Screwed Up Reforms

My latest column from Tribune, London 25 January 2007

The arrival of Sir John Holmes at the United Nations will be a distinctly underwhelming experience for most of the United Nations staff and diplomats. They would have been much more excited if it were his namesake the porn star “Long John” Holmes, whose qualifications were touted at 13 inches plus.

On the face it, the actor's qualifications, even when adjusted for reality at a mere ten inches, still appear more appropriate for his career than Sir John’s c.v. makes him to be Under Secretary General for humanitarian affairs.

Although it is possible that in the best mandarin tradition of the British Civil Service, Sir John will rise to the occasion, being so close a friend of Tony Blair that the Prime Minister ordered the Foreign Office not to submit any other British nominations for high office to Ban Ki-Moon is not necessarily a good qualification for such a demanding position.

What is more, Sir John has a hard act to follow in Jan Egeland, his predecessor, the Norwegian who was nobody’s poodle, and whose outspokenness mobilized billions of dollars for humanitarian aid after disasters like the Asian Tsunamis – at the risk of annoying the White House. Such qualities are not in oversupply in Tony Blair's immediate vicinity.

While all British governments have played this game, their nominations have usually had much more apparent qualifications, and to be fair, have often taken their oaths as international civil servants seriously enough to irritate Whitehall.

But regardless of Holmes’s qualifications, Blair’s nomination is a buccaneering one in many respects, not least in the wreck it has helped make of the UN reforms that he and Bush keep invoking.

The root of many of the managerial and personnel problems of the United Nations -- and there are many -- is that from the beginning the permanent five have ridden roughshod over the UN Charter’s provisions for an independent international civil service.

Under their pressure, Trygve Lie allowed the FBI an office in the building to vet American staff for Un-American activities. For decades, the UN could not employ Russian or Chinese staff who were not sponsored and vetted by their governments.

More recently, the British and French have claimed various high-level jobs, while for the last fifteen years, the Under Secretary General for Management has been an American presidential appointment. Some of them did outstanding jobs, although one notes that when the Murdoch press and Congressional Republicans inveigh against "waste, mismanagement and corruption," at the UN, they rarely mention who is charge of management there!


But regardless of the competence of the appointees, there can be no substantial reform of UN personnel policies when the President of the US, or the Prime Minister of Britain, treat senior posts in the organization as part of their own political patronage.

While it is true that the British, French and Americans do not deign to interfere in lower level appointments, pouring through the breach made by the P5 many other ambassadors work hard to ensure that their nationals get a piece of the UN pie.

Towards the end of his term, Kofi Annan, perhaps a little belatedly, tried to do something to stop this. Admittedly, he waited until after appointing a Bush nominee to head UNICEF, a traditional American position. Senior UN positions were advertised, candidates were interviewed, and Annan appointed people from the non-chosen nationalities.

It was, of course, too good to last. In the last month of office as John Bolton shouted "reform" and demanded that every senior appointment that Annan made should end as soon as he left office, the White House, and Bolton, contrived to nominate a prominent Bush supporter and former editor of the of the Reverend Moon's Washington Times as head of the World Food Programme. The search process went ahead as specified, but reportedly, the White House threatened to pull the funding both from the Food and Agriculture Organisation and the WFP, if the interview panel failed to take note of the manifest qualifications of Bush's nominee. And so Josette Sheeran Shiner was appointed.


And then came Sir John Holmes, whom Blair wanted to be either head of peacekeeping, or political affairs. Ban Ki-Moon demurred, apparently because he had already been pressured into promising these positions to the Americans and the French. So Sir John ended up heading Humanitarian Affairs, for which his main qualification is being a Friend of Tony – and a previous friend of John Major.

It would have been pleasant, if unlikely, to see a British Labour government side with Annan, and his British Deputy, Mark Malloch Brown, in their efforts to reform the UN. Even putting forward several candidates for Ban to choose from would have preserved appearances.

The results may now be disastrous. The leaks suggest that the President will successfully put American diplomat Burton Lynn Pascoe as head of the Department of Political Affairs at the UN. He is indeed unusually well qualified for a Bush nominee.

However it is difficult to conceive of anyone suggested by this administration who will not cross their fingers behind their back as they swear not to take instructions from their governments. For example, Pascoe now has a choice, to implement UN policy on the Middle East – or ruin any career chances he has in Washington!

In any case, appearances do matter. If the UN appears as an unalloyed tool of Washington, that will seriously harm its ability to work across the world. To put it shortly, Tony Blair has joined in doing to the UN what the other "Long John" Holmes used to do to his co-stars.

Ban, American Moguls at UN?

Khalilzad: Good News and Bad for UN
The Nation

Ian Williams
The impending appointment of Zalmay Khalilzad to replace John Bolton as US ambassador to the United Nations is mixed news. Khalilzad takes his directions from Vice President Dick Cheney, and since the beginning of the Reagan Administration has been an ardent supporter of the various neocon adventurist positions.

While he almost certainly shares the neocons' bedrock contempt for international law and the UN, Khalilzad does not carry Bolton's baggage: decades of obsessive fulmination against the international body. As a Muslim of Afghan descent who possesses more social and diplomatic graces than his predecessor, he will probably do a better job of advancing the White House agenda.

Progressives who called for the dismissal of Bolton might have crossed their fingers and hoped he stayed. After all, do we really want an effective diplomat representing the Bush-Cheney agenda? Much better, surely, to have an ineffective bully and blowhard who provokes opposition than someone who has charm and diplomatic skills. We may now be seeing that experiment in real time.

