Defending Kofi Annan
Over at Global Dashboard, Richard Gowan has posted a smart response to my short take on the comparisons of Ban Ki-moon with Kofi Annan. I had argued that Annan’s hyped moral gravitas was built on a very shaky foundation, notably his performance as head of UN peacekeeping during Rwanda and Bosnia: Here’s Richard: You can ...
Over at Global Dashboard, Richard Gowan has posted a smart response to my short take on the comparisons of Ban Ki-moon with Kofi Annan. I had argued that Annan's hyped moral gravitas was built on a very shaky foundation, notably his performance as head of UN peacekeeping during Rwanda and Bosnia: Here's Richard:
Over at Global Dashboard, Richard Gowan has posted a smart response to my short take on the comparisons of Ban Ki-moon with Kofi Annan. I had argued that Annan’s hyped moral gravitas was built on a very shaky foundation, notably his performance as head of UN peacekeeping during Rwanda and Bosnia: Here’s Richard:
You can agree or disagree with this assessment – I concur with David’s basic point that a near-ubiquitous nostalgia for Kofi clouds assessments of Ban’s work. Conversely, if are going to judge every UN leader by the horrors that took place on their watch, should we mention’s Ban’s association with humanitarian mega-crises in the DRC (2008), Sri Lanka (2009) and Darfur (ongoing)? Maybe so. But my main problem with this argument is that I’m wary of the whole moral yardstick thing anyway.
Annan’s strongest qualifications to run the UN were his instinctive sense of the organization’s capabilities and his political ability to charm the Clinton administration – which obviously failed to transfer to the Bush administration. Annan got hold of the UN at a time when it was in well-nigh terminal disarray after the Balkan and Rwandan fiascoes (which, in fairness, he took responsibility for while SG) and used his institutional and political skills to restore its relevance, as the 70K blue helmets attest.
And Ban? I have a piece coming out in Internationale Politik assessing his performance in similar institutional/political terms – but you’ll have to wait until April to read that. Suffice it to say that I think that, after four years in the job, he has still to get the real sense of what the UN can achieve that Annan had. Equally, it’s harder for Ban in 2011 than it was for Annan in 1999 or 2000: Annan worked in a straightforward context of American power. Mr. Ban navigates less well-charted waters.
I concur with much of this. I don’t think assessing the moral fiber of international civil servants is necessarily a productive enterprise. And I’m willing to accept Richard’s assertion that Annan was an abler manager with a better sense of how to pull the UN levers.
My point was really a narrower one: I don’t think key international players in the Rwanda and Bosnia catastrophes paid an adequate price. Everyone acknowledged in the abstract that these were epic failures, but the failure never seemed to stick to any individuals. Madeleine Albright–UN ambassador during Rwanda–was promoted to Secretary of State. Annan was boosted to the top UN job. I’m not saying Annan should have been prosecuted, or fired or even formally reprimanded. I just don’t think that the head of UN peacekeeping during those episodes should have been promoted to Secretary-General unless he was fighting tooth-and-nail to prevent what occurred. And at least as I read the history, Annan wasn’t.
David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist
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