Looking Back at the Man Who Helped Shape the U.N.

0:00Today on State of the World, looking back at the man who helped shape the U.N. You're listening to State of the World from NPR. We bring you the day's most vital international stories up close where they're happening. I'm Greg Dixon. The 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly is underway. And as the world's current pressing issues are discussed, we're going to take a look at someone who helped shape the role of the highest office of the UN, the Secretary General. U Thant was the first non-Western person to hold that position. He was a Buddhist from a remote town in Burma, and he led the United Nations through the height of the Cold War.

0:45Thant Mint Yu, his grandson, has recently published a book titled Peacemaker, U Thant and the Forgotten Quest for a Just World. NPR's diplomatic correspondent Michelle Kellerman recently spoke to him about the role of the U.N. Secretary General and how it's changed in the 80 years since the institution's founding.

1:05U Thant's grandson:So before we talk about the book, I want to ask you about a picture that you include in it. It's you as a child, your grandfather, the Secretary General, is posing along with Apollo 11 astronauts. And I wonder, do you remember that day or do you have, you know, why did you include that in this? It's actually one of the very earliest memories that I have. I think I was about three years old. So I remember not so much the astronauts themselves, but I remember driving to the UN and seeing the big, you know, the UN building, going up to the 38th floor, seeing my grandfather there. Because it was a fairly unusual thing to do, to go see him in the office.

1:45So I do remember that day, and I remember that huge map that you see in the photograph behind, which used to light up. And I think that was, for my three-year-old self, I think that was more exciting than anything else. I included that because Farouk Thant, the astronauts, the cosmonauts, space exploration, all those things were of extreme interest to him, and I think really influenced how he thought about his role in the future of the UN as well.

2:07U Thant's grandson:Are there other personal memories that kind of inspired you to look more deeply into your grandfather's history? He was a bit of a mystery because he died when I was eight. We lived with him until he passed away in 1974. And so I remember him, but he was always this kind of, it was always a very fuzzy memory. And as I grew older and I worked for the UN myself, I didn't know that much about him as a person in terms of what he did. I knew the outlines of his career, but I was always a little bit curious, but I never had time to research it until just a few years ago. And in telling Uthant's story, what do you want readers to learn about the United Nations?

2:46U Thant's grandson:Why it was kind of a necessary institution then and why it may still be? I think when it was founded, it was meant to be this enforcement mechanism, the wartime allies, the U.S., the USSR, sort of controlling the peace and policing the world afterwards. And it never worked out that way. But what we saw from the mid-1950s onwards was that the Secretary General of the U.N., Dag Hammersholt before my grandfather and then Uthant, really pioneered this whole role for the Secretary General as a mediator, as a peacemaker, as a peacekeeper. And a lot of that history has been kind of brushed aside or sort of forgotten.

3:23And in looking at the archives, which have been declassified, digitized only fairly recently, I sort of understood much better both the role of the Secretary Generals, including my grandfather, in de-escalating key conflicts like the Cuban missile crisis, but also the role of the newly decolonized countries like India, Burma, Ghana, many countries in Africa, Indonesia, in really shaping the UN in a very new direction. It's a whole history of the late 50s, 1960s that are so pivotal, I think, to global history. And it's been, again, sort of airbrushed out of history.

3:56U Thant's grandson:I want to talk a little bit about that in a bit. But first, talk a little bit about your grandfather, how he went from being a schoolteacher in Burma to this cigar-smoking diplomat at the Center of Global Affairs. Yeah, it's an extraordinary story because he was, you know, at 39, he was a schoolteacher, school headmaster of a little wooden school in this tiny town in a backwater in Burma. And he thought he wanted a midlife career change. And at 39, he went to Rangoon, joined the government, rose up through its ranks. It had just become an independent country from the British Empire. and within 10 years found himself as Burma's new ambassador to the UN.

