Empire: World History - Murder in the Congo, The Cuban Missile Crisis, & India in the UN (EXTRACT)

Episode Date: June 15, 2025

How did the first Asian UN Secretary General prevent multiple Armeggedons in the 1960s? What is the mystery surrounding his predecessor’s death? How did the Global South shape the UN in a post-colonial landscape? What does the future of the UN look like in these uncertain times? In this special bonus episode we have made public for all, William and Anita are joined by Thant Myint-U, author of Peacekeeper: U Thant, The United Nations and the Untold Story of the 1960s, to discuss how his grandfather left an indelible mark on geopolitics yet has been forgotten by many.  If you want to hear the entire episode and all other bonuses, as well as receive early access to miniseries, ad-free listening, early access to live show tickets, book discounts, our exclusive newsletter, and access to our members’ chatroom on Discord, then head to empirepoduk.com to sign up to Empire Club today! For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com. ----------------- Email: [e-mail] Instagram: @empirepoduk Blue Sky: @empirepoduk X: @empirepoduk Assistant Producer: Becki Hills Producer: Anouska Lewis Senior Producer: Callum Hill Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpowerpoduk.com. Hello and welcome to this bonus episode of Empire. We're doing something different with this one and we're giving everyone access to the bonus this week so you can live a life of an Empire. club member for a day. This is an extract from our brilliant bonus episode that we made to conclude our series on Yalta and the early UN. We talked to my great friend, Thant, Mint, Wu, about the history of the UN in the 1960s and the life of his grandfather, Uthant, who was the first Asian

UN Security General and saw the organization through massive world events like the Cuba Missile Crisis. Our club members get to listen to a fabulous bonus episode like this every two weeks, but that's not all you get with this membership. You also get completely ad-free regular episodes and early access to miniseries, as well as weekly newsletters, which include book discounts for all the books we discussed in the show and access to our chat community

where you can hang out with fellow EmpirePod lovers and ask Anita and I questions, all for the price of a coffee once a month. Enjoy this extract, and if you want to listen to the whole thing, then head over to Empirpoduk.com to become part of the club today. That's Empirepoduky.com and we will love you forever. We're going to come up to your grandfather's great glory days. But tell us about the first two Secretary-General's who preceded him.

So the first was a Norwegian politician named Trigvili, and he left, were resigned, I think it was about eight years later, saying it was the most impossible job in the world. He had tried to kind of find this middle way. He had presented at one point this enormous plan. for world peace. His biggest achievement, perhaps, was in getting that building, that site in New York and having built this masterpiece on the East River under his direction. But in the end, he lost balance in this tightrope between the superpowers. And he sided with the Americans on Korea. He sided

with the Americans on other issues. And the Soviets kind of peeled away from him. And when it came time for his reappointment after five years, the Americans actually bypassed a superiors. Security Council and the Soviets refused to speak to him and then he resigned. And then his replacement was the Swedish technocrat economist Dag Hammersholt, who became this amazing sort of figure on the world stage. So really the first UN Secretary General who became a prominent international figure in his own right. And he was the one who presided over the invention of peacekeeping after the Suez crisis in 1956, and he's the one who became this very active kind of mediator in conflicts all over the world.

And then he... He died. He was killed. So tell us about that, this extraordinary story of his trip to the Congo. Berlin, which I think you've discussed was this great crisis in 1961, but what was also happening at the same time was the Congo crisis. And Congo's this giant country, it just become independent. and the Congo represented different things to different parts of the UN.

So with the Americans, it was to some extent a Cold War kind of issue. But for the Europeans and the West in general, it was something else. It was a test of whether or not a country could become independent, but still be kind of influenced and controlled by the West. And for the Afro Asians, it was a different test. It was a test of whether independence really meant independence. And so there was everything to play for in this Congo crisis. Dag Hammershould pushed through a UN resolution and then deployed over 20,000 UN peacekeeping

troops at the request of the leader of the Congo, Patrice Alamumba. But it was an incredibly complicated situation where the central problem or issue was a succession by Katanga, where white mercenaries were backing a secessionist regime there. And to make a long and very complicated and convoluted story short, I mean, Hammersholt flies into the Congo in late 1961 and his plane disappears, is later found the next day wrecked. And I think because of a series of investigations over the past 10 years in seminal work done by Susan Williams, who's a historian, we now, I think, can say pretty confidently that he was killed in some way. Either the plane was there was an attempt to force down the plane or it was actually shot down. And he was killed in September. Okay, so the obvious question is by who?

