Time was when Kremlinologists pored over every grainy photo of the politburo lineup atop Lenin’s mausoleum, trying to discern from who stood where, and who had suddenly vanished, the ructions with the Soviet state. Watchers of Mao’s China read tea leaves. As George Russell and I note in this latest article, trying to figure out what’s going on inside the UN Procurement Department, where your tax dollars get spent on UN business, is not so different. ^[1]