THE ORDEAL OF A PEACEMAKER
Wechsler, James A.
THE ORDEAL OF A PEACEMAKER by JAMES A. WECHSLER Tn the crisis-ridden years since 1961, when he assumed the United Nations post left vacant by Dag Hammar-skjold's sudden death, U Thant has on...
...I had been talking with a learned friend during the first hours of the war...
...later, strength was the obstacle...
...I believe capitalism is going to stay...
...document of June 26 previously cited, there appeared this official statement of the fact in a review of the events of May 18: "21...
...There is no neat answer except that The Times is a large, sometimes puzzling institution where a certain lack of coherence and communication is perhaps predictable—but whose influence on other news organs is prompt and almost overwhelming...
...it was almost an embarrassment to seem to be checking on his word...
...But the implication seemed clear that his journey depended on avoidance of any advance plea for abandonment of Nasser's demand...
...Perhaps it will be said that they do things differently in Texas...
...As Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and all other religions are existing peacefully in amity, I believe a day will come when these different societies—Communist societies, socialist societies, capitalist societies, or any other types of societies—are going to exist peacefully...
...Thfe Secretary-General met at this time with the Permanent Representative of Israel who gave his government's view on the situation, emphasizing that the UNEF withdrawal should not be achieved by a United Arab Republic request alone and asserting Israel's right to a voice in the matter...
...Many days prior to release of that report I had confirmed for myself the inadequacy of such initial impressions...
...To its great credit, The Times published the full text of U Thant's report to the General Assembly on the events leading to the withdrawal of UNEF—and this report, together with the news story, filled three pages of its June 28 issue...
...there was a clear and present danger to the UNEF troops for whose lives he held special responsibility...
...Bunche took the position— and was under the impression that "People just don't understand the problems of parents these days" Gross concurred—that such a document, which was in effect a personal memoir, had "no legal standing," and Thant shared that judgment...
...In the same meeting Thant asked if he could visit Cairo and was told that he would be welcome...
...Rusk's antennae could pick up "the signal...
...A major American involvement could have stirred new backlashes of anti-Semitism...
...In many ways Thant's handling of the Nasser affair was a revealing exhibit of the blend of principle and pragmatism that shapes his conduct at 'the United Nations...
...a lackey of capitalist oppressors, and a tool of dangerous "Third World" revolutionaries...
...Few episodes in modern times have been so crudely distorted, and truth is still vainly pursuing many of the thoughtless accusations...
...There is no compelling evidence that he did...
...Throughout this interval it should be added that Thant believed Ho Chi Minh was more disposed to heed Soviet rather than Chinese counsel if only Mr...
...When Thant finally consented, there was a widespread assumption that he had shrewdly exacted some hard concessions, especially from the major powers...
...If there has been any single blunder in Thant's regime, it may well have occurred in late 1966 when he announced his resolve to resign from "the loneliest job in the world...
...And now, as this is written in July, 1967, General Westmoreland is warning that he cannot hold the line without 100,000 or more troops...
...The question of stationing UNEF on the Israeli side of the line was raised by the Secretary-General and this was declared by the Permanent Representative of Israel to be entirely unacceptable to his government" (Emphasis added...
...And so one reverts to the initial question: How could U Thant have become the target of so much vilification in this country—especially since the military result spared Lyndon Johnson the ordeal of a decision that might have created a new domestic crisis...
...why, they might be asking querulously, didn't Thant succeed in saving Nasser from himself...
...I must qualify the point by observing that I do not read every newspaper or monitor every television show—but there was plainly no hot general pursuit of the story...
...Fortunately this fifty-nine-year-old former schoolmaster seems to possess infinite resources of Buddhist stoicism, and a capacity to look beyond any immediate search for power and glory...
...But there is no peace for U Thant as small men in many places continue their guerrilla war against him...
...In carrying out my functions, however, I find it necessary sometimes to suppress my own convictions and approach my tasks with impartiality and keep the views of the member states and the interests of the organization foremost in mind...
...A calamitous confrontation was averted, and the United Nations— divided, weak, discordant, clamorous as it often appears—had reestablished at least a semblance of order...
