis between the us and the un but what happened back then

in the late nineties was was in some ways more great week in theory we could've gotten kicked out the united states could've gotten kicked out of portions of the eu and including the general assembly because we didn't dare do because we didn't bear dues largely because after ninety four when we had a republican controlled house and senate these guys hated the un maybe they just thought the un was the last word in a left wing socialist every kind of bad things and the wheeler of that of course was jesse helms he talked about the un like it was some kind of foreign army that income to colonize the united states and he seemed to really think that and so it was clear that you couldn't you couldn't go oh well jessi he was the head of the senate foreign relations committee you have to somehow tackle jessica and so there was a process of diplomatic hand holding and kissing of the rain and everything else that began to the time that coffee became the secretary general in nineteen ninety seven madeleine albright then the secretary of state would just sweet

talk jesse helms four hours and she was much better at that than people realize kofi went down to meet with him and it was very much a kind of kissing of the ring thing and kofi annan has a gift for being deferential because he's non egotistical got in he if he give you think if he makes you think that you're the greatest and he's nothing that's ok that doesn't bother him and so he told jesse helms how important jesse helms was and how how much the un needed to hear the kinds of criticisms that he was giving and jesse the two of them come out after their talk and jesse's put his hand and coffees back and at i say in the book that then i i think this is true that kofi annan was just becoming deferential black boy who jesse helms really want to know is why can't all black people to be alive and that's i'm sure was jesse's so that began softening up process but still calm

ninety nine and it still hadn't paid her dues were making impossible demands of the institution as you are based budgeting all sorts of restrictions and we weren't paying that so richard holbrooke a very intrepid figure a controversial guy who many people think is an egomaniac i think as a profoundly gifted egomaniac sets out to finish this job and awe the kind of coup de gras his when he invites jesse to come speak before the security council this was the point of the interview and this was like having seen come to watch the hated this guy had ever met they just knew he was before and what he thought he was stepping into the den of inequity and celine gives this speech which you wishing weiss is the new way and then all the ambassador's afterwards they're so diplomatic they find ways of a sticking pins in him in a way the jesse doesn't quite get and so he feels it's all going wonderfully they behave themselves the next day there's a session of the senate foreign relations committee in new york jesse

gets up and said i want all the ambassador's hearing the audience knew when we stand up and they will travel okay but they stand up and he says that nasa down holbrooke says something nice about jesse and italy and the problem's solved once every citizen great master stroke of the film's delicate diplomatic route the coffee you say that early on that coffee on with the united states study center for mcallister college and he's it is fifty nine sixty sixty one that period the civil rights movement he follows a but there is a point where you say he thought of himself not as black but african and therefore when he was insulted i was a white young woman german almost beaten i guess they posted a commonsense to run away and it didn't it didn't faze him to talk a little bit about his personality but if

we know that relationship with jesse different show he is the dignified he also is proud men he also is there are there it sits in the dressing it's interesting there he's easy person to misread because he's so profoundly quite deferential than you might think oh he's timid you know he's immune even cowardly but i don't think that's the case and i have seen him in in baghdad in fact in ninety eight i remember watching him deliver a lecture to saddam hussein's number two guy about their intransigence in terms of the big big issue that was weapons inspections but there are other issues as well if he was quite tough with the guy he wasn't fearful kofi i mean maybe he was or two to conflict averse to two uncomfortable with conflict i was a fearful person all there was something chiefly about here not in the

sense of grandiose of in a way almost the opposite that is to say my dignity wise in a place that cannot be touched but others and so i don't have to wear it on my sleeve boutros ghali one of his problems that he had to let the world know that he was a gifted smart talented and a third world man and so the coffee not we didn't have the personnel think he didn't have the third world thing either that he had to let the world know that he was there as an african man to defend african in just know if anything he presented himself as a kind of universal person he stood up to what he believed were universal rights human rights are not rich and he went to africa and said we can't talk about human rights as if it's some western thing imposed on us no it's a universal for an african head of state has the exact same obligations to his citizens as he repeated as in he was on person that way i sometimes thought of as davos man in the sense that those international conferences that he had that set

of can essentially northern european social democratic values the africans were disappointed because they wanted an african and some african americans were disappointed and if they wanted someone stood up for the fact that he's black and that's not really what he once but you know for those who just tuning in i'm talking with james traub about is about his book the best intentions kofi annan united nations that your view of power let's talk about that era of american world power because i hear and in here we have to recognize that there are given those patients are that look on un differently and the difference between the way it's an illustration indeed the first bush administration looked on the un and the way the second bush administration the poignant quite different

starkly different focus focus our attention there for a bit higher that probably has never been an administration this country quite as hostile and a kind of a priori way to the un as this current bush administration maybe the reagan administration is illegal but the un simply didn't matter quite as much so these guys came in with a deep view that the united states under clinton had allowed itself to be too constrained by treaties by international wall but international institutions and there were all these charges that we were all waiting to use sub contracting our foreign policy to be you they wanted they are assigned a number of treats they refused to sign other treaties this all before nine eleven that first year was clear these guys were not to go down that road and and even the decision to use the you went to two armed would utilize that warner wrap was a big fight inside the administration cheney didn't want to go there or how did our ally tony

blair needed a student and so we did that debate was really ruins it because my general view was that the united states can be one degree going bro bro area that's about right you know it was a pyrrhic one that's for sure the united states in general can get what it wants from the un for pre small price and the whole incident with whole broken homes and so forth i think demonstrated that if you are willing to show a kind of decent respect for the institution the united states because of the position of pre eminence of hats can normally get its way here was the great exception the case of black where we brought the highest issue of state to the security council and we didn't actually and that has produced a deep bitterness on the part of the united states which still resonates because of the bitterness inside the un that still resonates and so i think the question you have to ask where does that failure why does that prove the human failing as a band instrument for american policy which is i think certainly conservative you in this country