Who done it? Who done it? Yeah, and to this day, no one knows. You know, the investigation. So because of Susan Williams' book, the UN began a new investigation, I guess about 10, more than 10 years ago. It's still ongoing. And the US and UK governments still refuse to open all of their files. Oh, really?

So who are the suspects? Well, I guess the main suspect would be the Belgians who were involved. They were the ex-colonial power. They were Belgian mercenaries, as well as British and other mercenaries. is running around all over the place. And there was a particular Belgian mercenary plane that had been flying around strafing UN positions and UN convoys over the past many months. So the Belgians are probably everyone's number one guess in terms of who is involved.

So, I mean, you have the United Nations now convulsed, because if they can reach the Secretary General, then what does it all mean? What do we do? If we're not safe or we're not respected, then what are we for? and that is when your grandfather steps in. There's so many questions I have. He wasn't white. He was from Burma.

He wasn't, you know, one of the usual club types who would sort of sit in the Garrick discussing world events. How did that happen? How did they come to choose him? And what did he feel when the door was knocked on and he decided to walk through? Give us a little sketch of him, an improbable character in many ways to fill this.

Yeah, he's an improbable character. I mean, the amazing thing is he was born and spent almost his entire life until he was almost 40 living this remote Burmese backwater town in the Irrawaddy Delta in a little wooden house, a school teacher, then school headmaster. And so for, you know, well over a decade from his early 20s until his late 30s, was trying to administer raise funds for this little school, teaching history, teaching English, and looking after the students there. and he had been born into a well-to-do family,

but when he was very young, his father died, and a rival branch of the family took away all of the family's land and money. And so his mother was left impoverished, looking after four young boys. And so my grandfather decided that he wouldn't finish university and instead would teach school in his hometown to support his little brothers. And so he was there. And then at age, I can't remember, it was 38 or 39.

Burma becomes independent. and he decides on a career change. And he goes to Rangoon joins the government, he joins the administration. And within 10 years, he had kind of risen up through the ranks and found himself in Midtown Manhattan as Burma's ambassador to the UN at the very center of global politics.

And Burma at that time was a neutral country. He wasn't like now. It was active on the world stage. And he had been part of the prime minister sort of travels around the world. So he had an education in a way, having met Mao and Churchill, and Nehru and Eisenhower.

And what was the process, what was the politicking in New York that got this previously obscure figure, only 10 years earlier, a schoolteacher up River Irwadi? So in those four years that he had been in New York as Burmese ambassador, he developed this reputation as the man who got along with everyone. He championed the FLN in the Algerian Civil War in a way in which, you know, he still was on speaking terms of the French. And so he got along. he was a good diplomat. He was very sort of extroverted. He'd like going to cocktails and meeting people

and going to lunches and dinners every day and everything like that. I think the main thing, though, is that when Hammershaw died, yes, the UN was in crisis. Kennedy came up to New York. Some people thought the UN wouldn't survive the next several weeks because it seemed impossible in the, in the shadow of the Berlin crisis and the Congo crisis that the superpowers could agree on a successor. The Afro-Asians, however, thought and had been thinking for a while that they really needed to make their move. They had come into the UN, had fueled it, had energized it, were ambitious. They really embraced the UN charter in a way the British, the French, the Americans, even, and certainly the Soviets, didn't. And they thought it was time for one of their own.

And they had thought that they would have a year or two, and even if Hammersholt had resigned, they'd have a few months. But now they felt they had to act. And over a few weeks, they decided that my grandfather would be their candidate. And in the end, Kennedy and Khrushchev both agreed. Khrushchev put him on probation. He would only agree that he would be the acting Secretary General for a year. Who was the driving force? Which of those Afro-Asian nations took the lead in choosing him?

The more prominent one. So it was Nehru and Khruma, to a lesser extent, Nasser, to a lesser extent Sukarno. we're all leading this effort in New York at the UN and the Burmese government supported my grandfather as well. An extraordinary moment though, first time in history since Vasco de Gamma that African nations are pushing together. But I don't think it wouldn't have happened if Bandung wouldn't have happened.

