The quiet diplomat who mediated a superpower nuclear standoff
“Neither would wish to be remembered by history, if any history survived, as having jointly precipitated the end of human civilization.”
U Thant was a Burmese teacher, civil servant and diplomat who became the third UN Secretary-General during the Cold War, when decolonization and international negotiation were reshaping the organization. During the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, he appealed to John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev, proposed a face-saving link between turning back Soviet ships and removing missiles from Cuba, then travelled to Cuba to discuss verification with Fidel Castro. His mediation lowered the danger of nuclear war, yet the UN's quiet diplomacy was long overshadowed by superpower-centered accounts of the crisis. He also directed peacekeeping in the Congo and pursued negotiations to end the Vietnam War, exposing the tension between an international institution's moral obligations and great-power politics.
Career timeline
1928–1931Teacher and headmaster, National High School, Pantanaw
1948Director of Broadcasting, Burma
1951–1957Secretary to the Prime Minister of Burma
1955Secretary of the Bandung Conference
1957–1961Burma's Permanent Representative to the UN
1961Chairman of the UN Congo Commission
1961–1971Secretary-General of the United Nations
1971–1974Senior fellow, Adlai Stevenson Institute of International Affairs
The Ecuadorian UN envoy who shuttled through six years of Geneva talks to frame the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan
Gorbachev decided to withdraw 'because of perestroika and diplomacy,' he later wrote in his memoir, 'reinforced by military pressure': not because of Stinger missiles alone.
Cordovez was an Ecuadorian diplomat and UN Under-Secretary-General who, as Pérez de Cuéllar's Personal Representative on Afghanistan from 1982, spent six years shuttling between the Pakistani and Afghan delegations in Geneva to broker the accords that framed the Soviet withdrawal. He entered the UN in 1963 as part of Raúl Prebisch's team that founded UNCTAD, rose to head the ECOSOC secretariat, and handled crises from the Iran hostage affair to the Iran-Iraq war. The Geneva Accords were signed on 14 April 1988; Cordovez, nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, later served as Ecuador's foreign minister and UN ambassador.
Career timeline
1935.11.03Born in Quito, Ecuador
1962Law degree with honors, University of Chile; admitted to the bar
1963Joined the UN; helped Raúl Prebisch found UNCTAD
1978UN Assistant Secretary-General for Economic and Social Matters
1981–1988Under-Secretary-General for Special Political Affairs; Personal Representative of the Secretary-General on Afghanistan
1988.04.14Brokered the signing of the Geneva Accords, framing the Soviet withdrawal
1988–1992Foreign Minister of Ecuador
2005–2007Permanent Representative of Ecuador to the UN
