Tributes are piling up over Kofi Annan’s ten years as UN secretary-general. By and large they are richly deserved. The soft-spoken Ghanian is likely to go down as an outstanding occupant of his office. Yet ironically much of his success was born of failure. For the greater part of his two terms, Annan had to work with a Republican president in the White House who was totally unprepared to admit the pivotal role the UN was designed to play in world affairs.
Time and again, the UN was snubbed or ignored by the Bush administration. But thanks to Annan’s dignity and persistence, the UN was never marginalized. The secretary-general continued to represent the voice of compromise and moderation even when Washington was at its macho peak of aggressive intervention in world affairs. Momentously Annan declared the invasion of Iraq to be illegal under the terms of the UN Charter. It is certain that he had come under immense pressure to get on side with American policy. It is more than likely that the behind-the-scenes arm-twisting involved US threats to expose the scandal of his son Kojo’s dubious involvement in Iraq’s oil-for-food program. Annan preferred to let the matter come out in the open and he himself was later entirely cleared of any involvement in Kojo’s business dealings.
The Bush administration never forgave him for his refusal to sign off on their belligerent Iraqi policy. As the failure of their ill-judged intervention became ever more apparent, White House anger only increased even though Annan never set out to rub salt in its wounds. Ironically, Annan himself believed that the UN actually did have a duty that overrode a country’s sovereignty, a duty to intervene on behalf of civilians threatened with mass slaughter and the ravages of war; hence, Annan’s consistently interventionist policy toward Sudan over its failures in Darfur, which in the closing hours of his secretary-generalship appear to at last be bearing fruit. Annan’s concept of intervention was pluralist not unilateral. He believed that the United Nations should act as the strong arm of the international community, regardless of politics and pressure, working to protect and succor the weak and the oppressed. The doggedness with which he defended and expounded this vision, through conflicts from Cambodia through Bosnia to Darfur has given considerable substance to his vision. He passes on a brightly burning torch to his successor, Ban Ki-moon.
His very real failure was over UN reform. Though he slimmed the organization’s bloated bureaucracy and avoided a real risk of bankruptcy a decade ago, he did not get to grips with administrative restructuring. This was not entirely his fault. Big-power dominance builds in inefficiencies. However, perhaps because he himself was a career official in the UN, he lacked a clear overview of what needed to be done. His far less charismatic successor Ban Ki-moon is probably better qualified for the reform task. Politically and morally however, Annan leaves a very big pair of shoes for his successor to step into.
