1
International Studies Association
Hawaii, March 2005
February 15, 2005
Ethical Values, Religion, and Policy Choices: Another Look at Kurt Waldheim
By: Michael Kuchinsky, Goucher College
1
Kurt Waldheim, fourth Secretary-General of the United Nations (U.N.), remains an
enigma. How can one man rise to represent the world’s loftiest principles grounded in the U.N.
Charter, yet fall to the level of a suspected war criminal all but convicted by public opinion of
the international community’s most heinous sins? What explanation adequately covers one
whose role to advance the cause of global peace made him sought after and welcomed, and now
shunned by others as a blot on the international system?
Enigmas raise questions, point out ironies, prompt paradoxes, or surface contradictions.
They discomfort us.
By such standards, the life of Secretary-General Waldheim fits the
characterization of “enigma.”
This makes the task of answering project questions over
relationships between religious and/or ethical values and the peacebuilding pursuits of Waldheim
while in office that much more interesting and difficult. Temptations for conjecture abound.
This case both follows along and moves away from patterns set by other authors of the
project. History forces this to be so. It questions whether, which, and how the personal and
contextual values of a man influenced his policy choices while fulfilling the role of Secretary-
General of the United Nations.
After elaborating upon multiple sources for his values,
Waldheim’s actions across cases verifies the conclusion that values other than religious ones
better explain his decisions.
Ironically this conclusion would be in keeping with both
Page 1 of 55 
Convention