or does approve that the united states finally made a series of demands that was so unsatisfied ball that the institution would've had to always subordinate itself to american policy and become an enormous american policy if you'd said yes i mean what are outlawed almost all around us thought it was a bad idea and when you think about the conflict when using of a conflict on the ultimate issue for this president bush all that weapons of mass destruction of any un is newman was best new conducting this investigation was of another way to try and it's interesting speculate on what would've happened had we waited for what had already had more faith had we waited it would've been that much harder to have a wart rack because i've seen they wouldn't find weapons of mass destruction you point out of this park and others said they want war from the get go right right they clearly that they wanted the war was going to happen no matter what they less saddam unilaterally disarm and act in a way that would be unthinkable for any autocrat

in the middle east or elsewhere so yes officer bp had we waited then there would never have been a war but this situation was that the other countries were trying to find ways of the peace in the united states let's wait a few more months let's put down benchmarks let's do this let's do that no by that time the soldiers had been standing out there and in kuwait for too long we had two hundred thousand people were massed hundred and fifty thousand and we really go before got two not one winner and so when we say she pushed you into the wall finally moved quite reluctantly in most cases no says that its other security council country said no we went ahead anyway with our coalition of the willing and the rest is a catastrophic history turns out the un was right the pilot catastrophic history involves someone in john bolton and you deal with them john bolton was a little gift to me i was

it was it was just like you know when i first wrote this book i thought what if nothing happens while i'm here and a lot of terrible things happen and john bolton was a really dramatic terrible thing bolton was very much a carrier of this administration view that international was back to you as ben soulful normally ambassadors just don't make that much difference but he arrived in the middle of a big debate over un reform something that the bush administration backed and kofi annan and his team to put together a very impressive really comprehensive may be over ambitious but be a good package of reforms to make the un more effective to make or a human rights council that would really work to unambiguous we define terrorism stuff and we wanted the bolton was so profoundly suspicious of the institution and of the other ambassadors i was so worried there would uphold a wool over america's eyes and force us to sign some document full of stuff we heed that he would much rather short circuit the whole thing and prevent these bans things he was imagining and so he essentially said i know you've done all this work to put this

document to europe but it's no good were the storyboard or the frenzy and that had the effect of giving much more weight to the other spoilers their cuban ray in venezuela the folks who who don't want the you went to ah and it made it much more difficult for the folks who came and so change them was already very fragile balance and made it almost impossible for the united states to get what it wanted and any and if you look at the reformed document that emerged we didn't get much of what we want and i don't think golden bears all the blame but he does bear some substantial part of that what's the future is the un continued going to continue to be as you said one month alone is the model doesn't overly lead to a model you know it i tried to imagine what he had a different you and i mean i actually when i first wrote the chapter on that i did propose a different un where you can only get in if you are a democracy

you have to agree in advance to provide peacekeeping troops and so on and so the problem is if you do that ah they're both sides decide who it was a democracy in easy don't have china i don't think in institutions where we work with our trade it also means are costly intervening in places where there are no members in the middle east means israel's a member nobody else's you can operate the middle east that way so i think that that what the un has that makes it valuable is this special legitimacy that comes from the fact that everyone as a member but that's also the limitation on the organization that everyone is a member and operates often by consensus is it will be able to accomplish a lot of things i think that the biggest obstacle of all now clearly is the whole issue of sovereignty wage in the way an act against the wishes of another country in store for for example where the un is not going to be meaningful can't act in a situation like that and yet it seems like we can't because too many countries are only willing to act against the wishes of the

sudanese government you know we've got the thing that's left and i know you're already in the next book and in part with different about his writers another i talk about those are the next the next book there is about this question of democracy promotion which the bush administration calls the freedom agenda it's connected to the un the following way that i do that nine eleven is a transformative event and it forces americans to rethink how they should behave in the world the bush administration happened to be around when nine eleven occurred and so the only foreign policy we've had post nine eleven is theirs and i think many people would agree that there's been a a a failure and media disasters failure so what should we do instead and part that question though is is there something that they actually did get right to work up partially rate that we really have to think about so the freedom agenda i think has been discredited

by to read that people think that you were trying to impose democracy at the point to go on a rack and that was it stupid idea that they are but the thing that's not roll is me now we're we are threatened by what goes on inside regimes above all in the middle east is hugely in our own interest not sick humanitarian aid as a strategic matter that there be more stable responsive accountable democratic states above for the middle east but elsewhere but what can we do about that how can we shape that how can we for example if we're seeing is not behaving democratically ourselves effectively preach about democracy elsewhere how can weave we need these middle eastern regimes as allies for regional issues on his real weapon on iran and so forth how can read the same time press that against the wishes of the regime in the elite to democratize these are really hard questions but i think we have to think about how to answer you know if other if you do in the book is not a sequel

the next book is not a sequel but it does immersive the reader in the concept of our role in world affairs and it's rocky in the united nations but is rocky outside the united nations and the real question is can we continue given the record this administration and rockin millie can we survive as the superpower you know and and can we afford to be so indifferent to the opinion of the world and to these institutions others join and i think one thing that's become clear zte we live in a much more transparent world we used everything we do is going to be seen to be judged by that so we behave in these ways that have a seen as a as a bully in a bellicose power we will suffer the consequences as well we'll get the answer to that when you come back with the next book i would be well thank you so much jim james traub ladies and gentleman has been our guest

today thank you all for watching for word on words and johnson dollar keep writing