As promised, here is my Guardian Comment is Free post
The editors asked the question, you will note that I did not answer it - insufficient data!
Ian
The plot in favour of America
Does Ban Ki-Moon's latest appointment put truth on the rumours of a US-dominated United Nations?
Ian Williams
February 13, 2007 9:45 PM | Printable version
Ban Ki-Moon has finished six weeks as secretary-general of the United Nations. At a similar stage in Kofi Annan's career, Sergei Lavrov, the mordantly witty Foreign Minister of Russia and then ambassador to the UN, asked him why he had not completed his reforms, since the Almighty only took six days to complete the Universe. In one of his infrequent but sharp retorts, Annan pointed out that God did it on his own, without the interference of 190 members.
In reality, most of those 190 have little individual voice - but the permanent five members of the security council and, above all, the US certainly do. In that context, Ban's confirmation or the rumours that he is appointing the US ambassador to Indonesia, Lynn Pascoe, to head the UN's department of political affairs, could be disastrous.
That is no personal comment on Ambassador Pascoe, who is an accomplished diplomat well versed in Asian affairs, and even speaks Mandarin. If it had to be an American then he was a much better choice than, say, John Bolton.
Presumably Ban, in his previous incarnation as South Korean foreign minister had already become professionally acquainted with Pascoe. One can imagine a trade-off: American insistence that an American get the job, but Ban picking one he felt comfortable with. But no-one should have put him in that position.
Having any American, or for that matter, in the current state of the Blair-Bush relationship, any British appointee, in such a crucial position, is bad for the UN and for Washington. Even if Pascoe does not keep his fingers crossed behind his back when he takes his oath as an international civil servant, swearing that he "shall not seek or receive instructions from any government or from any other authority external to the Organization," who is going to believe him?
When Washington talks about reform and efficiency of the UN it is like Humpty Dumpty - the words mean just what the White House want them to mean, neither more nor less. Humpty Dumpty's great fall in Iraq is strongly persuasive to the rest of the UN membership that little this administration says or does can be put back together into any close proximity to reality. To mention but one important question, will Ambassador Pascoe implement UN resolutions on the Middle East, or for that matter on issues like Western Sahara?
Of course, he may, but Washington wouldn't like it, he will have a huge credibility gap to surmount with the rest of the membership and any hopes of a career in American politics go up in smoke. Yet without heroic efforts on Pascoe's part to establish himself as thoroughly un-American, the UN's every move will now suffer from the perception of being another American plot, which is bad for America.
In fact, the rhetoric and snide asides from the Washington aside, the US has been calling on the UN more than ever before: between African peacekeeping operations, putting pressure on Sudan, on Iran and many other diplomatic initiatives. The appearance of global diplomatic consensus that UN action gives has been far more legitimizing than unilateral decrees from the White House. But the cover is now blown. If Pascoe gets involved in Sudan, then he will be depicted as an envoy of the Crusaders in Washington.
Insofar as reforms mean anything at the UN, it has to be about personnel, where a combination of big power pressure, smaller power diplomatic nepotism, and the most renownedly inefficient and politicized "human resources" department conceivable have perpetuated the situation that a former secretary-general, Perez de Cuellar, epitomized when asked how many people work at the UN. "About half," he replied.
At the core of that is the permanent five's presumption, since the organization was founded, that they could appoint the senior staff of the UN. While Pascoe has to be an improvement over the KGB appointees that Moscow used to foist in the same position before the end of the Cold War, the job is now far more important than providing hard currency and information for a beleaguered Soviet Union.
Very belatedly, in his last term, Kofi Annan began to tackle this, and began a respectable search for candidates for senior posts. And then right at the end, under heavy White House pressure he appointed, after consulting Ban, a Bush appointee Josette Sheeran Shiner, a former editor of the Moony-owned Washington Times, as head of the World Food Programme.
Ban also appointed Sir John Holmes, a chum of Tony Blair as head of the department of humanitarian affairs, a task in which he may succeed. But governments that prate about "reform" should have the decency to blush when they make the UN part of their domestic spoils system.
If there is any ironic satisfaction, it is that UN staff are complaining that no matter who gets what job, the decisions will be taken by one of the Korean kitchen cabinet that Ban Ki-Moon has brought with him. Comparing Seoul's recent foreign policy with Washington's, that is actually reassuring.
Showing posts with label Ban Ki Moon Appointments. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ban Ki Moon Appointments. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
No fun Being Right.
