The Most Impossible Job on Earth: Who Will Be the Next UN Secretary-General?
UNITED NATIONS, 27 Jun 2016
Shashi Tharoor – Le Monde Diplomatique
Whoever succeeds Ban Ki-moon at the United Nations will face the same frustrations as his or her predecessors — authority without decisive power.
June 2016
The first UN secretary-general, Trygve Lie (who served 1946-52), described the post to his successor, Dag Hammarskjöld, as “the most impossible job on earth” and time has not made it any easier. The UN charter makes the secretary-general (SG) the chief administrative officer, but also an independent official whom the General Assembly and Security Council can entrust with unspecified but implicitly political tasks. It is up to each holder of the office to demonstrate whether he or she is more “secretary” than “general”.
Paradoxes abound. The SG is expected to enjoy the backing of governments, especially the five permanent members of the Security Council, the Perm Five or P-5 — US, China, UK, France and Russia — but also to show impartiality. The SG establishes credentials by bureaucratic or diplomatic service, but, once elected, must transcend that past and serve as a voice of the world — even a “secular pope”. The SG is entrusted with helping member states to make sound and well-informed decisions, which he/she then has to execute, but can also influence their work and even propose actions they should undertake. The SG administers a complex organisation of more than 41,000 people and serves as head of the UN agencies (1), but must respect budgetary and regulatory constraints imposed by the member governments.
The SG has an unparalleled agenda-shaping authority, but does not have the power to execute all ideas, and articulates a vision that only governments can fulfil. The SG moves the world, but cannot direct it. Hammarskjöld (1953-61) first argued at the height of the cold war that an impartial civil servant could be “politically celibate” without being “politically virgin”. The SG could play a political role without losing personal impartiality, though this was conditional on keeping faithfully to the charter and international law.
UN SG races are nothing like the razzmatazz of American presidential campaigns. They are fought so discreetly as to be almost clandestine, and have a very limited electorate: the 15 members of the Security Council, who are supposed to agree on a single name to forward to the UN General Assembly. Majorities in the 193-member assembly are largely irrelevant: it has always endorsed the Security Council’s nomination. What really counts is victory in the Council, where the Perm Five enjoy a veto.
This year the challenge will be for Eastern Europe to come up with a candidate who will not attract a Russian or American veto; the other three members of the P-5 are unlikely to veto a European. If all Eastern European candidates are vetoed, a plausible national of the Western Europe and Others group, from Oceania, such as the former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark, currently a UN under-secretary-general, could stand a chance; there is widespread support for the idea that it is time the UN had a woman as SG. A Latin American, African or Asian in 2016 — and certainly a man from any of these continents — would be a major surprise.
South Korean lobbying
The 2006 election, in which I came second out of seven candidates to Ban Ki-moon, had an unprecedented level of public exposure for the candidates, who met Regional Groups and addressed the annual summit of the Organisation of African Unity; there were dedicated websites analysing the race, public opinion polls and editorials, and even a debate on the BBC in which Ban Ki-moon did not participate, confirming that public campaigns had minimal impact on the outcome.
During the contest, the South Koreans set a high standard in outreach; they visited all 15 Security Council members in their capitals, often dangling significant bilateral carrots; other candidates had neither the time nor the resources to do this. South Korea was the only government among the 15 members that undertook a yearlong, well structured and amply financed campaign — and its candidate won. This suggests there is some merit in a targeted campaign, provided none of the Perm Five has a fundamental objection to the candidate.
The SG race is not about vision or the most relevant resumé, language skills, administrative ability or charisma. This is a political job and the decision to select an SG will be political, made principally by the P-5. It is true that many SGs have been the “least unacceptable” candidate; it was said of more than one that he was the sort who wouldn’t make waves if he fell out of a boat. The P-5 would prefer someone who is going to be more secretary than general, and the smart money will still be on someone acceptable to both the US and Russia.
The shape of the race will become apparent from July, and an outcome can be expected in September-October. It has been felt recently that the Perm Five want a quiescent administrator who will not exceed the brief. But we do not have to look that far back to find a SG who expanded the possibilities of the remit beyond this minimalist notion. Kofi Annan, at the cold war’s end, went further than his predecessors in using the office’s bully pulpit. He boldly raised the question of the morality of intervention and the duty of individuals to follow their consciences, and he challenged member states to resolve the tensions between state sovereignty and their responsibility to protect ordinary people.
