Review: The Horseshoe Table

Abstract

THE HORSESHOE TABLE An Inside View of the Security council Chinmaya R. Gharekhan New Delhi: Dorling Kindersley (India), 2006. 328pp, US$20-95 cloth (ISBN 81-7758-453-7)Ambassador Gharekhan provides a useful glimpse into how the security council really works, and it's not a pretty sight. Indeed, it was particularly unlovely in the opening years of the post-Cold War era, the period during which he represented India on the council (1991-92). On completion of his two-year term, then-secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali asked Gharekhan to join the executive office and act as the secretary general's personal liaison to the security council, in which capacity the author served until 1996.While lucid, informative, and thoughtful, his account is overly protective of the UN secretariat and his own key role therein vis-a-vis the security council, particularly when he recounts the two principal disasters that befell the United Nations on his watch: Srebrenica and Rwanda. In both instances, his efforts at explanation and detachment grate and are unconvincing.The book remains, however, required reading for countries seeking a seat on the security council, particularly for those that might harbour delusions that service on the council will allow their high ideals to flower and flourish. He portrays Boutros Boutros-Ghali generally as a brave and steadfast man of principle, even if others, including members of the secretariat and Gharekhan himself, do not fare as well.His broader reflections on the extent to which the security council is owned and dominated by the veto-wielding five permanent members (P$) were precisely mirrored in my own experience a few years later. Indeed, this point cannot be overemphasized and Gharekharis contribution to making it more broadly appreciated is welcome indeed.When Canada was elected to the security council in October 1998 to serve a sixth term, our then-foreign minister, Lloyd Axworthy, was pleased that Canada would have an opportunity to walk our human security talk. I cautioned him that our successful four-year campaign had been the easy part, and that the realities of service on the council, about which Gharekhan writes so persuasively-particularly the unbridled power of the P 5-would sorely limit what Axworthy was so anxious to achieve during Canada's brief time at the UN's high table. Specifically, I urged him to consider how he was going to react when Washington called to encourage him to straighten me out.Surely, that would not happen, he replied, and if ever it were to occur, it would be on a matter of such overriding importance that the nature of such a demarche could not be anticipated. Not so, I insisted, the subject was likely to be well-nigh irrelevant. It would be the principle that would be at issue, and I predicted that he would face this challenge within our first month on the council. In fact, he received his first call on 18 January, and, of the six additional demarches that were directed variously to our prime minister, his foreign policy advisor, again to the foreign minister, and to the deputy minister of foreign affairs over our first eight months on the council, all with a single purpose-to put me under Washington's discipline-all were rejected out of hand in Ottawa. Then they stopped. A number of my elected colleagues on the council, however, were not so steadfastly supported, and such unsubtle exercises of raw power were never pleasant to witness. Gharekhan recounts a few similar stories involving his own country and others.His more detailed recollections of how specific issues were handled by the council in the first half of the post-Cold War decade will not cause readers to be inspired by the courage and foresight of council members, but nonetheless offer useful insight into the Realpolitik of council operations and the limits to their effectiveness.His account of the advice being offered by secretariat officials to their boss, the secretary general, is particularly intriguing if no more inspiring. …