...Translated into the terms of the Israeli-Arab collision, Thant could not afford the luxury of indulging any private sentiments...
...In more immediate terms, Thant has long been convinced that the preservation of even a fragile structure of peace and the creative functioning of the United Nations hinges on a growing accommodation between the United States and the Soviet Union...
...In fact the memorandum had first been brought to the United Nations' attention by Ernest Gross, a former Hammarskjold aide and international lawyer, through a telephone call to U.N...
...policy in Asia is the belief that the Communist thrust can be effectively resisted with arms...
...the Secretary-General tried to prevent the crisis from getting out of hand...
...Time and again under U Thant's regime the United Nations has performed such a role...
...What may appear to be a mystery in motivation is perhaps not too elusive, however, when contemplated against a broader intensity of the "get-Thant" background and in the context of events long preceding the 1967 Arab-Israeli hostilities...
...At the very least U Thant was charged with spineless submission...
...I hasten to add that I am not alleging a sinister plot but only lamenting the negligence of our highest-powered news media...
...President Johnson, whose private assessments of Thant in bull sessions with selected journalists had been less than enthusiastic, to put it mildly (as frequently reflected in the writings of some White House mouthpieces), was among those who urged Thant to stay on...
...Yet the fact is that the new anti-Thant onslaught was in large measure nourished by American sources, and much of it has been traceable to the highest official levels in Washington...
...The facts are beyond dispute: A story that would have sharply challenged the image of U Thant's UNEF move as "pro-Nasser" was ignored for two weeks, and a dubious footnote to history that seemed to discredit him was given large notice—without any explanation of the dubious circumstances of its issuance...
...Meanwhile a fortnight had elapsed in which the build-up of the anti-Thant drive had steadily mounted without any enlightenment on this point from The Times or any other mass communications media...
...At the same time he asked for the removal of U.N...
...I am a very political animal," he once told a reporter...
...forces once Nasser began his move...
...circles in New York suggested this might be different...
...Soviet Premier Kosygin gave his personal endorsement to the prophesy...
...he does not count...
...The next day Eban graciously modified his critique of U Thant and did not dispute the facts about the Secretary-General's plea to Israel that failed...
...a wide-eyed captive of a world he never made and a crafty oriental wearing a mask of virtue...
...For overwhelming as American sympathies were with Israel—if only because the Arabs had long proclaimed Israel's extinction as their goal—the polls showed little enthusiasm for a new military intervention...
...Nasser's thunder had often been strangely unaccompanied by lightning...
...Unhappily, and this was perhaps his blunder, the evidence is that he settled for little more than assurances of their highest esteem...
...The question seemed an obvious one that had inexplicably eluded all of us...
...Suddenly he became that rare phenomenon—the indispensable man...
...I heard well-founded reports of divisions within our own National Security Council over the extent to which the United States should honor its commitment if war broke out, in the light of our involvement in Vietnam...
...THE ORDEAL OF A PEACEMAKER by JAMES A. WECHSLER Tn the crisis-ridden years since 1961, when he assumed the United Nations post left vacant by Dag Hammar-skjold's sudden death, U Thant has on various occasions and in diverse quarters been alternately damned as a creature of U.S...
...My feeling is that nobody should aspire to be Secretary-General for more than one term," he said...
...He worked closely and sympathetically with Adlai Stevenson in that quest...
...In any case I published this report the following day...
...But that would be the largest sin that could be ascribed to him...
...Perhaps no world figure has shown more conscientious fidelity to the late President Kennedy's resolve to "make the world safe for diversity...
...He believes there is a recurrent naivete in American stereotypes about the Asian Communist monolith...
...It was at about that time that a wise British diplomat observed to a small group: "You know, the trouble with us is that, because we're Westerners, we always assume that we speak directly and that because U Thant is Burmese he's playing some clever, devious game...
...The attentive student may contend that The Times' seeming identification with the anti-Thant operations can scarcely be ascribed to his Vietnam position, with which that newspaper is so largely in accord...
...informed the Secretary-General that the Foreign Minister had asked the Permanent Representative by telephone from Cairo to convey to the Secretary-General his urgent advice that the Secretary-General should not make an appeal to President Nasser to reconsider the request for withdrawal of UNEF and that, if he did so, such a request would be sternly rebuffed" (Emphasis added...
