Chapter 63: The Dust Has Settled
Where there are people, there will be struggles, and the higher the level, the more intense the struggle! It's just that when you reach a high place, everything is hidden behind the scenes, and it is carried out under the shroud of fog, and ordinary people don't have the opportunity to get a glimpse of it.
The United Nations is no exception. As the largest multilateral international organization in the world, the United Nations should represent the common interests of all mankind and make unremitting efforts to safeguard world peace and development in terms of its founding purpose and the provisions of the UN Charter. However, as a huge organization composed of nearly 200 countries and regions, with tens of thousands of employees, it is impossible to avoid the entanglement of interests, contradictions and grievances, and even its complexity exceeds the internal problems of any one country.
Moreover, the United Nations has the same power, with more than $10 billion a year collected from individual member states as contributions, which are eventually spent as various expenses in various fields. How to distribute such a big cake is a very complicated game process.
Not to mention that the UN Security Council has the right to give final verdicts on various issues around the world, and Security Council resolutions have the highest authority within the UN framework, which can condemn, blockade, sanction, send peacekeeping troops to specific countries, and even authorize other countries or national organizations to directly strike at them! Therefore, the Security Council has become the place where the great power game is most intense. Needless to say, the five permanent members have a veto on Security Council resolutions. It is the other 10 or so non-permanent members, and every time they vote for an election, the fierce struggles and behind-the-scenes deals are staggering.
In addition, from the Secretary-General of the United Nations to an ordinary United Nations staff member, they all come from all countries in the world and naturally represent the interests of their respective countries, not to mention that many United Nations officials have held important positions in their own governments and have close ties with them. In the various activities in which it participates, it is natural to exert all kinds of influence and try to tilt the balance of interests in its favor.
The same is true this time. Originally, within the United Nations Programme, there was a consensus to transfer a part of the product procurement target to manufacturers outside Europe and the United States in order to better control costs and expand the number of purchases.
However, the situation has been exacerbated by the recent political turmoil in France, especially by the strike action of powerful trade unions. The frustrated French government ordered the Frenchman Ramonis, who is the assistant under-secretary of the United Nations and the administrator of the United Nations Development Programme, to do everything possible to get the projects under the responsibility of the UNDP to procure French products and ease the deadlock between the government and the trade unions.
As a former French deputy foreign minister and a senior member of the current ruling French Democratic Alliance party, Ramonis naturally could not sit idly by and watch his party collapse and the country become in chaos, so he could only do his best. Therefore, it is not surprising that his attitude changed greatly after receiving a report from Rokens and others, and he resolutely disagreed with the purchase of products from Huaxia.
However, even if Ramonis was in the position of Administrator, he could not have the final say within such a large UNDP alone. As soon as he flew back to Beijing, Rokens informed the Swede Kabufele, who had a long-standing feud with Ramonis and was a strong candidate for the next administrator. The latter immediately launched their own forces to fight back. His internal activities prevented UNDP from taking immediate decisions and stalled him. On the other hand, Kabufile knew that his own strength alone was not enough to fully counter Raimoniz, so he informed UN Secretary-General Khachar of this information. Hachar is also a Swedish and has a friendly attitude towards China, and has visited China many times. After learning the news, he immediately summoned Ramonis and urged the other party to treat the project procurement equally and without prejudice. However, Khachar's move is not only because of his friendship with China, but also because of his own considerations.
It turned out that more than half of Hachar's five-year term had passed, and he was actively seeking re-election. Among them, the attitude of the five permanent members of the Security Council is the most crucial. However, because of his relatively moderate attitude and relatively neutral stance, he was not welcomed by Western countries led by the United States. The candidate chosen by the United States to be the next secretary general is none other than France's former deputy prime minister and foreign minister. Anyway, he had irreconcilable contradictions with the United States and France on this issue, and he turned to seek the support of other countries. In this case, Huaxia's attitude is crucial.
While revealing the information to the Huaxia delegation to the United Nations, he made frequent high-profile appearances to put pressure on the project. Since then, there has been a quiet and fierce game around this project to aid Africa.
Actually, Ramonis himself knows. Although Huaxia's products may be far behind French products in terms of fineness and advanced performance, they are also superior in terms of simplicity and reliability, ease of use and repair, and low price. If we really take into account the harsh natural environment and low personnel in Africa, maybe Chinese products are more adaptable!
Just like in World War II, Germany's armored forces, under the leadership of Guderian, were invincible and swept across Europe. One of the important pieces of equipment is the well-known "Tiger" tank, which has advanced performance, powerful firepower, and a good crew environment, which is convenient for long-term combat. After the outbreak of the Soviet-German war, it faced the Soviet T-34. The performance of this tank is relatively backward, and the member environment is also very poor. International public opinion and the German High Command both believed that the "Tiger" type could defeat the T-34 to the ground.
This was true in the early days of the war, but soon the shape began to reverse. The "Tiger" style of defeat is defeated by its advancement. The reason is very simple, although the "Tiger" type is advanced, it is expensive, the production cycle is long, the maintenance is complex and the operation is difficult, the requirements for soldiers are very high, and the consumption rate in the war is just amazingly fast. Gradually, the factories in the rear and the soldiers in the front could not meet the needs, and the German army, which had struggled to support it, gradually became the last of its strength.
On the other hand, in the Soviet Army, although the T-34 has poor performance and many minor problems, it is simple and fast to produce and maintain, and the operation is not complicated, and it can be mass-produced in a short period of time. As a result, with the continuous supply of factories in the rear and soldiers in the front, the Soviet armored forces became stronger and stronger, and the momentum was like a rainbow. In the end, the myth of the German blitzkrieg was completely shattered on the territory of the USSR.
However, he is also difficult to ride now, because he received a call from his mentor and political leader, Joe Rosen, who was the president of France at the time of the French Democratic Alliance party, and asked him to fight for the project as much as possible.
In the end, after a fierce struggle, because no one could completely defeat the other, all parties reached a compromise and divided the procurement of products involved in the "Stephen Plan" into three parts, with French manufacturers and Chinese manufacturers each receiving 1/3, and the remaining 1/3 being obtained by other countries.