I remind Turner that the prevailing perception of the UN, in the eyes of millions, whether accurate or not, is of an organization in disarray, an entity that has no backbone or real might to take on and stop aggressive regimes, and a bureaucracy that is the poster child for incompetence. Critics regard Turner’s belief in the UN as being naïve and rooted in feel-good ideology.
“Well, what’s the alternative?” he asks, his voice assuming intensity. “No, really, what is it? The critics have never been able to advance one. And the reason they can’t is they know that what the UN does for today’s world could not be replicated if we had to start over from scratch. They are the same people who ask us to put blind faith in free markets and then wash their hands of responsibility when things go wrong. They’re the same people who sent us into Iraq on the premise that there were weapons of mass destruction. I see the UN as a ‘the-glass-is-half-full’ proposition. We can make it better. We can help it achieve all that it’s capable of achieving. What the critics don’t want to admit is that treating people with more dignity and respect now will save the US lots of money down the road, especially with military intervention. If people want to have a debate about the UN, let’s bring it on.”
With regard to the UN’s blue-helmeted peacekeeping force, a frequent target of US conservatives and a popular muse for paranoid “black helicopter” conspiracy theorists, it has been dispatched to myriad venues over the course of the organization’s history, the majority of the time exerting a calming influence and alleviating the necessity for individual countries to mount costly interventions, he says.
Peacekeepers, Turner notes, not only protect the most vulnerable people from abuse and exploitation, but their role, as witnesses against oppressive regimes, gives greater comfort to companies doing business in the developing world that otherwise might not make economic investments.
“Ted always notes that international peacekeepers are sent to the toughest places in the world, usually when other forms of diplomacy and remedies have failed,” says former US senator Timothy E. Wirth, the UN Foundation president handpicked by Turner. “They are dispatched into the most inhospitable settings and do their work for a tenth of the cost of the mission were it carried out by the US military. UN peacekeeping is a value proposition for the US taxpayer concerned about overextension of our military.”
Despite the constant browbeating the UN takes, Turner cites a research study prepared by the conservative RAND Corp. that found this somewhat startling reality—startling in the sense that it defies the image projected by its critics. Whenever the UN was involved in nation-building efforts following war and the subsequent holding of democratic elections that the UN helped monitor, peace continued in seven out of eight cases. Meanwhile, he notes, when the United States itself attempted on its own to set up governments in other countries, lasting peace was achieved in four out of eight examples, or half the rate of success. And it’s a costly undertaking for a US government sinking deeper into debt. “Every non-American peacekeeper means there’s a US soldier who does not have to be deployed,” Turner says. “I’d call that a good deal.”
“It’s extraordinary how much Ted knows about the UN,” says the environmental economist Lester Brown. “Ted gets invited to appear on the David Letterman show and what does he want to bring up? The UN. You can’t buy that kind of publicity.”
Kofi Annan has seen the mischievous look Turner gets when he wins over more advocates for the UN, when he sees the light bulb going off in people’s minds. The former UN secretary-general from Africa has been at Turner’s side when the pop quiz has been given. He is familiar with Nelson Mandela reaching out to Turner and asking him to help champion the establishment of a green peace park along the tense boundary dividing North and South Korea.
“When he wants to be, Ted, like Mr. Mandela, can be, shall we say, disarming and persuasive, charmingly so,” Annan explains.
A Ghana national, Annan was the first career UN employee to become secretary-general. He attended Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, and then rose up the UN ranks from the bottom. He attained the top job after spending thirty-five years on various tours of duty. He says Turner’s backing of the UN proved pivotal. “1938 was a very good year,” he tells me. “Ted and I were both born into it.”
Annan’s tenure as secretary-general commenced at a time when former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson was UN ambassador for the Clinton Administration. Holbrooke, who succeeded Richardson, said it was a tenuous era in US-UN relations not because the White House wasn’t sympathetic, but because of the blatant hostility fulminating in Congress.
For Turner, history provides lessons that some lawmakers in Congress should heed. Following World War I, Woodrow Wilson was instrumental in creating the League of Nations. But it lost support in the United States amid calls from some conservatives for isolationism.
In Europe, without the League of Nations possessing any real teeth and in the absence of the United States, there was nothing to check the ambitions of Adolf Hitler and the rise of military fascism in Germany.
The lack of a strong centrifugal force left European nations hesitant to stand up to the rise of Nazism. Had the UN existed and the United States been engaged with England and France in those days, Turner believes circumstances would have been different and possibly tens of millions of lives could have been saved.
The UN, Turner says, is far better than the League of Nations ever could have been. “Rather than the UN being something that is fatally flawed, I think it has a solid footing that can be continually improved upon and reformed to confront the emerging challenges in this century.”
“Ted has an instinctive feel about people. I can’t explain it,” Annan says, noting that he has accompanied Turner on UN-related field trips and watched him carry on conversations with rural agrarians or leaders from developing countries. “His empathy comes through when he says to them, ‘Hi my name is Ted. What do you do?’”
“And when he hears that they are farmers he says, ‘That’s great cause I’m a farmer too. I do a little bison ranching.’”