...On Monday, June 24, that newspaper, which had not yet reported the U Thant proposal for transfer of the troops to Israel's side of the frontier carried a page-one story from Washington describing a ten-year-old memorandum written by Dag Ham-marskjold and offering his interpretation of an agreement he had reached with Nasser in 1956 on the disposition of UNEF...
...representative in Rangoon...
...Yet this time the atmosphere in U.N...
...He views the American "quarantine" of Peking as a self-defeating disaster...
...I do have strong political convictions on specific issues...
...For better or worse, it was the nature of U Thant to consider the unanimity of appeals for his continued presence as sufficient personal testimonial, as proof of the urgency of his mission, and the only tangible form of reassurance in a world of cheap rhetoric...
...the story of that debacle was later unfolded by Eric Sevareid and was wholly consistent with private communications from Stevenson that I published in the pages of The Progressive after his death...
...Senator Jacob Javits had told me some days earlier that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee had received ominous reports of the extent of the Soviet arms investment in Egypt...
...But Stevenson lost the battle of Washington (if indeed he ever had the chance to fight...
...It was not his fault...
...As columnist Clayton Fritchey, former aide to the late Adlai Stevenson at the United Nations, was to note in a quiet rebuttal to the assaults, the continuing hysteria of Thant's critics was especially grotesque in the light of the military outcome...
...In almost any large world decision there remain margins for ensuing debate and speculation...
...files...
...what would have happened if the United Nations had not existed as an arena in which the conflict could be ventilated and the Russians had in fact come to the aid of their embattled Arab allies with serious armed action rather than unlimited polemic...
...He said what puzzled him most was that, when Nasser made his move, the Israelis had failed to counter it by declaring their readiness to take the force on their side of the line...
...In short, on the first occasion Thant's formula had been spurned in the name of weakness...
...Perhaps Nasser now wishes that he had...
...Impressive as is the case Thant finally spelled out in his timetable of trouble, some may still insist that he should have taken the first plane for Cairo before even acknowledging Nasser's demand for withdrawal of UNEF...
...the force had never been conceived as an "occupation army...
...But nothing happened...
...Finally, in the U.N...
...It continues: "Later in the day, the representative to the U.A.R...
...At U Thant's suggestion, I confirmed the story in other places...
...Max Ascoli of The Reporter wrote, ". . . let's forget about him...
...10:30 hours New York time...
...On that fateful May 18, after his unsuccessful meeting with the Israelis at the United Nations, the report reveals that Thant told the United Arab Republic envoy of his "deep misgivings about the likely disastrous consequences of the withdrawal of UNEF and indicated his intention to appeal urgently to President Nasser to reconsider the decision...
...He serves a large, sprawling body known as the United Nations, and his transcendent loyalty is to that institution...
...But this surely seemed a crucial, unreported aspect of events, casting a sharply different light on descriptions of U Thant's "impetuous" or "reckless" conduct...
...The full record of the agony of Thant's decision is contained in a document released by the United Nations on June 26 called "Report of the Secretary-General on the withdrawal of the United Nations Emergency Force...
...he is a former diplomat whose emotional involvement in the Israeli cause was beyond dispute...
...He is a man with no large constituency—except the anonymous multitudes of war-weary mankind...
...In some liberal salons it was not uncommon to hear him depicted as a sinister figure who had finally exposed the depths of his anti-Jewish prejudices...
...Now the word was that the military position had improved so remarkably that it would be premature to talk peace...
...I believe parliamentary democracy is going to stay...
...For it was through the United Nations that a cease-fire was quickly achieved...
...It covers thirty-four mimeographed pages and it can only be suggested here that anyone who has capricously condemned Thant as a light-headed, fainthearted spirit or a diabolical enemy of Israel ponder the document before closing the book on him...
...They rather raised questions—as U Thant with unusual asperity observed thereafter—about the origins, timing, and intent of this journalistic coup...
...U Thant would obviously have been the leading contender for the role, and probably no amount of reasonable reflection would have cleared the air for a long time...
