The Challenging Role of the UN Secretary-General: Making The Most Impossible Job in the World Possible

How has the role of the United Nations and its Secretary-General changed with the end of the Cold War? With the beginning of a New World Order? These questions are increasingly significant as the threat of nuclear-bloc confrontation is replaced by ethnic tensions and civil conflicts. In this first study of the office of the UN Secretary-General in this new era, Rivlin and Gordenker bring together leading scholars and practitioners to analyze these issues.

The fifteen essays in this volume discuss the new complexity and salience of the role of the UN Secretary-General and its current incumbent, Boutros Boutros-Ghali. Not only is the role analyzed in relationship to a rapidly changing climate of world politics, but it is also examined in relationship to the backgrounds and experiences of the earlier Secretaries-General from Trygve Lie, Dag Hammarskjold, U Thant, and Kurt Waldheim, to Javier Perez de Cuellar. All those concerned with the UN, international organizations, and international administration will find this volume interesting reading.

BENJAMIN RIVLIN is Director of the Ralph Bunche Institute on the United Nations and Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the City University of New York. He is the author and editor of Ralph Bunche: The Man and His Times (1990), The Contemporary Middle East: Tradition and Innovation (1965), and The United Nations and the Italian Colonies (1950).

LEON GORDENKER is Professor Emeritus of International Relations at Princeton University and Senior Research Fellow at the Ralph Bunche Institute on the United Nations. He is the author of The UN Secretary-General and the Maintenance of International Peace (1967), Refugees in International Politics (1987), and The United Nations in the 1990s (with P. R. Baehr) (1992).