Annan goes on. “Ted really is a farmer—he’s a farmer of ideas. Farmers realize instinctively that if you take something from the earth today, you have to put something back to have for tomorrow. Sometimes, when we move into the city and leave the countryside, as more people than ever are doing, we get disconnected from that lesson. Sometimes, when I introduce him to other heads of state, I say, ‘Meet Farmer Ted.’”
No economist has influenced Turner more than Lester Brown, renowned for his ability to make sense of diverse data points pertaining to environmental degradation, human population growth, food production, weather, and living conditions. “What Jared Diamond did with his book Collapse, analyzing why civilizations failed or succeeded historically, Lester does every day in the way he thinks about our modern world,” Turner says. “I consider him to be the resource statistician for planet Earth.”
Brown says that because of the multiple fronts in which Turner operates—humanitarian, nuclear issues, agriculture, alternative energy, running restaurants—and given his record as a businessman, few others have better insight into why it’s not capitalism that is the problem, but the way that capitalism is promoted and practiced—as a proposition that runs on resource depletion. “Ted doesn’t have airs,” Brown says. “I think his lack of pretension has an effect on people.”
Once, while Brown was at a meeting in Oslo, the prime minister of Norway shared details of meetings he had with a number of world leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Turner’s name came up.
The limousine assigned to ferry Turner had become stuck in a snow bank, the prime minister said, and the chauffeur could do nothing to get it out. Turner learned forward and told the driver not to worry, that he would get some people together and push. To the driver’s amazement, Turner exited the vehicle and ca
lled out to a group of presidents, including the Norwegian prime minister and prominent businesspeople in suits waiting for their own rides. “Hey, I need your help. We need you to push,” Turner said. “We’re kind of stuck and if we work together we can get the car out of the rut.”
“If it had been anyone else, those world leaders might have been horrified to be asked to push, or they might have asked their assistants do it, but because it was Ted, and he was leading the charge and wasn’t really giving them a choice, they pitched in,” Brown says.
They grunted, and rocked the vehicle forward until it was free, and had a good belly laugh. The experience reminded them that no one is too high or mighty to be asked to do some heavy lifting, Brown says. “The lingering question is whether the vehicle was actually stuck or Ted used it as an opportunity to make a point!”
“Ted has a conscience that is wired to a free spirit,” Annan says. “And when you have a combination like that, you have a man who isn’t interested in formalities. He cuts right to the chase in sometimes awkward ways that leave people feeling uncomfortable.”
At another meeting in Davos during a different year, Annan says, there were intense anti-global demonstrations. The police were dispatched with shields and clubs, standing at the ready with tear gas. World business leaders, the so-called plutocrats, were gathered at windows overlooking a street where thousands of protestors had massed. Some of Annan’s colleagues proposed that the meeting be moved to a safer interior location. Annan encouraged Turner to pull back because of the possible danger posed from rock-throwing anarchists.
“Ted walked to the window and said, seemingly naively, ‘No one is going to throw a stone,’ and I said, ‘Look at the facial expressions on the police. They are concerned. They are ready for a violent confrontation.’ But Ted seemed baffled—and I mean baffled—by my suggestion. He wanted to be in the middle of the action. He tried to imagine himself as one of the protestors to determine why they would be down there. He wanted to know what they were protesting about so he could better understand. He said the protestors don’t want to destroy things. They just want to be heard. They want to feel valued. So, in the end, at Ted’s insistence, we didn’t move our meeting and, you know what? No windows were smashed. His action reminded those around him that if you must retreat, it gives the impression that you are doing something wrong.”
America is, per capita, the most charity-minded nation in the world. For whatever reason, and for as much as her citizens spend domestically, often taking on huge amounts of personal debt per capita, they also voluntarily part with more money, per citizen, in support of charitable causes. This fact wasn’t lost on Turner when he created the Turner Foundation to get his children involved with philanthropy.
Turner says there’s a folklore associated with his $1 billion donation to the UN. Even some of his friends are under the impression that it was something he spontaneously concocted. It has been joked about that perhaps Turner had been medicated, and had temporarily lost his mind.
During the hours leading up to the moment he took the podium at the UN event in 1997, he shared his intentions with a close inner circle. His friend and chief financial advisor Taylor Glover got a call in the very early morning hours. “When Ted phones and has an idea, sharing it at first light, he’s usually excited,” Glover says. “Let me just say that I’ve worked with Ted on some ambitious things over the years, but giving away $1 billion . . . You kind of roll back on the pillow and ask your wife, ‘Did he just say one billion dollars?’”
Barbara Pyle, Turner’s one-time head of environmental programming at CNN, says she paused when Turner reached her on the phone. “Ted, do you know what you are doing?” Pyle worried that the money would disappear into the UN’s bureaucracy and be squandered.
When Turner told Fonda what he had planned, she wept. Turner and Fonda carried on a never-ending conversation about the failures of traditional philanthropy and how the prevailing blueprint was often aimed at building new edifices rather than platforms for new ideas. “Ted actually had been talking about doing something like this for a while. But given the tone in Congress, he realized that support for the UN was slipping. The number of challenges in the world are many, and it is difficult to target charitable giving in a way that touches upon as many of those challenges as possible, even though the problems are interrelated,” Fonda says.