...Stevenson died, to be replaced by Arthur Goldberg, with whom U Thant established a comparably fraternal association...
...But in the immediate matter he saw no legal justification for rejecting Nasser's call for UNEF's withdrawal...
...He has long been dismayed by Arab refusal to negotiate an over-all settlement...
...But they are the essence of his faith...
...Publication of the memorandum appeared to offer proof that U Thant was guilty of double-cross, doublethink, and double-standard in dismissing or burying a document that could have enabled him at least to buy time...
...It helps to explain why Thant rejected pleas to delay any action on UNEF until he had flown to Cairo...
...Gross brought a carbon of the memorandum to Bunche's office on May 22...
...In doing so I made the point that there might well have been valid "psychological and strategic" reasons for Israel's response (as for its initial refusal to permit a UNEF detachment on its side when Egypt agreed to do so in the arrangements after the Suez war more than a decade ago...
...Eventually the Secretary-General felt able to assert publicly, after personal contacts abroad, that negotiations could begin "in three weeks" if we halted the bombings of the North...
...JAMES A. WECHSLER is editor of the editorial page of The New York Post and a featured columnist for that paper...
...he is also a long-time admirer of U Thant...
...Few men are less prone than U Thant to claim total retroactive wisdom for all their deeds...
...But rarely have his resources of spirit been so harshly tested for the wrong reasons as in the dangerous weeks of the Middle East explosion and its aftermath...
...Such words have unquestionably branded Thant an incorrigible innocent—or worse—among the Ruskian doctrinarians at the State Department and in the Pentagon, just as they would be deemed "bourgeois revisionism" by the current war lords in Peking...
...Thus, in the here and now, Thant has been deeply preoccupied with the threat of a new estrangement between the United States and Moscow...
...A sense of weariness and a lack of lust for combat, mingled with concern for his family, induced him to make the statement...
...At the same time, as events evolved, the United Nations retrieved a measure of prestige...
...The truth is that too often we're playing the games and he's speaking directly— and so we miss the point...
...heading, and no copy of it exists in the U.N...
...I called U Thant who said that he could tell me "for background purposes" that he had made such a proposal to the Israelis before announcing compliance with Nasser's demand...
...imperialism and a cunning collaborator with Soviet agents (and other species of the Communist breed...
...The largest source of that threat, for many long months prior to the Middle East crisis, was Vietnam...
...It was quickly apparent that there was no serious successor in sight...
...Actually the detailed record is responsive to many questions...
...If the removal of UNEF had paved the way for the triumph of Nasser's long-proclaimed "holy war" of annihilation against Israel and the destruction of a small state born of so many centuries of a people's torment, the search for a scapegoat would have been inevitable if uninspiring...
...columnist Joseph Alsop called him a "poltroon...
...Much of the story of U Thant's frustration as Secretary-General concerns his effort to terminate or decisively de-escalate that war...
...Not until two weeks later, after Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban, in the course of a memorably eloquent recital of Israel's fight for life, parenthetically scolded Thant for the withdrawal did the Secretary-General rise publicly in his own defense and record his attempt to shift UNEF to Israeli territory...
...Did he miscalculate Nasser's intentions...
...Thant has never discerned any infallibility in the "domino" theory so long advanced by John Foster Dulles and sanctified by Rusk...
...It was my assumption—and perhaps U Thant's as well—that my publication of this story, even without attribution, would evoke prompt follow-up by The New York Times, the Associated Press, and other major agencies...
...It is a very killing job and from time to time very frustrating...
...But none of the unjust and often contradictory calumny to which he has been subjected has approached in irrational fury the characterizations applied to him by large numbers of articulate Americans and others in the hours and days that followed the withdrawal of the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) from Egypt at the behest of President Nasser...
...But in view of the way things actually turned out (and granted the uncertainties that still remain), it would seem far more plausible for Thant to have been the object of hatred of the humiliated Arab chieftains and their Soviet sponsors...
...It describes the physical vulnerability of the U.N...
...Under-Secretary Ralph Bunche one day after Thant had agreed to UNEF's withdrawal...
...In the ensuing weeks I had the sense that not many people had read beyond the headlines...
