The diplomatic heavyweight tasked with mending the United States’ relationship with the UN

Linda Thomas-Greenfield is one of the faces of US policy during the war in Ukraine. As ambassador she wants to restore Americans’ trust in the UN and that of the UN in Americans.

Linda Thomas-Greenfield (69) once had an AK-47 pointed at her head. The genocide in Rwanda had just broken out, and she was working as a diplomat in the East African country. A young man was ordered to assassinate Agathe Uwilingiyimana, the then Prime Minister. When he saw Linda, he thought it was her. Linda Thomas-Greenfield kept calm, smiled, gave her name, asked who he was—thus convincing him not to kill her.

The 31st UN Ambassador to the United States knows how to get through to people. In the diplomatic world, where she has been wandering for more than 35 years, she does so according to her self-invented principle: Gumbo Diplomacy† She invites opponents to a plate of gumbo, the famed stew from her southern home state of Louisiana, and then makes her plea.

‘I’m a big fan; she has a lot to offer,” said John Kerry, former Secretary of State and her longtime boss. When she had to deliver an annoying message to a leader, Kerry wouldn’t worry for a second: “She can be as tough as she needs to be.”

Heavyweight

Americans who become UN ambassadors tend to be heavyweights: think George H. Bush, Madeleine Albright, Susan Rice, Samantha Power. With her long track record at the State Department, Thomas-Greenfield easily belongs in that list. She was ambassador to Liberia, served in embassies in Kenya, Jamaica, Switzerland, and Pakistan, and served as Under Secretary of State for African Affairs under President Barack Obama.

Shortly after President Donald Trump took office, she became one of the victims of his massive purge at the top of the ministry, and retired. In 2020, President Biden asked her back.

The United Nations, after Trump – who with his America First was politically skeptical about multilateral cooperation – needed some extra love. After four years of icy relations between the US and the UN, Thomas-Greenfield wants to improve the climate at the New York headquarters. She wants to restore Americans’ trust in the UN, and the UN’s trust in Americans.

“When America is involved, consistent and persistent,” Thomas-Greenfield said during her candidacy hearing, “when we use our influence in line with our values, the UN can be a vital institution for promoting peace, security and security.” and well-being.’

Now Thomas-Greenfield gets the chance to prove it, faster than anyone could have imagined. However, with Russia as a permanent member of the Security Council, she cannot change as much as she would like during the first major war that has broken out since she took office. In an emergency meeting on Wednesday, an overwhelming majority of countries voted in favor of a proposal to require Russia to withdraw all troops from Ukraine, but the resolution is not binding. Her many calls to the Russians to leave Ukraine alone have been unsuccessful in recent weeks. But she can deal blows on behalf of the US. “They will feel pain,” Thomas-Greenfield said on NBC news on Sunday. She promised the Russians that they can expect tougher sanctions “if Putin intensifies his attack.”

awkward truth

Long before she worried about authoritarian leaders dropping bombs on countries, Linda Thomas-Greenfield faced another domestic threat: the Ku Klux Klan. In the 1950s, Thomas-Greenfield attended a segregated school in America’s deeply racist South, where the KKK regularly burned crosses in its neighbors’ yard.

“I know the ugly face of racism,” she said during her UN speech last March. ‘I have experienced racism, and I have survived racism.’

After graduating from high school, the first in her family, she attended Louisiana State University, one of the first black students. KKK leader David Duke exerted a lot of influence on her campus.

She was one of the first people to make race a theme at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She has never found it difficult to tell the “inconvenient truth,” Thomas-Greenfield says in interviews. Not even when it came to the US slavery past. “America is not the source of slavery. Others also carry this shame.’ Slavery still exists in many places, she said in her speech, and that too needs to be talked about. She regularly talks about China’s racism against the Uyghurs and the oppression of the Rohingya.

She admires the social resistance against racism that followed the death of George Floyd in May 2020. She herself also regularly wears T-shirts and caps from Black Lives Matter. “Racial discrimination may seem hopeless,” she said, but she remains “hopeful” as she has seen for years how communities and countries are able to change. “I have experienced that progress in my own life.”