Backstabbing for Beginners: My Crash Course in International Diplomacy

In this Wall Street Journal "Book of the Year", Michael Soussan gives a darkly comic first-person account of the oil-for-food scandal that rocked the United Nation to its core. 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 programme, the largest humanitarian operation in the organisation'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 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. An absolute beginner in the world of international diplomacy, Soussan initially struggles to negotiate the increasing paranoia of his incomprehensible boss and the inner-workings of one of the world's most Kafkaesque bureaucracies. As he learns more about the vast sums of money flowing through the program, Soussan finds himself embroiled in a world of spies, corrupt oil tycoons, and dysfunctional diplomats whose office turf wars and petty personal rivalries all set the stage for a dramatic political showdown. His discovery that Saddam Hussein is extracting illegal bribes while UN officials turn a blind eye sets him on a collision course with the organization's leadership. On March 8, 2004, in a Wall Street Journal editorial, he becomes the first insider to call for 'an independent investigation' of the UN's dealings with Hussein. One week later, Kofi Annan appoints Paul Volcker to lead a team of sixty international investigators who ultimately expose the biggest financial scandal in UN history. "Backstabbing for Beginners" is at once a 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.