...Those who do not know him may find it hard to comprehend why Thant himself so long delayed authorization of the full chronicle...
...forces, he moved his own forces into the positions held by the United Nations...
...It is a measure of Thant's infinite grace and dignity—and self-respect— that he refused to drive a bargain...
...By a wild coincidence of history, U Thant's action and Israel's army spared the United States, for the foreseeable future, a great moral burden...
...He should never have been counted...
...He failed...
...The Associated Press quickly picked up the tale, and it won swift national notice...
...These "super-powers" are formally committed to the credo of coexistence...
...Nothing said before or thereafter seems a more precise summary of U Thant's predicament...
...I heard him repeat that assertion in a private conversation as late as March 10 of this year...
...Then the headlines announced that U Thant had acquiesced in Nasser's demand for pull-out of the UNEF troops...
...An equally extraordinary journalistic circumstance preceded Thant's own airing of his side of the story—and again The New York Times played a prominent role...
...delegate, Gideon Rafael, when he said on June 3: "The crisis in the Middle East erupted without warning when an Egyptian general sent an ultimatum to the commander of UNEF...
...In that period the American negativism about negotiations was apparently based—according to subsequent disclosures—on a dread that the South Vietnamese government would collapse if word of such peace talks leaked out...
...a neutralist lacking in moral conviction and a subtle sponsor of Asian subversion...
...But again the details hardly sustained the critique...
...It is difficult to review even these fragments of the record without suggesting that Thant had, among other things, committed the anti-American offense of being infinitely more prescient than Dean Rusk in seeking to arrange a peace...
...The campaign against Thant can be fully understood only as a reprisal for his refusal to concede the high rectitudes of the United States stand in Vietnam and for his even more profound disagreement with the vision of Asian events initially transmitted by Dean Rusk to John F. Kennedy and more boldly advanced in the Johnson era...
...Perhaps most important, it had not been initialed by Nasser...
...According to the Ham-marskjold document, Nasser had agreed in private discourse that UNEF could not be withdrawn until both the United Nations and Egypt agreed it had fulfilled its function...
...There were signs of the approaching Middle East storm, but many disparaged them...
...they had firmly rejected the idea...
...Several years ago Thant remarked: "Whether we like it or not, I believe Communism is going to stay...
...The more serious query is why the memo was so belatedly "leaked" to The New York Times (not by Gross) when it could have only academic relevance at that juncture, and why it was so prominently exhibited when its significance was so dubious...
...in the winter of 1965 they glimpsed a small light at the end of the tunnel when Hanoi agreed to secret conferences with a U.S...
...As anyone who has spoken privately to him knows, Thant is on the contrary passionately convinced that a basic delusion of U.S...
...Yet perhaps the soberest evaluation was voiced by Israel's permanent U.N...
...It seems clearly to have been his conclusion that he could neither protect principle nor save the peace by holding out until the General Assembly met to debate and dawdle...
...Perhaps the verdict of history will be that such guys finish last (and look where Leo Durocher and his Chicago Cubs were on July 4...
...their rivalry long ago lost the quality of a sacred crusade and, in many respects, the Moscow-Peking struggle has far more intense aspects of ideological fanaticism...
...It bore no U.N...
...The New York Times decried his "precipitous" action...
...From virtually every corner of the United Nations, and eventually from Washington and Moscow, came entreaties that he remain at his post...
...Yet, when Goldberg—after, one suspects, some earnest Potomac diplomacy—publicly affirmed last December our readiness to accept U Thant's guidance in steering us to the peace-table and Thant renewed his plea for cessation of the bombings, the Johnson Administration proceeded to act as if Goldberg had never spoken...
...While temporary armistices offer no lasting salvation, surely they are preferable to the kind of blow-up that could have occurred...
...a weak-kneed capitu-lator and a devious conspirator...
...It is possible to quibble...
...Pragmatically, he saw no prospect of success in evasion or filibuster, but rather the peril of armed conflict between Egypt and the thin UNEF legions, whose Indian and Yugoslav units were on the verge of being withdrawn by their governments...
Vol. 31 • August 1967 • No. 8
