It’s no secret that Ban Ki-Moon was chosen as Secretary-General because he is boring. He was chosen exactly because he was not what his predecessor, Kofi Annan was — a globetrotting cheerleader for international action, with a force of personality to match. Annan’s tenure was marred by scandal, and the U.N. never quite lived up to the bold reform promised in Annan’s In Larger Freedom report, an expansive plan for a more efficient, fairer U.N. that has yet to materialize.
Ban Ki-Moon became Secretary-General because he was expected to be a manager, a quiet reformer. So far, his role has been muddled, unclear and largely unsuccessful. Reform has stalled, climate talks have disappointed and the clock continues to tick on the Millennium Development Goals. The U.N. is not without successes during Mr. Ban’s tenure, and few problems exist that can’t be blamed on member states themselves, but a litany of interlocking troubles have made this summer Mr. Ban’s worst yet.
Just this week, Peter W. Galbraith, the U.N.’s former second in command in Afghanistan, has brought a case against Mr. Ban in the U.N. Dispute Tribunal. While it might look bad enough for the man who is largely credited for exposing the massively corrupt 2009 Afghan presidential election to bring a wrongful termination case agains the Secretary-General, it gets worse. As reported in the New York Times, the U.N. Dispute Tribunal, which rules on internal U.N. affairs unregulated by member states, has recently condemned Mr. Ban for preserving a culture of secrecy and exceptionalism at the highest levels of the U.N. secretariat. One judge even called their attitude an “attack on the rule of law”.
The substantive issues on the U.N. agenda haven’t fared better this year. Another round of sanctions on Iran has resulted in continued Iranian posturing, and this round saw Brazil and Turkey break formation with the West, offering a fuel swap to Iran and abstaining on sanctions. Then there’s the far more volatile issue of the sinking of the South Korean navy ship Cheonan by North Korea, an issue close to Mr. Ban’s heart. While the precipitous decline in already shaky Korean relations is enough to make any SG pull his hair out, Mr. Ban sits in the unique position of being a presumably neutral international civil servant, while really being a child of the Korean War. During the war, Ban’s family was forced from their home by the North Korean invasion and kept alive by U.S. food aid. Mr. Ban has admitted he has difficultly balancing his personal experience with his duty, and there’s no doubt that North Korea’s continued saber-rattling will not cease to irk him.
What else could possibly go wrong? Well, there’s the Israeli raid on a flotilla of protesters attempting to run the Israeli blockade of Gaza. Normally, this kind of thing wouldn’t be too hard for the U.N. to speak out against, but the U.S. insistence on blocking an independent international inquiry has put them at odds with Mr. Ban, who has been vehemently called out by John Bolton, the former Bush administration U.N. envoy.
Bad enough? It gets worse. Word came last week that a den of Russian spies were operating out of Russia’s mission to the U.N. in New York, a time-honored Russian tradition that has made everyone from the U.S. to the U.N. to Russia look bad. How does Mr. Ban respond? This week he’s likely to name a Russian, Yuri V. Fedotov, to head the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, according to Foreign Policy’s Turtle Bay blog. Obviously, a bit of spying shouldn’t reflect poorly on an entire nation’s diplomatic corps, but the timing couldn’t be worse.
As the summer trudges along, we can only hope that the member states offer some good news to the Secretary-General. Considering the pressure he’s under, Mr. Ban could probably use a Christmas in July. — AR
Photos via Milan Stanic.
