Backstabbing for Beginners
So, as promised, here is the first part of the, hopefully, multi-parted series of my notes, thoughts, and impressions of guest speakers who’s talks I have the fortune to attend. Enough chit-chat. Let’s go.
The topic of today’s guest was as follows:
Backstabbing for Beginners: A Crash Course in International Diplomacy
Michael Soussan, Writer. Professor of International Affairs, Center for Global Affairs, New York University
The year is 1997. Michael Soussan, an idealistic young Brown University graduate has recently accepted his dream job at the United Nations’ Oil-for-Food program, the largest humanitarian operation in the organization’s history. His mission is to help 23 million Iraqi civilians survive the devastating impact of economic sanctions that were imposed following the 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Under conflicting guidance from the fifteen bickering nations on the UN Security Council, the Oil-for-Food program would oversee the use of 64 billion petrodollars against a backdrop of simmering international tension that constantly threatens to explode into an all out war.
Backstabbing for Beginners is at once the darkly comic tale of one man’s political coming of age, and a stinging indictment of the hypocrisy that prevailed at the heart of the world’s most idealistic institution.