But Khalilzad's appointment leaves open the question of who will be the next US nominee to high office in the UN. It was rumored that he was under consideration to be under secretary general for political affairs, and the United States had expressed interest in taking over the position as head of peacekeeping.

The French seem to think that they have a lock on peacekeeping... but then the British thought that their man John Holmes was on the trail for that or political affairs until he ended up in the important but less politically sensitive position heading humanitarian affairs, so there may be room for disappointment. Maybe Paris misinterpreted Ban Ki-moon's still-less-than-perfect French? Perhaps to ward off American interest, Ban has reportedly been considering splitting the responsibilities of peacekeeping between its administrative and logistical side and the more overtly political aspects.

There still may be the chance for a nightmare scenario in which Bolton is nominated for one of the presumed American senior positions in the UN hierarchy. I advance this theory for several reasons: The Bush Administration is arrogant and/or stupid enough to try such a stunt, and Bolton is obsessive enough about the UN to seek another post. But my main reason for raising it is prophylactic--the hope that people will be so horrified at the thought that they will not let it happen. (Note that these positions are not subject to confirmation by the US Senate since they are technically made by the secretary general. It is considered polite for everyone to pretend not to notice the US arm-twisting when the Secretary General makes his decision.)

However, we should not get too personal about Bolton. It would be a disaster for the United Nations and the United States to have any American identified with this White House (or for that matter the previous one) heading such crucial departments.
Indeed, Britain's recent close proximity to US positions probably counted against the appointment of Holmes to the peacekeeping post. The advantage of the UN for rational American policy is not only that it provides a global legion of sepoys to carry out duties that would swamp the US military. An independent globally respected body can implement resolutions, even American-inspired ones, while one that is overtly American-dominated would have far less credibility. Indeed, the perception of following narrow American interests that would accompany almost any conceivable nomination from this Administration would put UN staff and peacekeepers across the world at considerable risk.

For all the complaints from Republicans in Congress, Washington has always had far more say in the UN than is good for the organization, and while on one level such senior appointments would line up perceptions with reality, they would reap no benefits for anyone.

If Ban Ki-moon thinks that putting a US-approved appointee in such jobs will insulate the organization from criticism, he should consider that American presidential-patronage nominees have been in charge of UN management for fifteen years of unrelenting American media and Congressional criticism of UN management.
In fact, the first item of any serious reform of the UN was already derailed by the United States with the enforced appointment of Josette Sheeran Shiner as head of the World Food Program, which rescinded Kofi Annan's already belated declaration of personnel independence.

Ban Ki-moon was off to a good start in reclaiming that lost ground by appointing two women--Alicia Bárcena of Mexico to the traditionally US-held position of under secretary general for management, and Dr. Asha-Rose Migiro of Tanzania (hitherto foreign minister) as his deputy, replacing Mark Malloch Brown, the retiring British incumbent.

American for Peacekeeping? -- And Which American would that be?

Blair Cronyism derailing UN Reform

Here we, three days into the New Year, and it is already apparent that when the Permanent Five members talk about UN reform they are only kidding. The first major appointment of the New Year is in fact a Major appointment, albeit out of Blair.

When I heard that John Holmes was going to take over from Jan Egeland as USG for humanitarian affairs, my first confused thought was "The porn star with a ten-incher? But he's dead!"

Alas, no one so colourful. Rather Sir John Holmes is a protégé of Tony Blair and sometime host of the Prime Minister on his frequent freebie holiday junkets around the world. Before he was Personal Private Secretary to Conservative Prime Minister John Major, but his career survived that of possibly the least memorable and colourless premier in British history. The British wanted him for Political Affairs or Peacekeeping, and instead of putting forward several candidates, at Blair's instructions lobbied heavily for him alone when Ban visited London last year.

At least it was not the former BeeGee who was Blair's most recent host.

Ban Ki-Moon is of course under pressure to appoint staff from the P5, and it is even possible that in the best mandarin way Holmes could turn up trumps in the job, despite his complete inexperience in the field of humanitarian relief. However, the appointment sends a signal: that reform is what the West expects the Third World to do, not what the major powers do.

It reflects more discredit on the West than on Ban. Such outstanding ostensible cronyism, in the wake of the appointment of a former Washington Times editor and Bush protégé, is hardly likely to convince the majority of the UN members of the bona fides of the would-be reformers.

While few could take exception with the meritocratic but geographically balanced appointments of Indian Vijay Nambiar as Chef de Cabinet, or Haitian (and Francophone!) Michelle Montas as spokesperson, Ban's team is so far remarkably water-tight as far as leaks go and so at this early stage, reading the runes is made all the more difficult because there are so few runes to read, and each could be read in an opposite way.


The appointment of Alicia Bárcena of Mexico as USG for management could be taken as a double blessing. A non-American heading the department is a welcome break with tradition, and a discrete finger to those not unadjacent to John Bolton who demanded a complete break with the Annan team, not to mention her being Third World, women and all the other beancounting pluses.

On the other hand, it lets the Americans off my personal hook – for decades they have railed against UN management while all that time the person responsible has been an American Presidential appointee. More worrying is the implication that an American will get one of the really important posts: peacekeeping or political affairs. Quite apart from the nightmare scenario of John Bolton rising like Rasputin from the dead and being appointed to one of those positions, it is difficult to conceive of a Bush nominee in either position who would not confirm the growing suspicions of the rest of the world that the UN is there to further narrow American interests.

It would put every blue-helmet and UN staffer under increased risk – not to mention the political damage to the organization. If anyone knows how to slip a memo in Korean under the SG's door on the 38th floor, now would be a good time to do it.