“I didn’t know that Ted was thinking $1 billion, but it didn’t surprise me, nor that he selected the UN as the recipient. He saw it as a nexus for addressing global concerns that affect us all, and he wanted to make a splash.”
Turner had a number of objectives that explain the timing. Because he was being honored, he had the podium and he didn’t want to waste an opportunity. “Nobody’s gonna yank you off the stage,” he says.
The UN was approaching its fiftieth anniversary and Annan was just coming on board as the new secretary-general. Some members of Congress refused to authorize US payment of its UN membership dues. America was $1 billion in arrears, and it was severely hamstringing the UN’s ability to function. “I thought it was shameful and an embarrassment,” Turner says. “If you are the most powerful member and you are enjoying the benefits, you don’t leave the organization in the lurch by being a scofflaw. You follow through. If you don’t like something, you work constructively to change it. That’s how adults and mature countries behave. I thought our behavior was childish and petty—not unlike how Congress behaved during the first term of the Obama Administration.”
Turner knew that the UN needed to be reformed, and that Annan’s arrival represented a chance to move reforms forward, but that without resolving the US debt, Annan didn’t stand a chance of success. Initially, Turner thought of outlandishly trying to “buy” the US debt and then hold his country accountable for it by filing a grievance in the World Court. But he rejected that tactic. He also entertained giving $1 billion to the UN to use as it saw fit, but that was prevented by charter.
He finally decided to structure the donation in a way that a new entity, the UN Foundation, would serve as both advocate and watchdog, promoting reforms, helping to elevate the organization’s profile, and serving as a conduit between the UN and the business community.
“Do you know that the UN has no mechanism for marketing itself or defending itself publicly against criticism?” he says. “It was just sitting there, taking bad PR body blows day after day without responding. I know from being in the advertising business that you have to be able to push back against attacks from Neanderthals.”
That’s why, in addition to the UN Foundation, he created the Better World Fund, an organization that can take out pro-UN ads in newspapers and mount a counteroffensive. “When a member of Congress goes on the attack, the Better World Fund can point out that by voting against the UN, that elected official is undermining things in the world that are important to US citizens. And you know what—since some members of Congress have realized they no longer have a free pass to batter the UN at will, without stating facts, they have backed off.”
Annan remembers when Turner arrived in New York City the day before the awards banquet and met him at the UN headquarters. Turner mentioned what he planned to do.
“I thought it was a joke, that he was being mischievous—until I saw the expression on his face and realized he was serious,” Annan said.
Annan consulted with a colleague, who had been chairman of Price Waterhouse, and was told that “no one gives away one billion dollars just like that.”
“How do you respond to such a gesture that is so far outside the boundary of the norm? I had to tell the person that Ted wasn’t trying to enrich himself. He had no secret agenda,” Annan says. “We all complain about things. It is human nature to criticize, but so few of us take steps to make it better. Whining about things isn’t Ted. Taking action is part of his unique focus.”
Still somewhat incredulous, Annan put
his arm around Turner and told him it was not too late to reconsider.
“No, I’ve made up my mind and, with your permission, I would like to announce it tonight.”
Holbrooke was in the audience as US ambassador to the UN the night that Turner made his announcement. He said, “I think Ted realized that someone, an American from outside government, needed to step up and validate the importance of the UN, to sort of put the critics in check. He understood its value because his international bureaus at CNN had exposed him to the work of the UN. It was tangible and it touched him. He had standing because he was an emblem of the modern successful entrepreneur and an avowed free market capitalist, kind of reflecting the values of Theodore Roosevelt.”
It was an evening of fireworks. “Ted not only gave a billion to the UN, but he also challenged others in the philanthropic community. He spared no one,” Wirth says. “He made a game-changing move with philanthropy that night, and he focused on the one organization with the highest international profile. On the face of it, it was pure genius. He has been a remarkable leader in philanthropy, not necessarily giving to libraries and hospitals and schools, though he has done his share, but focusing on the great causes that he believes must be championed—environment, population, nuclear arms, climate change.”
Turner strolled to the dais not only to unveil the UN-related gift, he climbed to the bully pulpit to shine a beam of guilt on other tycoons. Instead of hoarding wealth to earn themselves higher spots on the prestigious Forbes magazine richest persons list, he said, peering down upon some of the most privileged and powerful families in the world, people with wealth ought to give back.
Turner admits he made the admonishment hoping to make people with money, especially those making huge fortunes on Wall Street, squirm. Not long afterward, he challenged Forbes to devise a list that tallies not only the richest but honors the most magnanimous as well. A year earlier, he had gone on a rant with New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, who wrote a piece titled “Ted’s Excellent Idea” in which he said of the annual Forbes hubris-stroking tabulation: “That list is destroying our country! These new super-rich won’t loosen up their wads because they’re afraid they’ll reduce their net worth and go down on the list. [Making the Forbes list is] their Super Bowl.”
Last Stand: Ted Turner's Quest to Save a Troubled Planet Page 20