When the US first threatened to bomb Iraq in February 1998 because Saddam Hussein was not co-operating with UN nuclear inspections, Kofi Annan travelled to Baghdad to resolve the crisis, against the wishes of a majority of the P-5. His success turned out to be temporary, but in going beyond where his masters wanted him to go, he demonstrated the potential of the role.
Walk a tightrope
Often the SG can raise an awkward question but not dictate the answer. Annan’s historic speech on intervention at the General Assembly in 1999 caused a thousand flowers to bloom in thinktanks and on op-ed pages, but did not lead to a single military intervention to protect the oppressed. The UN is often seen to embody international legitimacy, yet the SG’s pronouncements often have less impact on the conduct of member states than the pope’s strictures on birth control.
The SG knows that the office can accomplish little without the support of members whose inaction on issues he/she might otherwise want to denounce. The SG cannot afford to allow frustration on any single issue to affect the ability to elicit cooperation from governments on others. (Annan quoted a Ghanaian proverb: “Never hit a man on the head when you have your fingers between his teeth.”)
Today’s single-superpower world also means that the SG must manage a relationship vital to the UN’s survival without mortgaging his/her integrity and independence. The insistent demands of some in America that the UN prove its utility to the US (demands that could not have been made in the same terms during the cold war) oblige the SG to walk a tightrope between American priorities and the preferences of the membership as a whole. The SG can be most useful to the US when demonstrating independence from it.
Member states’ increasing micro-management of budgets has also weakened the SG’s authority. Both Annan and his predecessor, Boutros Boutros-Ghali (1992-6), undertook ambitious administrative reforms, but were unable to address the far greater levels of procedural and regulatory inertia in areas under the authority of member states, against which no SG has had real independence: the UN operates without embassies or intelligence services, and member states resist any attempt to acquire these. The reach of SGs cannot exceed their grasp, and that grasp cannot extend across the frontiers of member states, or into their treasuries.
The next SG
The next SG will command great diplomatic legitimacy, and even greater media visibility, but less political power than the language of the UN charter suggests. To be effective, she (all signs point to the likelihood of a woman being elected) must be skilled at managing staff and budgets, gifted at public and behind-the-scenes diplomacy, and able to engage the loyalties of external actors, including non-governmental organisations, business groups and journalists.
She also must convince the nations of the poor and conflict-ridden South that their interests are uppermost in her mind, while ensuring that she can work effectively with the wealthy and powerful North. She must recognise the power and the prerogatives of the Security Council, especially the P-5, while staying attentive to the priorities and passions of the General Assembly. And she must present member states with politically achievable proposals and implement her mandates within the means they provide.
I believe strongly that the UN needs reform, not because it has failed, but because it has succeeded enough to be worth investing in. For that, the SG needs a vision of the higher purpose of the office and an awareness of its potential and limitations. To be successful, she must conceive and project a vision of the UN as it should be, while administering and defending the organisation as it is.
Realistically, it will probably be a UN that is more sharply focused on areas where it has a proven capacity to make a difference. It will continue to be the first choice for coordinator of the world’s response in major humanitarian disasters. It is currently the most successful institution at monitoring peace treaties and conducting peacekeeping operations, and will likely remain the means of choice for these. When territories must be administered while political solutions evolve and working methods for lasting peace are established, the world will continue to turn to the UN, since it transcends any single government’s interests but acts in the name of all.
I imagine it will not lead military interventions, peacekeeping excepted, although its legislative bodies will undoubtedly remain the primary source of legitimacy for any such interventions. The UN is still the place to confront serious threats to international peace and security, and it is indispensable to construct peace: military strength has its limitations for nation-building. (Talleyrand said the one thing you cannot do with a bayonet is to sit on it.)
And I can see no other entity that could, with the same efficiency and objectivity, provide the means to address the gaps and the cracks in the façade of the international system, in which many of the 21st century’s problems, from environmental degradation to global epidemics, from human rights abuses to international terrorism, would otherwise flourish.
So much for the architecture. But a house is not a home, and the new SG must make it one. Truly an impossible job.
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