People used to equate the vice-presidency of the United States with a "pitcher of warm spit." Since Dick Cheney occupied the position, the spittle has become more potently venomous and the office consequently more important and noticeable. Similarly, the secretary-generalship of the United Nations is a very malleable office. The contrast with a predecessor’s personality can make the successor’s style more or less noticeable. Ban Ki Moon's tenure so far has been on the low decibel end of the scale, even compared with Kofi Annan, who always spoke softly, realizing that there was no big stick at hand.
Technically, the secretary general is the UN’s office manager, and on the official protocol totem pole only equates to a foreign minister. In fact, the frequently overlookable President of the General Assembly officially outranks him. (Until now, only men have served as UN secretaries general.)
However, like his predecessors, Ban can phone heads of state, confident that they will answer his calls. His real powers derive from his ability to put questions on the agenda –which can mean putting the great powers on the spot by raising issues that they would rather see buried. That’s an integral part of his real power – it’s the practical leverage by which he can symbolize the UN Charter and the world community for the peoples of the world.
It’s a power that recent incumbents have under-used rather than abused. One of the reasons for this is that the role of the world's conscience contradicts the other role that has accreted to the office, which is to be the global Arch-Envoy. It’s difficult to remain the public keeper of the global conscience when shaking the bloodstained hands of the statesmen of the world is an essential part of your job description. And it’s difficult to keep shaking the hands of people that you may name and shame.
First Six Months
So where does Ban Ki Moon fit into the pattern after six months in office? One suspects that his neophyte Korean-dominated team doesn’t really realize that there is a pattern. In some ways, his tenure is reminiscent of the initial intellectual arrogance of Boutros Boutros Ghali, who ran the show peremptorily and autocratically until experience taught him differently. In Ban's case, it’s more oligarchic than autocratic. His team of Korean advisors is collectively running the show, but these advisors really do think they have little to learn from the existing office-holders, many of whom they have cleared out.
Indeed, so thoroughgoing has been their exclusion of most of Annan’s personnel that one can only presume they believed the John Bolton/Fox TV image of the Annan administration as hopelessly anti-American and incorrigibly corrupt.
That lack of institutional memory leads to a reinvention of the wheel. The fractious ending of their terms of office obscured the fact many Non-Aligned delegations regarded both Boutros-Ghali and Annan as being pro-American to the point of being tools of Washington. Ban has, naturally, declared that U.S.-UN relations are to be a major priority, but his Korean back up staff seem to think that they are being innovative with this. In reality they are marching briskly into the same prejudiced swamp as their predecessors.
Annan and the United States
Indeed, Annan, a U.S. nominee, went as far as possible in constructive engagement of Washington, and, realizing its importance on Capitol Hill, to bring in Israel and American pro-Israeli organizations into the United Nations.
However, Annan realized that there was some considerable dissonance between what American politicians wanted and what the UN Charter and international law mandates. He didn’t ostentatiously flaunt disagreements, but when he was pushed there were lines he would not cross. In the end, he had to admit that the invasion of Iraq was illegal – but no one could accuse him of being os
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