The Absolutely Indispensable Man: Ralph Bunche, the United Nations, and the Fight to End Empire

684 Pages·2022·23.682 MB·English

by  Kal Raustiala

T H E A B S O L U T E L Y
I N D I S P E N S A B L E
M A N

T H E
A B S O L U T E LY
I N D I S P E N S A B L E
M A N
RALPH BUNCHE, THE UNITED NATIONS,
AND THE FIGHT TO END EMPIRE
KAL RAUSTIALA
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.
© Oxford University Press 2023
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction
rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.
CIP data is on file at the Library of Congress
ISBN 978– 0–1 9– 760223– 2
DOI: 10.1093/o so/ 9780197602232.001.0001
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Lakeside Book Company, United States of America
CONTENTS
Foreword vii
Preface xiii
1. West and East 1
2. Mandates and Colonies 23
3. A World View of Race 40
4. The War 60
5. Rebuilding the World 80
6. San Francisco 102
7. The UNO 120
8. The Struggle over Trusteeship 138
9. The Problem of Palestine 160
10. The Path to the Prize 196
11. Triumph 215
12. Bunche Fever 236
13. Loyalty 258
14. Showdown at Suez 279
15. Corporal Bunche 306
16. To Gaza 323
17. The Year of Africa 342
18. Katanga 364
19. The Congo and the Cold War 392
20. The Death of Hammarskjold 414
vi Contents
21. Kennedy and Johnson 440
22. From Saigon to Selma 465
23. Seeking an End 494
24. An Idealist and a Realist 524
Epilogue 553
Notes 571
Index 635
FOREWORD
I
n 2006, I entered my new office in Bunche Hall for the first time. I had

been a professor at UCLA for six years and had often been inside the tall
North Campus tower. On its eleven floors are an array of social science
departments and classrooms, and, at the very top, is housed the center that
I now direct, the Ronald W. Burkle Center for International Relations. Over
the coming years I would spend many days in Bunche Hall.
As I settled into my new office, I realized I did not really know much
about Ralph Bunche. I knew he had been an accomplished leader at the
United Nations, an institution I had studied for years. I knew he had won a
Nobel Peace Prize. And I knew he was one of the very few Black men prom-
inent in midcentury diplomacy. But beyond that, I knew almost nothing
about how he had stitched together such a strikingly unusual and illustrious
career. Curious, I began to explore Bunche’s life, reading the now almost
three- decade- old biography written by his deputy and friend, the late Brian
Urquhart, and subsequent works by excellent scholars such as Charles
Henry, Ben Keppel, Pearl Robinson, and Ed Keller. Among other things,
I discovered that Bunche spent much of his adult life in Kew Gardens,
Queens, about a mile from where I had lived as a young child and my
grandparents had lived out their lives after immigrating to the United States.
Indeed, Bunche and I lived in Kew Gardens at the same time, though he was
by then an elder statesman and I was a toddler.
During this period I was teaching a course on the UN for UCLA students.
Each July, for a month, I would take twenty- five students to New York City.
We would tour the UN, meet with officials and ambassadors, and visit some
viii Foreword
of the nongovernmental organizations that work closely with, and some-
times sharply criticize, the UN. As I walked by the long line of fluttering
national flags on First Avenue, I would sometimes think of the early decades
of the organization and the role Bunche had played. When he began, at the
time of the UN’s founding, there were about fifty member states; today
there are nearly 200. That huge growth in flags was in turn a huge story—a
transformation of the international system and an often peaceful revolution
in human self- determination, in which dozens of former colonies gained
their independence.
Over time, I began to think of writing my own book about the UN,
one that would focus on the momentous change of postwar decoloni-
zation and how it transformed world politics, and I would tell that story
of transformation through the life and work of Ralph Bunche. I learned
that UCLA possessed an enormous trove of his papers— some 200
linear feet of boxes— and that sealed the deal. I dove in and soon be-
came immersed in Bunche’s remarkable life. As I did so, the focus of the
book evolved, becoming less a history of the UN and decolonization
and more a biography of one of the organization’s greatest and most in-
fluential figures.
Still, I have not written a conventional biography and I do not try to tell
the full story of Ralph Bunche’s life. Rather, this is a political or professional
biography that engages primarily with his career in diplomacy, especially
during his UN years. Other authors, better placed to explore the personal or
other sides of him, I hope, will write different books. I have focused on my
expertise— Bunche the diplomat and policymaker—a nd so I spend only
enough time on his childhood and family life to give context and texture to
his impact on the postwar world.
As the focus of the book fell into place, I struggled with what aspects
of his story I could tell. As an international lawyer with a PhD in interna-
tional relations, I felt very comfortable with Bunche’s career at the State
Department and at the UN. This was terrain I had studied for decades. Yet
Ralph Bunche was more than a diplomat. He was a Black man with a life-
long commitment to racial justice. That story, too, had to be acknowledged,
if the book was to be at all truthful to his spirit and legacy. With the guidance
Foreword ix
of friends and colleagues at UCLA such as Anna Spain Bradley and Robin
D. G. Kelley, I read widely on 20th- century Black internationalist thought
and tried to understand the intellectual milieu in which Bunche lived.
I reached out to the extended Bunche family, and, thankfully, they wel-
comed my project and offered me much wise counsel and recollection. In
particular, Ralph Bunche III, his grandson, and Ronald and Peter Taylor, his
cousins, gave me access to materials, personal insights, and family lore that
improved the book immeasurably. I cannot claim to have done justice to all
dimensions of his life, or to understand the experience of a Black man born
at the high point of Jim Crow. Instead I have tried to be sensitive to how he
saw the world and, as much as possible, to tell that story through his own
words. In this regard, I was lucky that Ralph Bunche was an inveterate note-
taker and journal- scribbler. He recorded many thoughts in detail, especially
toward the end of his life, musing on issues ranging from the prospects for
peace in the Middle East to the future of American race relations to the cru-
cial influence of his grandmother on the arc of his life.
I also struggled with how to accurately portray a man who was born al-
most 120 years ago. Our language and expectations have changed, in some
cases dramatically. Words and their meanings are always evolving and are
often contested. How much should I directly quote Bunche, even when his
words might trouble some readers today? Even more, what about quoting
contemporaneous newspapers, books, and the like? This book often deals
with war, hate, and prejudice. Is quoting a prewar news report that is imbued
with racism giving the reader a frank description of the reality of the times,
or is that outweighed by how it may amplify hateful voices from the past?
I ultimately decided that there was no way to truly understand these aspects
of his life and times without appreciating how different politics and social
thought was. I have at all times tried to put such ideas and quotations in
context. I also have endeavored to show respect to Bunche and his life by
quoting him in his own voice, such as in his almost universal use of the word
“Negro,”* and by presenting with clarity but also concision the ideas, often
abhorrent, that he was fighting.
* By contrast, in my own voice, I use the word “Black.”