Article 97

The Secretariat shall comprise a Secretary-General and such staff as the Organization may require. The Secretary-General shall be appointed by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council. He shall be the chief administrative officer of the Organization.

Article 98

The Secretary-General shall act in that capacity in all meetings of the General Assembly, of the Security Council, of the Economic and Social Council, and of the Trusteeship Council, and shall perform such other functions as are entrusted to him by these organs. The Secretary-General shall make an annual report to the General Assembly on the work of the Organization.

Article 99

The Secretary-General may bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security.

Article 100

• 1. In the performance of their duties the Secretary-General and the staff shall not seek or receive instructions from any government or from any other authority external to the Organization. They shall refrain from any action which might reflect on their position as international officials responsible only to the Organization.

• 2. Each Member of the United Nations undertakes to respect the exclusively international character of the responsibilities of the Secretary-General and the staff and not to seek to influence them in the discharge of their responsibilities.

Article 101

• 1. The staff shall be appointed by the Secretary-General under regulations established by the General Assembly.

• 2. Appropriate staffs shall be permanently assigned to the Economic and Social Council, the Trusteeship Council, and, as required, to other organs of the United Nations. These staffs shall form a part of the Secretariat.

• 3. The paramount consideration in the employment of the staff and in the determination of the conditions of service shall be the necessity of securing the highest standards of efficiency, competence, and integrity. Due regard shall be paid to the importance of recruiting the staff on as wide a geographical basis as possible.

Introduction

Issues of peace and security, so-called ‘high-politics’, frequently take centre stage in debates on the UN. This book has been no exception, as the previous chapters all focused on the repeating cycles of high-level political crises, and Lie’s attempts to deal with these as secretary-general. Lie chose to focus most of his attention and energy on the political role of the UN secretary-general and the questions of peace and security discussed by the Security Council. Yet, to understand the process by which the UN Charter was transformed from paper to practice, the establishment of the UN Secretariat itself is also of crucial importance. As the previous chapters showed, in these early years after an organization has been established, while the rules are still fluid, individuals working in the organization have wide room for manoeuvre and can influence the establishment of precedents for the future. It therefore matters also what kind of organizational structures are set up and which formal and informal rules develop for the secretariat itself.

This chapter examines the initial establishment of the UN Secretariat, focused particularly on the norms associated with the International Civil Service (ICS). The ICS is both an empirical and a normative concept. As an empirical concept it refers simply to the staff working for international organizations. The term as such was first adopted by the League of Nations and later continued in the UN system. But with the designation of staff as ICS in purely descriptive terms, there also follows certain normative expectations. The ICS offers an ideal vision for how staff should act and who they should be.

In the beginning of a new IGO’s life it may develop in ways unintended or unanticipated by its state founders. When the organization faces unexpected crises in a situation where the rules are still fluid, surprising new precedents may emerge. The people involved during this phase when the IGO is first established have significant room for manoeuvre and flexibility in interpreting what rights and responsibilities their positions entail. Trygve Lie was determined that the UN organization, and the UN secretary-general in particular, should be ‘a force for peace’ in the world. In the context of different political and security crises Lie took advantage of the ambiguity present in the UN Charter, and the vague but powerful potential of his own position, to insert the secretary-general’s office into new areas of UN activity. Through these actions he secured acceptance for new procedural norms and a more public profile for the UN secretary-general than that envisioned by the UN’s founders. The interplay of crisis decision-making, institutional constraints, and the individuals involved during this time thus built the foundations for the UN organization we know today.

In contrast to earlier scholarship on the role of the secretary-general which has tended to emphasize the contributions of Dag Hammarskjöld, the UN’s second secretary-general, this book has uncovered and discussed the important foundations which were established during Lie’s tenure from 1946 to 1953. Despite the many precedents set during his tenure and his strong principled activism on behalf of the UN and UN Charter values, Lie’s contribution to the UN and the office of UN secretary-general remains largely overlooked and forgotten. Urquhart’s blunt statement that ‘Lie did not achieve any particularly notable political or diplomatic feats at the United Nations, nor at that time was he expected to do so’, represents the orthodox view on Lie’s contribution. From this perspective, Lie’s only significant contribution lay in ensuring the location of UN headquarters in Manhattan, New York, and in bringing on board some of the world’s top architects to design the new building.

