Peacemaker by Thant Myint-U: Gin-swilling Buddhist who averted World War III
PEACEMAKER: U THANT, THE UNITED NATIONS, AND THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE 1960s by Thant Myint-U (Atlantic Books £22, 384pp)
CAN you name the current secretary-general of the United Nations? In the 1960s, everyone who followed the news could. Indeed, U Thant was something of a celebrity. Former Beatle John Lennon, underwater explorer Jacques Cousteau and actor Burgess Meredith, the Penguin in the TV series Batman, attended his retirement farewell lunch in 1971 (Lennon insisted on playing his new song, Imagine). Singer Joan Baez sent a message.
U Thant - Secretary General of the UN
Yet until he was nearly 40, Thant (he had only a single personal name, ‘U’ roughly equates to ‘Mister’) had been a schoolteacher in Burma (now Myanmar). He joined government service after independence in 1948 and in less than a decade rose to be his country’s ambassador to the UN, the New York-based organisation set up in the wake of the Second World War to try to keep world peace.
And in 1961, after the death of the UN’s second secretary-general, Dag Hammarskjold, Thant replaced him. He was the only candidate acceptable to both the Americans and the Soviets as well as the Arabs and the Israelis. This biography, by his grandson, focuses on his ten-year, two-term tenure, during the coldest years of the Cold War.
Thant mediated conflicts in the Congo and Kashmir but the surge of goodwill and optimism that had swept him into office evaporated all too quickly. He sought a resolution to the war in Vietnam but fell out of favour with Washington when he expressed the view that the Americans needed to negotiate with the North Vietnamese and implied – quite correctly – that the true facts of the war were being withheld from the American people.
He lost further support over his stance on the Six-Day War between Israel and a number of Arab states in 1967 when he advocated for a peace based on an Israeli withdrawal from recently occupied territories. Perhaps his greatest success was the role he played in helping to de-escalate the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, when the US and the USSR squared up to each other over the siting of Soviet atomic missiles in Cuba.
Fidel Castro with U Thant
Thant was able to act as a neutral messenger between the Americans and the Soviets and to successfully propose a way out that both sides could take without losing face. F EW realised at the time how close the world had come to a nuclear war, but in January 1963, Thant received an unprecedented joint letter, signed by representatives of both the US and USSR administrations, in ‘appreciation of his efforts in assisting our governments to avert the serious threat to the peace which recently arose in the Caribbean area’.
Although the focus in historian Thant Myint-U’s briskly written book is very much on his grandfather’s diplomatic work, we also get a real sense of the man, a gentle, conservative Buddhist who always acted in what he believed were the best interests of peace.
Thant dressed smartly, favouring dark suits, Egyptian poplin shirts and striped ties. A tailors’ magazine declared him the most elegant world leader. He had a dry sense of humour. The French had initially opposed his appointment as secretary-general, reportedly complaining that he was ‘too short’ for the role. Thant responded to journalists, ‘You can tell them that I am taller than Napoleon.’
One of his special representatives, Gunnar Jarring, was famously media-averse. Once, when he was reported to have replied, ‘No comment’ to the Press, Thant observed, ‘I’m sure Jarring would never have gone as far as that.’ He hosted hearty, boozy lunches in his office on the 38th floor of the UN’s headquarters.
On April 14, 1965, then British prime minister Harold Wilson was among the 20 guests who enjoyed a meal of jellied eggs, veal, and ice cream, washed down with most of a bottle of whisky, a bottle of gin, nine bottles of Château Laville HautBrion, and five bottles of Veuve Clicquot, finished off with French liqueurs and brandy. H OWEVER, he also suffered personal tragedy.
He and his wife had three children but the first died as a toddler and their other son died aged 20 in May 1962 when he fell from a moving bus. In July 1962,Thant had his first audience with the Queen. Thant later told a Press aide that the first thing the Queen said was: ‘As a mother I know how much you must have suffered when you heard the terrible news of the death of your son.’ Thant said she had tears in her eyes, as did he.
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Aside from specific crises that Thant had to deal with, the broad issue that most troubled him was that of racism, a problem at every level of society. Adam Malick Sow was Chad’s ambassador to the UN and the US government.
On one occasion, driving from New York to Washington, he stopped at a diner for coffee but the owner’s wife refused to serve him because he was black. She explained later that she had no idea he was an ambassador, saying, ‘He looked like just an ordinary run-of-the-mill n***** to me.’ In 1971, in a phone call to president Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, then governor of California, referred to African delegates at the UN as ‘those monkeys . . .damn them, they’re still uncomfortable wearing shoes!’ Nixon laughed.
Perhaps as a result of the seeming intractability of the problems on Earth, he began to develop an interest in extraterrestrial matters.
'He reads all the books and articles about “flying saucers”,’ his close colleague Ralph Bunche noted. He told a political commentator that he believed UFOs were the biggest challenge facing mankind, next to the war in Vietnam. In addition, towards the end of his tenure, he became a fervent advocate for environmental protection. Ultimately, this is a compelling but rather depressing work.
When Thant retired in 1971, the New York Times praised the fact he had at least managed to keep alive the hope of ‘a closer human community’. Laudable but a far cry from the hope expressed by president Kennedy in 1963 that the UN would ‘develop into a genuine world security system . . . creating conditions under which arms can finally be abolished’.
Thant died in 1974. His remains were taken to Rang oon but the ruling military regime’s decision not to give Thant a state funeral triggered profound anti-government feeling. The burial became a flashpoint for unrest. How sadly ironic that the final send-off for a man so devoted to peace descended into violent disorder at which an unknown number of protesters were killed.
