Hazard pay
When Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, withdrew her name from consideration for U.S. secretary of state in December, the consensus among many of her Security Council colleagues was that she had been unfairly denied the top American diplomatic post by Senate Republicans seeking to wound the newly reelected American president. But ...
When Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, withdrew her name from consideration for U.S. secretary of state in December, the consensus among many of her Security Council colleagues was that she had been unfairly denied the top American diplomatic post by Senate Republicans seeking to wound the newly reelected American president.
When Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, withdrew her name from consideration for U.S. secretary of state in December, the consensus among many of her Security Council colleagues was that she had been unfairly denied the top American diplomatic post by Senate Republicans seeking to wound the newly reelected American president.
But one of her colleagues, Russia’s U.N. envoy Vitaly Churkin, had a curious way of rising to her defense. (A little background: the two ambassadors have had a highly confrontational, though often affectionate relationship, that manifests itself in the kind of testy personal exchanges one might associate with a marital spat.)
In an interview broadcast on Dec. 13 on PBS, Russia’s U.N. ambassador Churkin told PBS’s Judy Woodruff, if the setback "means that ambassador Rice is going to spend four more years in the United Nations I’m going to have to ask for double pay. She has been one tough individual in the United Nations but we have had I think sometimes a stormy but most of the time friendly relationship with her. I would be looking forward to that, particularly if I’m given double pay for the additional effort."
Over the weekend, I wrote a piece in the Washington Post indicating that Rice was in line to become President Barack Obama’s next national security advisor. The move is not imminent. Rice will likely remain in New York at least through the summer, as Thomas Donilon, the current office holder, plots his next move, either inside or outside of government.
During the reporting, I approached Amb. Churkin outside the Security Council to ask if was he was pleased to hear that they would not likely spend the next four years together. He declined to comment. Well, what about that raise? I asked.
"I didn’t get it."
Follow me on Twitter @columlynch
Colum Lynch was a staff writer at Foreign Policy between 2010 and 2022. Twitter: @columlynch
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