Introduction

Trygve Lie had barely held the office of UN secretary-general for a month, when Winston Churchill, Britain’s wartime prime minister, declared the descent of the ‘iron curtain’ from Fulton, Missouri, on 5 March 1946. The conflict between the US and the Soviet Union and their respective allies – commonly known as the ‘Cold War’ – was to become the defining feature of international politics for the next four decades. The Security Council held its first meeting on 17 January 1946 in London and come February it was already embroiled in heated debates over the slow withdrawal of Soviet troops from Iran and the presence of British troops in Greece. In Lie’s own words: ‘The hard realities of world politics intruded. Like gusts of wind warning of future storms to come, they blew in the door of the new-built house of peace before the workmen had finished.’ But what was the newly elected UN secretary-general to do in such a situation? How did the emerging superpower conflict impede or facilitate the development of the secretary-general’s political role?

Within scholarship on the UN secretary-general a common observation is that the end of the Cold War opened new opportunities, allowing Boutros Boutros-Ghali and Kofi Annan to play more active roles than their Cold War predecessors, particularly in the area of norm entrepreneurship. Yet despite the constraints imposed by the Cold War, other scholars have also highlighted the way the Cold War paradoxically provided opportunities for the secretary-general, because it made Security Council agreement more elusive and allowed the secretary-general to balance the superpowers against each other. Although this literature recognizes that the Cold War could be both constraining and empowering, few have undertaken in-depth studies of the mechanism behind this development.

Introduction

UN scholars often overlook Trygve Lie’s contribution to the development of the political role of the UN secretary-general. To the extent that he is remembered for his political actions, it is in the case of ‘the Palestine problem’. Lie himself would later regard the State of Israel ‘as his child’, and he took pride in the part he played in helping to establish the Jewish state in Palestine. Lie was an enthusiastic supporter of Israel’s UN membership application in 1949 and sought to use every means at his disposal to ensure the necessary majority in the General Assembly. Ralph Bunche, the acting UN mediator, described in his diary how, ‘Lie phoned me in evening – very upset – said Israelis had to be admitted now; wanted me to make a statement in favor’. Allegedly, Lie also passed ‘secret’ information to the Zionists/Israelis on several occasions, and he attempted to leverage his contacts in Norway to ensure its delegation voted in favour of the Israeli membership application. These episodes have led contemporary observers and later researchers alike to accuse him of harbouring a pro-Zionist bias that came into conflict with what they perceive to be the proper way of fulfilling his role as UN secretary-general.

Ironically, in the one instance that historians recognize Lie’s efforts to expand the political scope and autonomy of his role – the case of Palestine – they hurl the adjective ‘political’ as an accusation against him. In regard to Palestine, Lie supposedly overstepped the boundaries of what was appropriate for the UN secretary-general by acting on a personal political bias. This chapter will argue, to the contrary, that although Lie may have supported the Zionist cause, there is not sufficient evidence to substantiate the corollary position that such support constituted the key driver of his actions.

Introduction

Today the UN secretary-general is widely considered to be a ‘norm entrepreneur’ or an ‘advocate’ for global issues. The UN website describes the secretary-general as ‘a spokesperson for the interests of the world’s peoples, in particular the poor and vulnerable among them’, while the civil society campaign ‘1 for 7 billion’ argues that ‘as the UN’s top official, the Secretary-General embodies the high values of the Charter and represents the hopes and concerns of the world’s seven billion people’. This highly visible, politically and symbolically important role has developed over time, but the foundations for this public role were set up while Trygve Lie was in office. Lie himself described this part of his role as ‘a spokesman for the world interest’. As previous chapters have shown, Lie frequently sought to enlist the public and the media in his efforts to put pressure on states to act the way he wanted them to. This chapter examines Lie’s most high-profile and ambitious attempt at acting the norm entrepreneur or advocate: his 1950 proposal for a 20-year peace programme.

