DANGEROUS DIPLOMACY
Bureaucracy, Power Politics,
and the Role of the UN Secretariat in Rwanda
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017
Dangerous Diplomacy reassesses the role of the United Nations Secretariat during the Rwandan genocide, including the institutional pathologies that contributed to it.
With the help of new sources, including the diaries and private papers of the late Sir Marrack Goulding (an Under-Secretary-General from 1988 to 1997 and the second highest-ranking UN official during the genocide), the book situates the Rwanda operation within the context of bureaucratic and power-political friction existing at UN Headquarters in the early 1990s
The book shows how this confrontation led to a lack of coordination between key UN departments on issues as diverse as reconnaissance, intelligence, and crisis management.
Yet Dangerous Diplomacy goes beyond these pathologies and identifies the conceptual origins of the Rwanda failure in the gray area that separates peacebuilding and peacekeeping.
The difficulty of separating these two UN functions explains why six decades after the birth of the UN, it has still not been possible to demarcate the roles of key UN departments.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Bureaucracy, Power, and Tragedy in Rwanda
- Department of Peacekeeping Operations
- Department of Political Affairs
- United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda
- Secretary-General’s Office
- Security Council
- Bureaucracy
- Intelligence
- Leadership
- Morality
- Peacebuilding
Conclusion: The UN Secretariat, Yesterday and Today
Features
Dangerous Diplomacy:
- Features exclusive material from the late Sir Marrack Goulding’s archive, including diary entries from 1986 to 2005
- Provides an in-depth, insider view of UN institutional history and the Rwandan genocide
- Shows the relationship between power politics and UN bureaucracy
- Examines the institutional history of the United Nations, suggesting how and why several of the bureaucratic pathologies which affected the UN Secretariat during the Rwandan genocide are still present in New York today.
More information can be found on the global website of Oxford University Press here. Reviews can be found here.
Awards
Winner of the 2018 ISA Chadwick Alger Prize for Best Book on International Organization
Winner of the 2016-18 Biennial Book Award by the Academic Council on the UN System
Other Details
- Format: Hardcover and E-Book
- Published: 10 October 2017
- Pages: 320
- Size: 9.2 x 6.1 inches
- ISBN: 9780198733591
- Dust Jacket Download: PDF
- Publisher’s Website Page: click here