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UNITED NATIONS JOURNAL by William F. Buckley Jr.

UNITED NATIONS JOURNAL

A Delegate's Odyssey

by William F. Buckley Jr.

Pub Date: Sept. 17th, 1974
Publisher: Putnam

If anyone might be expected to animate the topic of the United Nations, it would be William Buckley—did you know that recently he did a stint (as other conservatives have) as public delegate to the U.S. mission at the U.N.? Buckley had a pleasant time speechifying against "vague, presumptuous, inscrutable" draft resolutions, appraising "parliamentary footwork," and keeping count in his journal of the Soviets' hypocrisies, which as representative on the Human Rights Committee he often assailed. He gently derides the rhetoric of certain Arab and African delegates (Buckley is gruffishly pro-Israel), but the book is tame and the epigrams toothless—at his most outrageous, Buckley claims the U.S. is the only world power without satellites. Buckley is really far more comfortable in the company of Kissinger, Nelson Rockefeller, anti-communist social democrats and foundation types—Nixon is out of the picture—than among old oaken right-wing Republicans. There are few signals to be picked up here beyond a reminder that Buckley is ever so Establishment.