PEACEMAKER

Comprehensive biography of the long-serving United Nations secretary general.

As Burmese historian Thant observes, U Thant (the “U” is an honorific, something like “Mr.”) was, among many other things, “a central figure in averting nuclear catastrophe during the Cuban Missile Crisis.” Even so, Thant adds, U Thant seldom figures in standard histories of that episode and is underrepresented in the literature of the Cold War, one of the little-mentioned “non-white peacemakers on the world stage.” When U Thant arrived in New York in 1957, on that same excluding non-white front, he had difficulty finding a place to live, landlords having been reluctant to rent to Asians. Thant adds, “African diplomats were celebrated at society dinners, but many were denied basic rights beyond the UN’s carpeted corridors,” including not being served in restaurants in still-segregated America. When U Thant finally settled in as the recently independent Burma’s representative to the U.N., he was determined to address world issues: nuclear war, colonialism, international conflicts. He was clear-eyed about the fate of small nations in the contest between the U.S. and the USSR, and, although an anti-communist, he believed that Vietnam was fated to become a communist nation and that the choice should be made by the Vietnamese. That brought him into sharp conflict with the administration of Lyndon Johnson: “Thant’s standing in Washington had deteriorated sharply because of his opposition to the war in Vietnam.” In the bigger picture, Thant writes, U Thant had come to lead the U.N. among a powerful body of postcolonial leaders—Nehru, Nasser, Sukarno, Kwame Nkrumah—most of whom were dead by the time he left office, leaving him somewhat isolated. As Thant writes in this skillfully written biography, U Thant deserves credit for many things apart from his role in averting the Cuban Missile Crisis—including his deliberately “discreet” diplomacy in securing permission for Soviet Jews to emigrate to Israel.

A welcome addition to modern diplomatic and world history.