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From Annan to Ban, A Korean SurpriseBy Jeffrey Laurenti *
Century Foundation
October 6, 2006
Unless ambassador John Bolton’s purring about being “very pleased” with the Security Council’s settling on a candidate sets off a stampede in the General Assembly against him, Korean foreign minister Ban Ki-moon seems set to become the next secretary-general of the United Nations.
Ban’s nomination by the Security Council represents a historic coming-of-age for Korea, which for sixty years has been much more an item on the UN agenda than a driver of it. A nation still smarting from conquest by Imperial Japan, still divided as a Cold War laboratory of diametrically opposed social systems, will now fête one of its own as secretary-general of the world organization. For a country that in 1960 had the same per capita income as Ghana, this is a global affirmation of Korea’s great leap forward—in its southern half.
Almost as if to remind the world that the more traditional “hermit kingdom” to the north refuses to slink into the shadows, the “democratic people’s republic” in Pyongyang responded to Ban’s topping the Security Council’s straw poll by announcing plans to stage a nuclear test. It is a reminder that the new secretary-general will still have to deal with explosive issues from home—North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, Japan’s nationalist assertiveness—where he must nonetheless show impartiality.
Ban certainly has earned the deep respect of top government officials of the major countries collaborating to manage North Korea’s nuclear breakout. Ironically, he has found more comfortable alignment with China and Russia than with Washington, which has been frustrated by South Korea’s determined pursuit of détente with the North rather than confrontation.
But once it became clear that the Bush administration could not break the UN’s regional rotation, which promised the secretary-general’s post to someone from Asia (Bush’s personal favorite was Latvia’s American-raised president, Vaira Vike-Freiberga), Ban appeared to be the most palatable candidate for Washington’s reigning conservatives.
South Korea is, after all, the only Asian country presenting a candidate that is in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a club of higher-income countries. Conservatives expect that Secretary-General Ban will be warmer in embracing free trade as the solution to poverty, and less hectoring on development assistance for poor countries, than Kofi Annan has been—or a successor from South Asia might have been.
On this, they are likely to be disappointed. Ban’s public statements have made clear he will not retreat on the Millennium Development Goals (emphasizing education, environment, and health), and in his address to the UN General Assembly last month he specifically singled out the international development assistance target of 0.7 percent of wealthy countries’ GNP as “the cornerstone of our strong commitment” to achieving those goals in the poorest countries.
The global politics would make it impossible for Ban to do any differently even if he did not believe in the development goals. The reason Ambassador Bolton’s quixotic crusade to strip last fall’s UN summit declaration of any mention of the Millennium Development Goals and aid targets ignominiously failed is because the Europeans have swung firmly behind the cause, leaving the Bush administration isolated.
There is, however, another dimension to Ban’s candidacy about which Washington conservatives may be more hopeful. While he is an astute practitioner of the diplomatic arts of negotiation, compromise, and impartiality—a “harmonizer,” in his own words—Ban is not an accomplished public speaker. He succeeds a secretary-general whose most extraordinary accomplishment has been to marshal the support of world publics for the moral vision of the UN Charter.
In so doing, Annan has raised the bar for public expectations of the secretary-general. He has commanded media attention to give voice to the shared aspirations of much of world opinion—on human rights, on the responsibility to protect endangered populations, on nuclear disarmament, on international justice.
Annan’s fluency in English—today’s world language of diplomacy—made his task easier. He could reach American audiences, even with messages annoying to officialdom in Washington. It will be hard for Ban to fulfill this role of global visionary—and for U.S. conservatives who have seen Annan’s UN as an implicit counter-weight to U.S. global dominance, that is just as well.
Perhaps Ban will carve out a role more like that of Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, the soft-spoken Peruvian who was chosen secretary-general in 1981 after China vetoed Kurt Waldheim’s bid for a third term (which both Ronald Reagan and Leonid Brezhnev supported). Oratorically challenged, the unassuming Pérez de Cuéllar was virtually invisible to world publics. Yet he quietly forged major new roles for the UN and the secretary-general—convening the five permanent members to press them to shut down the Iran-Iraq war, launching a new peacekeeping era of UN interim administration in Namibia, and peace enforcement in Kuwait.
Perhaps Ban’s biggest challenge will be to establish himself early as a significant force to press for a permanent peace settlement between Israelis and Palestinians. That conflict, more than any other, is the source of constant challenges from all sides to the legitimacy and credibility of the UN and international law. Ban’s first tests will be in that region, picking up where Annan leaves off. If his talents as a harmonizer can bear fruit there, his reputation will be assured.
About the Author: Jeffrey Laurenti is Senior Fellow in international affairs at The Century Foundation.
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