DANGEROUS DIPLOMACY
Bureaucracy, Power Politics, and
the Role of the UN Secretariat in Rwanda
(2010)
Dangerous Diplomacy reassesses the role of the United Nations Secretariat during the Rwandan genocide.
With the help of new sources, including the personal 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 institutional 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 precise roles of some key UN departments.
More information on Dangerous Diplomacy and its contents can be found on the global website of Oxford University Press here. Reviews of the book can be found in the ‘External Reviews’ page of this site here.
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
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword
Introduction: Bureaucracy, Power, and Tragedy in Rwanda
Part I: Structures
- Department of Peacekeeping Operations
- Department of Political Affairs
- United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda
- Secretary-General’s Office
- Security Council
Part II: Processes
- Bureaucracy
- Intelligence
- Leadership
- Morality
- Peacebuilding
Conclusion: The UN Secretariat, Yesterday and Today
FURTHER DETAILS
- Format: Hardcover and E-Book
- Published: 10 October 2017
- Pages: 320
- Size: 9.2 x 6.1 inches
- ISBN: 9780198733591