Ulrike Lunacek in conversation with Thant Myint-U

HOW PEACE WAS MADE IN THE 1960’S – LESSONS LEARNED?

There are good and bad news when it comes to peace making. Bad news first: In today’s world, we see more conflicts and wars than ever. The environment and conditions for trust, reality based media, respect for international law and the quality of political leaders seem to be worse than ever. The good news, however, are: Peacemaking has always been difficult, already in the 1960s, nevertheless several UN peacemaking, mandate enforcement and peacekeeping missions were successful. Later on Track Two diplomacy emerged as an effective concept, protest and civil rights movements had an impact on peace negotiations. Today’s conflicts are pressing and have, due to disinformation, technology and weapons of mass destruction but most importantly unqualified and populist political leadership the potential to lead us to the brink of self-extermination.

What can we learn from the 1960s when the United Nations became an organization vetted with hope, competence and good leadership, with capacity and vision for a better and more peaceful world?

Historian Thant Myint-U, the grandson of the third UN Secretary General U Thant, will present and discuss his latest book Peacemaker: U Thant, the United Nations, and the Untold History of the 1960s and what this never-before-told story reveals about global politics and the prospects for future peace.

Based in part on recently declassified papers, the book tells the story of a schoolteacher in a remote Burmese town who, within a little more than a decade, finds himself at the very center of global politics, as the UN’s Secretary-General, mediating the Cuban Missile Crisis between Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro, and then going on to confront one war after another through the turbulent 1960s, from Vietnam to the Congo and the Middle East. The story is the missing piece in the puzzle of how our world came to be and shines a fresh light on our real options today.

Moderator Ulrike Lunacek together with Thant Myint-U will discuss what real options we have or might have today. How to imagine a world where trust in functioning international organizations and multilateral rules-based United Nations can again become vibrant, including in the implementation of the necessary changes that have been postponed for too long.

Thant Myint-U is an award-winning writer, historian, conservationist, and a former international public servant. He has served on three United Nations peacekeeping operations as well many years with the UN in New York as chief of policy planning. For over a decade, he helped lead reform efforts in Burma (Myanmar), including as a peace mediator. He is the founding chair of Yangon Heritage Trust. The author of five books, he is an Honorary Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, UK.

Ulrike Lunacek, currently Special Envoy for Austria’s candidature for a non-permanent seat in the UN Security Council, has had a long career in Austrian and European politics: between 1995 and 2020 she was Member of the AT parliament, Member as well as Vicepresident of the European Parliament, and in 2020 she briefly formed part of the ÖVP/Green government as Secretary of State for Arts and Culture. An active member of development/North-South as well as feminist and LGBTIQ activities/NGOs before and after her time in party politics, she has written and edited four books and lives in Vienna as moderator, speaker and author.

Thant Myint-U:
Peacemaker: U Thant, the United Nations and the Untold Story of the 1960s
Atlantic Books, Limited, 2025, 19,50 €