Bruce Jones and I have just published a short piece on the Brookings website pointing out that (i) there’s a growing sense that UN reform, and especially Security Council reform, is urgently needed after the financial crisis, but (ii) it’s not clear who’ll lead it….
Unlike his predecessor Kofi Annan, who strongly advocated Council reform, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon isn’t inclined to lead on the issue. Ban is a conciliator, and his public statements suggest that he has an oddly ambiguous attitude to the U.N.’s global role. At times he insists that the organization is indispensable—at others, he is very realistic about its limitations. He’s also up for re-election in 2011. Seizing the banner of Security Council reform would make him enemies he can’t afford.
Nicolas Sarkozy, himself facing elections in 2012, thinks he may be the man for the job. France is hosting both the G-20 and the G8 next year, and Sarkozy has announced he’ll take this opportunity to launch sweeping reforms of international financial institutions—and that the changes could spur an overhaul of the Security Council as well.
Sarkozy’s vision has been criticized as over-ambitious and designed to win him kudos at home. This isn’t entirely fair. At a minimum, the French president has laid out a coherent vision of what a grand bargain on multilateral reform would look like. If he can catalyze serious inter-governmental debate on the issue, it will be a major step forward. But it’s unlikely that France will manage to win consensus on a dramatic package of reforms in a year.
So who can lead on UN reform these days? Our answer is here.