So, I mean, we sort of skirted over Bandung, but many years ago I got obsessed with the Bandung Conference. But that was the first time that you had countries that had felt powerless and exploited who got together and saw just how many of them there were. And, you know, they discovered, the power of the flecks that together, you know, we form a formidable group. Had Bandung not happened? Had these people not had face time with each other? Had they not discussed just how wealthy,

powerful, populace they were? You would never have had this kind of takeover the United Nations. No, absolutely. And also, the non-aligned movement had just been formed. So there was a Belgrade meeting just a few weeks before. That's what I was going to ask. How far was this non-aligned push? Yeah. So that was, that basically meant that the Afro-Asians and connect. with Yugoslavia, which hosted an online movement inaugural kind of meeting in Belgrade, but also other neutral countries like Ireland and Sweden as well. My grandfather worked very closely with those governments when he was ambassador. So all of these non-aligned neutral countries wanted a non-aligned neutral person, and he seemed one of the two or three kind of obvious choices

because of his record in New York. But he was on an American shortlist as well. And, you know, in researching my book, I found these records, the American embassy, saying he's actually very pro-American, he's an anti-communist. And this somewhat, you know, sort of cryptic message from the U.S. mission in New York, Adelaide Stevenson, who was the ambassador then, to Washington saying, Uthad is our man. And that was a message said a few months before Hammersholt was actually killed. My grandfather wasn't Belgrade. And surprisingly, you know, journalists had nothing to do. The meeting itself seemed kind of boring, so they were looking for things to write. And the Guardian and other newspapers started portraying him,

writing portraits of him as someone who could eventually take over from Hammershaw. Just a minute. I think we have another suspect then, don't we? I mean, if you've got the Americans saying he's our man, and then suddenly the man who has the job is blown out the sky. Yeah, it's still very mysterious exactly how things clicked together. You know, one country that actually had a final say was Israel because, and this is, you know, again, another long and complicated story, but Israel and Burma had very close relations. And my grandfather was the only, ambassador from what was then called third world countries that would go to Israeli receptions and be friends with the Israelis. He thought the Arabs and the Israelis should make peace

with one another. And the Israelis blocked the other possible third world candidate who was a Tunisian named Mongi Slim. So in the end, it was between these two. And because of Israel, actually, as much as anything else, he was, that was chosen rather than Mungi Slim. So it was a mix of things that came together. But my grandfather knew that he was on probation. that he had a year without any power to rescue the UN from this moment of crisis. And, if I'm right in thinking the Soviets up to this point, we're thinking of a new system, the Troika system. Tell us about that before they settled on your grandfather.

Yeah, they were so unhappy with Hammersholt, because Hamishol was this brilliant, active Secretary General, but in the end still doing very much, I mean, in line with the American positions, and still very much doing what the Americans would have wanted the UN to do and helping the British and French in Suez, for example, and tacking fairly close to the American position in the Congo as well. So the Soviets were extremely unhappy. They refused to pay their Jews to the UN,

which meant that the UN was in financial crisis. And so Khrushchev comes to the UN in 1960 and proposes this Troika system, which meant that Hammersholt would be replaced, he demands Hammersholt's resignation, and suggests that he'd be replaced with three people, one representing the Soviets, one representing the West, if one representing the neutral countries.

And that would have effectively hobbled the UN, it would have meant the end of the Secretary-Generalship. So there he is. He's trying to stabilise a ship that is rocking on very stormy waters, the stormiest of waters. You lose your Secretary-General in an act of mysterious and as-yet-unolved violence. And he immediately hits a year later the Cuban Missile Crisis. Now, just, I mean, for those who don't know how close we came to,

world war. Can you just give us a tiny bit of background and then how your grandfather stepped into that disaster zone? This was the height of the Cold War. Everyone's focus was on Berlin, but Khrushchev had decided that he would make this gamble and he smuggled in or thought he was going to smuggle in most of the Soviet atomic arsenal onto Cuba. That would mean that the Americans would lose the advantage that they had in intercontinental ballistic missiles, the American had medium-range missiles in Turkey and in Italy, and by putting Soviet medium-range missiles, because they didn't have very many intercontinental ballistic missiles at the time, the Soviet side, by putting these medium-range missiles so close to America in Cuba, right up their nose,

that they would be able to basically threaten the Americans. So Khrushchev wanted to smuggle them in, and then when the Americans found out it would already be a fet accompli, but the Americans found out quite quickly, and then everything escalated, because Kennedy then had to decide what to do in the face of this very clear new Soviet threat. And with my grandfather, I mean, the thing to say is a background to that is that the first thing he had to tackle when he became Secretary John was actually, well, there was a financial crisis, but then the Congo. He had lots of trouble with Harold McMillan and the British government at the time.

