After getting booted from one of the world’s cushier and most high-profile jobs, Boutros Boutros-Ghali sat down for dinner in New York with his prime nemesis, Madeleine Albright.
Albright was then the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Boutros-Ghali was the first UN secretary general to be denied a second term in office. Before they parted that evening, Albright declared, “I will always have need of your good advice.”
In the world of diplomacy, that’s a synonym for see you later Charlie, don’t call us, we’ll call you, shove off.
“She was a beginner,” Boutros-Ghali said last week during a brief Washington sojourn. “She was not a diplomat before. But she learned very quickly.”
Indeed. As evidenced by the frustration still vented by the proud Egyptian, Albright did learn quickly, which helps explain why he’s out of the job he loved dearly.
If Clinton administration foreign policy has been marked by timidity, with a willingness to intervene in places but risk little, it can lay claim to at least one decisive, if brutish, action: shafting Boutros-Ghali as nearly all other UN member nations looked on in dismay.
The reasons were largely ones of congressional politics and the 1996 presidential campaign. Future Viagra spokesman Bob Dole was running around ridiculing “BOOOOOTROS-BOOOOOOTROS,” as he condescendingly referred to him, while Dole’s GOP colleagues were loath to pay a gargantuan U.S. debt to the UN because of what they deemed vast inefficiency and the prickly ways of the secretary general himself.
More Top Picks Best Vibrating Sensory Toys For Kids
For sure, the Egyptian diplomat, 76 and the first secretary general from Africa, was the victim of certain self-inflicted wounds, few of which he even alludes to in a nevertheless interesting memoir of his demise, “Unvanquished” (Random House).
While perhaps the most intellectually potent secretary general since Sweden’s Dag Hammarskjold (1953-1961), Boutros-Ghali could be a control freak who undercut morale internally with a haughty management style. His bashing of the U.S. for being such a deadbeat (owing more than $1 billion at the time), and of the rich nations for exhibiting scant attention to the plight of the poor ones, could be a tad shrill and heavy-handed, even if 100 percent accurate.
It explains why the U.S. decided to veto his nomination for a second, five-year term, knowing full well that the rest of the world interpreted the action as unjustified and petulant. So when President Clinton is chided as indecisive, at least he can cite the scalp of Boutros-Ghali as proof that once in a blue moon he isn’t.
Boutros-Ghali remains deeply chagrined, portraying the U.S. as the Holy Roman Empire of its time, employing diplomacy when it sees fit and only then. And he is unrelenting in his belief that the rich are protecting themselves at the expense of the poor, with the war in Kosovo an example of what he sees as skewed priorities and of the further marginalization of the UN, whose formal support for the NATO campaign was not sought.
“NATO was used to find a solution to Kosovo,” he said. “But suppose tomorrow you need a solution in, say, Asia or Africa? NATO is not there, and you have a weak UN. Who will be able to do the job?”
What’s the point of the UN, he wonders, if a group of states can act unilaterally, especially when they have ample firepower? But those who don’t have the firepower get left out in the cold.
He is sympathetic to the plight of the Kosovar refugees but sees them getting distinct priority over “the 12 million refugees and displaced people all over the world.” Sierra Leone, Liberia, Burundi, Tanzania, Rwanda, Eritrea and Ethiopia are among the nations he cites with human tragedies largely neglected by the rich nations.
“All those people are suffering as much as those in Kosovo. But the difference is the media and international community is not paying attention.”
And there is the unmistakable Eurocentric view, which even permeates the UN. “It is the culture and education among the elite all over world,” he said. “The Establishment in Asia will look to London. The Establishment in my country looks to the North, not the South. If you make a holiday trip, you don’t go to Kenya, you prefer Paris or Rome.”
In part, he blames American isolationism for the neglect toward poor nations but knows we aren’t alone. The trend among younger Republican lawmakers in Congress to keep a distance from world affairs is shared by many worldwide (“You have young Republicans in Germany, France, Brazil, in my country, feeling the same way”), ironically just as forces of economic globalization become more and more apparent.
“The average citizen, when confronted by globalization, feels insecure and wants to turn back to religion, to his village, to his family, and probably considers the foreigner an enemy,” said Boutros-Ghali. “So they refuse to get involved in problems not connected to their village.”
The Boutros-Ghali solution has always been predicated on a significant UN peacekeeping force, perhaps supplemented by separate UN groups to deal with disease, terrorism and drugs. There’s a strong logic to it all but would entail an ultimate subservience by the world’s powers that may be hard to imagine.
When it comes to those powers, he is worth hearing as he analyzes their presents and futures.
– China: “They are a superpower which, for the time being, has decided not to play a real role in international affairs. They can afford to wait. It’s not a mistake. Let them reconstruct their nation, devote their energy to internal problems.”
– Russia: “I still believe they are a big power. Not only do they have the infrastructure to play the role of a big power, they have the internationalist culture which will help them. At the moment, I agree, they are a mess.”
Though his book is at times a thin-skinned screed, last week he was in an upbeat mood, perhaps savoring the sort of attention he had once and lost. There’s a part of him that can think that 50 years down the road, human beings remaining the same, we’ll continue to kill one another and will make no real progress in living together, despite advances in technology.
And if there is one thing he’d love to know about the world 50 years out, it’s no surprise.
“I dream of peace in the Middle East,” he said. “I spent so much time trying to promote peace between Israel and Egypt, I would love to know if it happens.”
Uncomfy company
During times of war, the Pentagon activates what is known as the “war pool,” a small group of print and broadcast reporters who are allowed in with the military and then share the products of their labors with their colleagues.
It’s been especially interesting reading the Kosovo pool reports in recent weeks, especially given the identity of the newspaper pool reporter.
Last week, for example, he passed along a dispatch from the U.S. Army at Camp Able Sentry in Macedonia. It began this way:
“The pool passes along two items: a visit to the troops by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and the other an interview with the commander of the American contingent of KFOR in which he talks about the rules of engagement for American peacekeepers in Kosovo.
“The Secretary of State donned an Army baseball cap and addressed about 150 troops of the 82d Airborne Division, some Apache pilots and others who are preparing for entry into Kosovo. This happened in a big white sweltering tent that serves as the mess hall. She spoke about 12:30 p.m. and was gone in about 15 minutes.”
The pool reporter then quoted Albright at some length (“I wanted to come and say thank you. We have had a very busy few days diplomatically and have managed to arrange this agreement and now it is up to you . . .”).
The dispatch indicated that Albright “shook hands with some 82d Airborne soldiers and some Apache pilots, to whom she gave a thumbs up. Then, she left with another thumbs up to the assembled troops.”
More Top Picks Best Amazon Prime Day Stanley Cup Deals 2026
However, I do assume that Albright did not give a thumbs up to the pool reporter.
He was Joseph Albright of Cox News Service, whose great-great-grandfather, Joseph Medill, had owned the baiduhai.
Oh, one other thing:
It was Joseph Albright who in 1982 dumped Madeleine Albright for a younger woman after 23 years of marriage and three daughters.
———-
James Warren and Michael Tackett of the Tribune’s Washington bureau are hosts of “Unconventional Wisdom” at 7:05 p.m. Sunday on WGN-AM 720.