4:35He was living in midtown Manhattan and he was at the very center of this new global politics. And he developed this reputation quite quickly as the man who sort of got on with everyone, both east and west, north and south. He took on the French on the war in Algeria, but still got along with the French, for example. And so when Dag Hammarskjöld, who was the secretary general at the time, was killed in this mysterious, still mysterious plane crash, he emerged as the only human being in the world acceptable to both Moscow and Washington to become the acting secretary general on probation for a year.

5:10And that's how he got the job, just 13 years or so after leaving that small town.

5:15U Thant's grandson:Yeah, I mean, you write that he was the only person acceptable to both Moscow and Washington during the coldest years of the Cold War. I was also kind of fascinated to read about New York City at the time and why it was decided to put the UN there. So tell us a little bit about what it was like for Uthant and other diplomats from what we now call the Global South. Yeah, I think on the one hand, it was incredibly exciting. I mean, America was by far the richest as well as most powerful country in the world. New York was at the center of the world. So it was an exciting time. And I think he and my mother, for instance, his daughter who came with him, were in many ways, very happy to be in New York and very pleased with their lives there.

5:57At the same time, they faced a lot of discrimination, as did many of the diplomats who came into New York from Asia, and especially from Africa at the time, especially with housing, but also on, you know, occasionally on a day-to-day basis as well. So it was this mix. It was both kind of being pulled into this world of Upper East Side diplomatic functions and receptions of the UN and, you know, the limousines and the big meetings with leaders from around the world, but also being part of a still, in many ways, a segregated society, especially when they went outside of New York City itself.

6:31U Thant's grandson:So let's talk about the role that Luton played in the Cuban Missile Crisis. What surprised you as you were researching that? I suppose just that he had a role at all. I mean, if you read a lot of the secondary literature, which is what I've read since I was a student in the 1980s, He had a very marginal role at best. Sometimes he's not included at all. But it's very clear from the archive and also just from reading Times and other newspapers at the time when he was on the front page almost every day that he played this really pivotal role. So he was the one, you know, President Kennedy goes on television, gives his speech on the 22nd of October.

7:10It becomes this very public crisis. He spends the next day, nearly 24 hours, in deep consultation with what we call then third world leaders from around the world. And then he intervenes. He intervenes at the Security Council. He sets out the actual framework that would become the framework for settlement. He then intervenes with both Kennedy and Khrushchev directly through a series of both public as well as private messages. messages, basically to create the space for them and the time for them to find a diplomatic solution. He engages with both sides in trying to find the right formula for the verification of the missile withdrawal.

7:46And then he goes to Havana and basically kind of tries to diffuse Fidel Castro's temper and make sure that he wasn't going to be a problem at a time when Khrushchev and Kennedy were nearing an agreement. So, you know, I think the thing is that he was this neutral arbiter, right, this neutral figure that was essential to both sides in climbing down from what was then, you know, the very edge of a possible nuclear catastrophe.

8:14U Thant's grandson:Uthant was Secretary General also during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, the Vietnam War. I mean, there were obviously limits to what he could do. But as you said, he played this key role in the Cuban Missile Crisis. And I wonder if you think there are lessons in any of that for what a secretary general could do today. Yeah, because I think we miss this person called the UN secretary general, who has sort of prestige, who has access to all the top leaders of the world, and who can be this neutral, impartial point of reference. And we don't really know that we miss it, because I think people have forgotten what it was like in the 50s and 60s when that person was there as an instrument for de-escalation, for the diffusion of tensions, and maybe even for the settlement of specific disputes as well.

9:06And I think when we look around the world today and we see a world at war in so many different places in Ukraine, in the Middle East, in Sudan, and elsewhere, again, I think we should look back on that time and remember that the UN's key function, key reason for it being set up, was to prevent an war, and that there used to be this person called the UN Secretary General that was counted on and turned to, to play a decisive role in ending these wars.

9:33U Thant's grandson:Thank you very much for your time. Thanh Mint Yew is the author of the book Peacemaker, You Thond, and the Forgotten Quest for a Just World. Thank you. And he spoke with NPR's Michelle Kalman.

9:50And that's the State of the World from NPR. Thanks for listening.