In 1950 the hardening fronts of the Cold War caused trouble for the UN. Protesting the Western states’ refusal to allow the communist Chinese government to assume the Chinese seat in the UN, the Soviet Union boycotted the Security Council and other UN organs from January 1950. In 1949 the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb, while in January 1950 President Truman announced that the US would develop the more powerful ‘H-bomb’, thus signalling a new phase of the arms race between East and West. And within the UN, negotiations in the Military Staff Committee and the Atomic Energy Commission had completely stalled.

Introduction

Once a new IGO is established, it may develop in ways unintended or unanticipated by its state founders. Through the interplay of crisis decision-making, institutional constraints, and the individuals involved, new precedents emerge which build the foundations for the organization’s later operations. As the previous chapter argued, when the UN started operations in 1946 the general expectation among member states was that the UN secretary-general would play some sort of ‘political’ role; however, the precise implications of this were never discussed or spelled out in detail. Article 99 gave the secretary-general the unprecedented right to ‘bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security’. But what exactly did this article entail? What would be the relationship between the secretary-general and the Security Council, and what rights and responsibilities did the secretary-general have in the UN’s efforts to maintain international peace and security? The UN founders had left these questions unanswered, but they quickly gained importance as the UN organization faced its first crises in Iran and elsewhere in 1946.

The lack of clarity and agreement on the practical implications of article 99 and the precise nature of the role of the UN secretary-general, meant that the first holder of the office, Trygve Lie, enjoyed considerable autonomy to explore his new position. From the start, Lie was determined to ensure that the UN, and the office of the secretary-general, should serve as ‘a force for peace’ in the world. To this end he sought to clarify the rights and responsibilities of the secretary-general, and to seek the support of the member states for a range of new activities beyond those the League of Nations secretary-general had pursued.

The founding moment of an intergovernmental organization (IGO) often concludes with a grand, symbolically significant ceremony where representatives of the founding member states sign the treaty one after the other. But what happens when this high-level event concludes? Once the cameras have turned off and the politicians head home, the task of setting up the new organization falls to its secretariat. In the beginning of an organization’s life, its executive head and the first staff members can exert considerable influence on the future shape of the organization. During these first few years, when rules and expectations are fluid and new situations without former precedent, it is left to them to interpret what the founding treaty means and to determine how its goals can be put into practice. This book examines one prominent example of how IGO founding treaties move from paper to practice – the establishment of the United Nations (UN) during the tenure of its first secretary-general, Trygve Lie (1946–53).

The UN today occupies an important position in international affairs as the central arena for states to come together to try to solve global problems. The secretary-general plays a key part in these processes. Although the UN Charter merely describes the secretary-general as the ‘chief administrative officer of the Organization’, today she is widely regarded as the UN’s chief diplomatic and political officer. Former secretary-general Kofi Annan wrote that ‘for better or worse, the role of the Secretary-General has come to be seen as primarily political’, while the UN website describes the secretary-general as ‘equal parts diplomat and advocate, civil servant and CEO’. The secretary-general today plays important roles in the UN apparatus for peace and security. She can serve as a mediator and provide ‘good offices’ or act as a ‘channel of communications’ to help solve conflicts between states. The secretary-general also performs important functions for the UN as an investigator who can establish fact-finding commissions and write reports, on her own initiative or at the request of the member states.

Introduction

On 2 February 1946 Trygve Lie, up until then the foreign minister of Norway, was sworn in as the first secretary-general of the UN. He took on the role of secretary-general in a brand-new organization. The UN Charter had been signed just seven months earlier in San Francisco on 26 June 1945, and the first General Assembly opened in London on 10 January 1946. As the first secretary-general, to some extent Lie had to make up his own role as he went along. But he was not completely free to do whatever he desired. This chapter examines what expectations for the role of the UN secretary-general existed before Lie took office. The following chapters will then examine what Lie did with these expectations and how the role developed beyond the baseline from 1946.