Well just because we said Ban was going to appoint an American does not make us feel much better when he does. Vindication may be fine for a writer's ego, but my ego does fine anyway - and the appointment is bad for the UN and the world.
Honey Moon Ending for Ban?
Forty days into his tenure, Ban Ki-Moon's future policies are as enigmatic as ever – and it seems that they are enigmatic in Korean. The Ban team have not been successful – in fact they have not really tried – to explain what it is they are doing and why. In the absence of information the effect is like the Rorschach inkblot test used by psychologists so that those who stare at it can conjure up their worst nightmares.
Things did not become much clearer with the appointments that Ban made last Friday. They generally had hints of pay-off. As predicted he appointed B Lynn Pascoe, currently the US Ambassador to Indonesia, and a career diplomat, to be head of the Department of Political Affairs. He was probably the least worst American to put in the position, but having any American in that position is not clever either for the UN, or the US.
Essentially it gives the UN the appearance of being a open tool of US diplomacy, when its main usefulness for Washington is the global legitimacy that a seemingly independent UN can give to policies.
In fact, apart from his passport and his consequent difficulties in advancing UN positions that often run counter to what Washington had him pushing as a US Ambassador, Pascoe actually looks better qualified than many of Ban's appointments, whose resumes seem to have been fluffed up somewhat. Gender and geographical distribution seem to have weighed more than actual achievement and experience in many of the appointments.
Of course, it is possible that Mr Ban has seen deep and undiscovered qualities in his appointees that will now flower in office. But until they do, some of them will be seen as pay-offs, and also an attempt to buy non-aligned silence about Pascoe's appointment and unpopular moves like downgrading the department for disarmament affairs.
One generally welcomed decision was Ban's reappointment of Jean-Marie Guéhenno as head of peacekeeping. As well as being an Annan appointee, he was very highly regarded throughout the system – but more importantly, he is French. Ban, even if he has not quite fulfilled his promise to become fluently francophone was obviously paying off a debt.
On the payoff front for influential support, Ban has also rewarded Japan with the appointment of Kiyotaka Akasaka as Under Secretary General in the
Department of Public Information, supplanting Indian Shashi Tharoor, who had the temerity to run second in the race for Secretary General.
Those who remember previous Japanese incumbencies in this post are hoping that this one will be different – but fail to see how a former Japanese civil servant is going to do much for the UN's image outside Tokyo – and most crucially in the US. Even though his bio somewhat oddly states that he "has nurtured sufficient experience in handling communications and public relations issues," it will be interesting to see how he copes with the ferocity of the next "scandal" that the US media will surely cook up the very first time the UN next says no – to an attack on Iran for example.
However, while Japan has been rewarded with DPI, many UN staff were profoundly distressed with the public abuse by Ban's Korean aides of Nobuaki Tanaka, Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs for apparently taking initiatives without instructions. Whether it was a Korean thing about Japan, distaste for the actual disarmament position, which Ban is downgrading, or a very rigidly doctrinaire line with subordinates, it left UN staff very unhappy with the direction that Ban's team seems to be taking.
They are concerned that he has brought in a team of loyal South Korean advisers, who are actually making the decisions, regardless of the official position-holders. In fact, the indiscipline in the Secretariat has been legendary, and having an A-team of ones own nationals may in the end be a better way to run the organization than Boutros Ghali's "stealth and sudden violence" approach. And I would rather have a policy contrived in Seoul than one from Washington.
The real question is, which way will they steer the organization? Korean and American policy concur, for example, in favouring Israel more than the run of nation states, although South Korea has never joined the lonely band of coral atolls that are the only voting support that Israel and the US can muster. Can Ban and Pascoe resist attempts to get UN support for bombing Teheran?
The Secretary General is the servant of the member states and so has to implement the policies that they decide. But any good civil servant can be economical with the enthusiasm needed to implement mandates that he is unhappy with.
Once again, it is difficult to see which direction he is taking. Like Kofi Annan, he is deliberately courting opinion makers in the US. But does he appreciate the dangers of seeming to follow a path suggested by John Bolton when the Democrats now control congress? Does he appreciate the opportunities offered by the Congress that is reacting to the willful anti-multilateralism of the administration and the previous incumbents. Can he balance the superpower demands with the policies agreed by the rest of the world?