He wanted to take a much more robust position, but the British were blocking him. And so Thant wanted to establish the closest personal relationship he could with both Kennedy and Khrushchev, basically to outflank. the Europeans on the Congo. So he meets with Kennedy several times. He flies to the Black Sea and spends a day with Khrushchev. And it was just then, about a few weeks later, that the Cuban missile crisis kicks off. So my point there is just that he had established this very good relationship with the leaders of both sides of the superpower. So he was exactly in the right place to try to mediate. You told me, I remember your excitement and discovering quite how big a role he had played,

because I don't think it ever came out publicly, the degree to which he saved the well from nuclear abagans. I mean, it's interesting because when I first looked at the archives and saw this, I thought, well, this is interesting that it tells a very different story than what's in the secondary sources. But when you look back at the newspapers at the time, it's actually front page of the New York Times every single day. So in some ways, it's also what we choose to remember and what we choose not to remember, right? And so I think when the Cuban Missile Crisis became public, Kennedy gives his famous speech on the 22nd of October announcing a blockade, That had to decide what to do.

He had to do something, but he had no mandate. Security Council was going to be obviously deadlocked between the superpowers on this issue. So he spends the next day in intense consultations with all the leaders of the different non-aligned countries. So with Nehru and Nassar and Enkrumah and lots of people sending cables back and forth and telephone calls and meetings with their ambassadors. And he decides he is going to intervene. He's going to intervene explicitly as a non-aligned neutral Afro-Asian.

Secretary General. He goes to the Security Council. He sets out what would be the eventual framework for de-escalation, which is a trade between Soviet missiles and an American pledge not to invade the island. And then he sends a couple of messages to both Kennedy and Khrushchev, appealing for them not to, on the Soviet side, not to send further missiles or offensive weapons and on the American inside to suspend the blockade. The really interesting thing is that, you know, that evening, or the next evening, actually, Kennedy has this amazing idea. He suddenly realizes, I think, not any of his advisors, but John of Kennedy himself, realizes that Uthat can be really useful, the U.N. Secretary General can be really useful. He asks, in the middle of the night, they phone him up,

and they ask Uthat to send a second message to Khrushchev, asking Khrushchev to turn back the ships from the confrontation line. And again, you know, different things happen over those crucial hours. But for Khrushchev and for the Soviets, it was much easier to respond positively to an appeal for peace from an Afro-Asian non-line UN Secretary General. And it would have been from Kennedy. ...to an American president. To an American or a European. I mean, either one of them would have been noxious. But he also, does he not, go to Cuba and have a face-to-face with Fidel? saying, look, who was incandescent at this time, you know, completely livid at, you know,

being a pawn in this game. And what was that conversation like? Did he keep sort of records of how that meeting went? Yeah, so we have the transcripts of most of it. So he went very consciously with his key advisors who were also from the third world, as it was called. So he had his Indian military chief. He had his Egyptian senior political advisor. So they go in the first day, as you said, Castro is raging. He's infuriated, basically, because by that point, Kennedy and Khrushchev had kind of agreed on the framework that the UN had proposed. But still, it was all very tense. It was stuff happening in the Caribbean. There was stuff happening over the Bering Strait. There were possible military clashes. The whole world was still on edge.

And Castro was really important because, unknown to the Americans, the Soviets had tactical battlefield nuclear atomic weapons. If the Americans had invaded, something had set off a war, it could have been used in Cuba by just the Soviet commanders on the ground. Castro could have shot down an American plane at any time that would have set things off. So it was really important to kind of get Castro to some extent to calm down. So in that first day, that first meeting, Castro really wouldn't give way. So Uthan said, let's meet tomorrow, I'll be alone. We can have a much more private meeting. And they do. And basically, you know, the next day after that, Castro goes on Cuban television the next morning. And one of the first things he says is Uthand showed us respect.

And I know from the transcript what Uthand had said to Castro was, look, I'm from a small country, you're from a small country. You have every right to have foreign military bases, enter into foreign alliances, have missiles, whatever you want. You are sovereign. But I'm trying to paint you the bigger picture. The world is on the verge of a war and we just all need to take a step back. And it was that approach that worked with Castro and prevented him from making a really inflammatory speech that could have made things much worse that evening. We hope you enjoyed this extract to listen to the full bonus episode and get ad-free listening to the main episodes as well as early access, book discats, and our very special weekly newsletter,

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