In canvassing early government and public expectations of the role of the UN secretary-general, the first point of reference is the minimalist description as the ‘chief administrative officer of the Organization’ in article 97 of the UN Charter. This would indicate that the secretary-general was expected to play a primarily administrative role. Brian Urquhart, who worked in the Secretariat from the start and later published extensively on the office of the secretary-general, confirmed this when he wrote that

Blueprints

In the last 500 years, the state has emerged and then changed in significant ways, and so has the vast complex of social relations we call the modern world. Familiar periodizations of modernity assume that these parallel developments coincide but that their doing so is no coincidence. To simplify a superabundance of causal connections, we might say that states and the system of states, here called international society, have continuously reconstituted each other over the centuries, and that this process of co-constitution is an integral feature of modernity as a constitutive whole. State-building and world-making occur simultaneously on the basis of blueprints that are periodically but not systematically updated. Anyone building a state today must rely on incomplete, confusing, yet normatively controlling layers of blueprints setting standards and limits on the properties that states must have to function in the modern world— as societies and in international society.

Any effort to characterize social relations relies on metaphors, no matter how conceptually aware the effort is. Speaking metaphorically (and we always do), every concept— every representation of some state of affairs no matter how abstract— was born a metaphor. While I defend this claim later in this essay, it will be noticed that I have already placed great emphasis on a familiar metaphor, blueprint. In the first instance, a blueprint is a visual representation of the plan for a building or some other thought-out object of use. By metaphorical extension, a blueprint is any system of linked metaphors, or self-defining semantic field, representing what we (some metaphorically identified collectivity: we moderns) think we know about our social arrangements— how they are put together, and how they work, at any given moment. We revise small sections of these blueprints of ours frequently, not always deliberately, in response to practical concerns. Along the way, we even change the way we draw our blueprints— the way that we draw semantic distinctions to represent the particulars of our social arrangements.

This process looks continuous and its effects look like incremental social change. Nevertheless, when we stand back, we can see (a revealing metaphor) that social practices and their metaphorical representation are subject to abrupt changes, and that we can make sense of these changes only retrospectively.

The era of systems thinking in political science dates from the mid-1950s. David Easton gave currency to the term political system in 1953, and major statements on how to study such systems appeared a short while thereafter. Input-output analysis, general systems theory, equilibrium models all competed for attention. Even though students of foreign governments and relations among states were especially stimulated to abandon exclusively institutional and historical studies for brave new ways to comprehend political reality, there were signs even before the end of the decade that emergent fields of comparative politics and international politics were to part company in their preferred systemic formulations.

In comparative politics the structural-functional orientation popularized by Gabriel Almond prevailed as the convenient tool for investigating not just governments but anything political. In principle all political systems were subject to comparison because they all, regardless of form, share certain distinctively political functions. In practice this meant comparison of diverse systems nonetheless sharing important features qualifying them to be called states. The result was an ample but bounded universe of items for comparison.

Structural-functionalism inspired what has come to be called the comparative movement, penetrating most areas of political inquiry except, peculiarly enough, international relations. The stated object of comparing systems is theory-building. While failing to create theories of any consequence, the effort was marked by a surge of conceptual clarification, taxonomic ordering and empirical enrichment. Substantial though these gains are over previous scholarship, they succeeded mostly in fuelling rising epistemological expectations that structural-functional comparison could never fulfil.

Opinion leaders in political science turned increasingly to neopositivist epistemology prevailing in philosophy of science, which provided damning critiques of anything functional and legitimated the quest for properly hypothetico-deductive theory. Whether the rise of neopositivism and the quest for formally stated theory as the basis of ‘real’ science are benighted misadventure or passage to enlightenment cannot as yet be told. It can only be said that theory development in any form, or by any name, must be preceded by a period of conceptual and taxonomic growth. This would indeed seem to have been the pattern with all major advances in human understanding.