The answers are wrapped up in the Hermit Kingdom that has taken control of the 38th floor eyrie of the United Nations building. And the self confessed "slippery eel" is even harder to pin down.
Honey Moon Ending for Ban?
Forty days into his tenure, Ban Ki-Moon's future policies are as enigmatic as ever – and it seems that they are enigmatic in Korean. The Ban team have not been successful – in fact they have not really tried – to explain what it is they are doing and why. In the absence of information the effect is like the Rorschach inkblot test used by psychologists so that those who stare at it can conjure up their worst nightmares.
Things did not become much clearer with the appointments that Ban made last Friday. They generally had hints of pay-off. As predicted he appointed B Lynn Pascoe, currently the US Ambassador to Indonesia, and a career diplomat, to be head of the Department of Political Affairs. He was probably the least worst American to put in the position, but having any American in that position is not clever either for the UN, or the US.
Essentially it gives the UN the appearance of being a open tool of US diplomacy, when its main usefulness for Washington is the global legitimacy that a seemingly independent UN can give to policies.
In fact, apart from his passport and his consequent difficulties in advancing UN positions that often run counter to what Washington had him pushing as a US Ambassador, Pascoe actually looks better qualified than many of Ban's appointments, whose resumes seem to have been fluffed up somewhat. Gender and geographical distribution seem to have weighed more than actual achievement and experience in many of the appointments.
Of course, it is possible that Mr Ban has seen deep and undiscovered qualities in his appointees that will now flower in office. But until they do, some of them will be seen as pay-offs, and also an attempt to buy non-aligned silence about Pascoe's appointment and unpopular moves like downgrading the department for disarmament affairs.
One generally welcomed decision was Ban's reappointment of Jean-Marie Guéhenno as head of peacekeeping. As well as being an Annan appointee, he was very highly regarded throughout the system – but more importantly, he is French. Ban, even if he has not quite fulfilled his promise to become fluently francophone was obviously paying off a debt.
On the payoff front for influential support, Ban has also rewarded Japan with the appointment of Kiyotaka Akasaka as Under Secretary General in the
Department of Public Information, supplanting Indian Shashi Tharoor, who had the temerity to run second in the race for Secretary General.
Those who remember previous Japanese incumbencies in this post are hoping that this one will be different – but fail to see how a former Japanese civil servant is going to do much for the UN's image outside Tokyo – and most crucially in the US. Even though his bio somewhat oddly states that he "has nurtured sufficient experience in handling communications and public relations issues," it will be interesting to see how he copes with the ferocity of the next "scandal" that the US media will surely cook up the very first time the UN next says no – to an attack on Iran for example.
However, while Japan has been rewarded with DPI, many UN staff were profoundly distressed with the public abuse by Ban's Korean aides of Nobuaki Tanaka, Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs for apparently taking initiatives without instructions. Whether it was a Korean thing about Japan, distaste for the actual disarmament position, which Ban is downgrading, or a very rigidly doctrinaire line with subordinates, it left UN staff very unhappy with the direction that Ban's team seems to be taking.
They are concerned that he has brought in a team of loyal South Korean advisers, who are actually making the decisions, regardless of the official position-holders. In fact, the indiscipline in the Secretariat has been legendary, and having an A-team of ones own nationals may in the end be a better way to run the organization than Boutros Ghali's "stealth and sudden violence" approach. And I would rather have a policy contrived in Seoul than one from Washington.
The real question is, which way will they steer the organization? Korean and American policy concur, for example, in favouring Israel more than the run of nation states, although South Korea has never joined the lonely band of coral atolls that are the only voting support that Israel and the US can muster. Can Ban and Pascoe resist attempts to get UN support for bombing Teheran?
The Secretary General is the servant of the member states and so has to implement the policies that they decide. But any good civil servant can be economical with the enthusiasm needed to implement mandates that he is unhappy with.
Once again, it is difficult to see which direction he is taking. Like Kofi Annan, he is deliberately courting opinion makers in the US. But does he appreciate the dangers of seeming to follow a path suggested by John Bolton when the Democrats now control congress? Does he appreciate the opportunities offered by the Congress that is reacting to the willful anti-multilateralism of the administration and the previous incumbents. Can he balance the superpower demands with the policies agreed by the rest of the world?
The answers are wrapped up in the Hermit Kingdom that has taken control of the 38th floor eyrie of the United Nations building. And the self confessed "slippery eel" is even harder to pin down.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)