A few weeks ago, David Bosco and I had a rapid-fire exchange (look here, here and here) over how Ban Ki-moon measures up to Kofi Annan as UN Secretary-General. Now I’ve set out my views on the matter at greater length in IP-Global (the English-language version of Internationale Politik). My essay, entitled “A Second Chance for Ban Ki-moon”, doesn’t exactly start with a blaze of praise for the current SG:
Something strange is happening at the United Nations. Ban Ki-moon, who has received lackluster reviews since he became Secretary-General in 2007, wants a second five-year term. Although widely criticized as an insipid leader and feeble manager, Ban faces no challengers. Diplomats in New York expect the Security Council to nod through his renewal sometime later this year. If Ban strolls to victory, he may miss one of his last opportunities to lay out a compelling vision of why the UN still matters—something he has consistently failed to do so far.
I go on to criticize Ban for failing to gain a real understanding of the UN during his early years in office – although I posit, as I have before, that he has started to show a better grasp of the organization of late. In the past, the SG has tended to focus on high-level diplomacy – especially around climate change – rather than the down-to-earth realities of UN crisis management, peacekeeping and humanitarian ops.
His earlier efforts to define himself as a climate warrior now look like a bad bet: Ban seized on a high-profile policy issue over which he had little leverage, while paying the UN’s crisis managers too little attention. This has done clear harm. The UN’s operation in Darfur has stumbled from humiliation to humiliation, preyed upon by bandits and repeatedly obstructed by the Sudanese government. In 2008, the UN was blindsided by a predictable crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo in which rebels displaced over 200,000 civilians in an area patrolled by UN troops and attack helicopters. The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan—arguably its single most important operation in American and European eyes—descended into complete confusion after Hamid Karzai allegedly rigged the national elections in 2009.
Even if Ban had devoted his every waking moment to preventing these shocks, they might well still have blown up, but the UN has seemed to lack strategic foresight too often.
In spite this harsh reckoning, it isn’t all over for Ban. My article lays out elements of a new political narrative for his second term at the UN, based on a realistic assessment of how energy and resource scarcity issues are likely to destabilize poor countries (where the UN will have to respond) and create tensions between major powers (hampering how the UN works). To gain traction, the SG needs to do three big things:
First, he must convince the leaders of poor countries—who often view the UN as a neo-colonialist outfit, and would very happily get it out of their affairs—that his organization can help them through periods of instability ahead. Second, he must persuade skeptics in the United States and Europe that UN programs and operations remain the best-value tools for tackling new threats. Third, and most difficult, he must make the rising powers believe that the UN can help secure their growing global interests by fostering stability in weak states.
Easier said than done, perhaps. But it all needs doing.
