78 Books Like Dangerous Diplomacy

Funding of international organizations is one of the most obscure yet most consequential aspects of their work. Erin R. Graham convincingly demonstrates that the states that created the UN did not foresee the impending decolonization and the loss of the Western majority in the UN General Assembly, the UN body responsible for adopting the organization’s budget. Major donors, unable to maintain control over the regular budget, switched to providing voluntary funding—money that states can choose to give to the UN on their own terms, specifying projects and locations for their use.

The switch did not come about through an overhaul of the UN’s formal rules, but rather as a result of seemingly small, situation-specific decisions. Over time, they have led to the current state of affairs when 75 percent of UN development financing comes from voluntary contributions, undermining the spirit of multilateralism central to the UN.

The book theorizes international diplomats’ social capital as a reflection of their country’s positions in international hierarchies and, to a lesser extent, their individual experience and skill. It focuses, among other examples, on the debates on the reform of the UN Security Council that take place in the UN General Assembly. 

Pouliot offers a compelling account of the privileges that the permanent members of the UN Security Council enjoy that extend beyond veto powers, such as the mastery of the Council procedures that come with a permanent seat. The book suggests that besides institutional privileges, countries can also accumulate capital at the UN by providing voluntary funding or contributing peacekeepers.

The UN peacekeeping operation in the Democratic Republic of Congo, deployed in 1999 and still ongoing, has an annual budget of 1.13 billion dollars. It has over 16,000 military and police personnel and nearly 3,000 civilian specialists. Although it is preparing to withdraw, its duration, scale, and significance make it a fascinating case study of the UN’s work on the ground. 

Buitelaar’s book examines how the UN operates by zooming in on its cooperation with other international institutions—in this case, the International Criminal Court (ICC). Drawing on interviews with senior mission officials, the book convincingly demonstrates that individuals matter at the UN. Mission leadership’s decisions shaped whether and how peacekeepers supported the ICC’s work in an environment characterized by the US’ ambivalent attitude towards the court.

The UN is more than just the General Assembly, the Security Council, and the Secretariat with its mediation and peacekeeping missions. The broader “UN Family of Organizations” includes agencies like the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), international financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and programs like the World Food Programme (WFP). 

Hall’s book focuses on three entities that are part of the UN system: the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), the UN Development Programme (UNDP), and the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Her book analyses whether, when, and how international bureaucrats decide to expand their organizations’ work into new areas. As a result, organisations initially focused on refugee protection (UNHCR), development (UNDP), and migration management (IOM) have ended up addressing the issue of climate change.

Lieutenant General Roméo Dallaire is the highest-ranking military officer who has come out and publicly talked about his psychiatric struggles with flashbacks, depression, and suicidal thoughts. This is his story as the commander of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda in 1993-94. Woven into his narrative is an account of the onset of traumatic stress and of his reactions to what psychiatry refers to as PTSD. This is a brutally honest book by a high-ranking military officer about the unspeakable inhumanity of civil war and the terrible vulnerability of international peacemakers. It is a story of one of the walking wounded who survived the genocide as a moral witness.  

This is a beautifully written account of how 8-year-old Jeanne d'Arc Umubyeyi (Dédé) escaped the 1994 massacre of the Tutsi ethnic group at the hands of the Huti tribe. Jeanne was the only member of her family to survive. The horror of what she went through is vividly recounted in Jeanne’s words and those of her adoptive mother Hanna Jansen, who adopted her and brought her to Germany. 

It is a very powerful, true, story. I had heard of the Rwandan massacre, but knew little about it till I read this novel. 

I love the book and have re-read it several times. Young adults will identify strongly with both Jeanne and Hanna.

This is a harrowing account of the genocide in Rwanda told by one of its survivors, Imaculee llibagiza, after Hutu soldiers murdered her father, mother, and two brothers during a killing spree that took the lives of a million Rwandans.

In a fight for survival, Imaculee and seven other women took refuge in a 3’ by 3’ bathroom hidden behind a wardrobe in a pastor’s home. As the machete-wielding gunmen continued hunting for more victims, Imaculee and the women remained in their cloister in silence. Her  91 days in hiding is a testimony of endurance and resilience in the face of unrestrained evil.

When everyone you love is dead, and everything you love is lost, how do you go on? Imaculee found the answer in faith, love, forgiveness, and optimism. It is a haunting story of an ordinary woman and earthly mortal forced into an enlightening spiritual experience with the… show more.

The author, a Tutsi genocide survivor, was once a young Rwandan politician who deeply admired Paul Kagame and seemed destined for prominent public office. Instead, from his position as parliamentary speaker, he watched as his hero steadily emasculated the judiciary, undermined the country’s Hutu president – a symbol of ethnic reconciliation - and sabotaged parliamentary democracy itself,  eventually fleeing the country when his own life was threatened. His book not only offers great insights into the workings of village life in a tiny African country traumatized by its violent past, it’s a step-by-step analysis of how a dictatorship takes cynical, relentless hold.

John Buchan served in the War Propaganda Bureau during WWI, crafting press releases that sought to preserve public morale against the terrible losses on the Western Front. Already a successful novelist, he created a new character named Richard Hannay who starred in his 1915 adventure thriller The Thirty Nine Steps. Hannay was so popular that Buchan revived him for a 1916 sequel set in the Ottoman Empire that proved an enduring classic: Greenmantle. Through his work in intelligence and propaganda, Buchan was aware of British war planners’ concerns that the Ottoman call for jihad that followed their declaration of war might provoke colonial Muslims to rise against the Entente Powers in India, Egypt, North Africa, and the Caucasus. He captured British fears of an Ottoman-inspired jihad inflaming Indian Muslims with the memorably Orientalist line: “There is a dry wind blowing through the East, and the parched grasses wait the spar.… show more.

So many books have been written about the 1994 genocide in Rwanda since this came out, but for me it still effortlessly holds its own: clear, accessible, immensely insightful in the way it traces cause and effect. Make sure you buy the second edition, though, as French historian Prunier revised some key views over the years, including his opinion on who brought down the plane in which two African presidents died – the incident that triggered the genocide. The book is the perfect companion piece for Prunier’s follow-up tome, which pans back to examine not just Rwanda but the entire Great Lakes region during the turbulent post-genocide years: “From Genocide to Continental War. The “Congolese” Conflict and the Crisis of Contemporary Africa.”