Kofi Annan
The office of U.N.
secretary-general is traditionally a refuge for knaves, lickspittles, and
villains (in Kurt Waldheim's case, all three at once). So Americans are
entitled to surprise at Kofi Annan's deft diplomacy in Iraq last week.
U.S. warmongers had warned
that Annan would give away the store to appease Saddam Hussein. But the
soft-spoken secretary-general gave away nothing and got much. His persistent,
polite diplomacy revived weapons inspections (which have eliminated far more
Iraqi weapons than the war did); calmed nerves throughout the Arab world; and
saved the Clinton administration from an ill-conceived, unpopular bombing
plan--all without an apparently meaningful concession to Iraq.
More important, Annan
accomplished all this in a way that brought glory to the United States: He
announced--emphatically--that the negotiations would have been fruitless
without the U.S. military threat. The United States gains credit for diplomatic
restraint; the United Nations gains credit for keeping the peace; the will of
the U.N. Security Council is enforced; and the destruction of Iraqi weapons
continues. Even if Iraq reneges on the agreement--which is likely--the United
States has lost nothing but time: There will be far more support for bombing if
Hussein flouts Annan than there was when Hussein was simply flouting
Clinton.
Kofi Annan is the perfect
secretary-general for an age of U.S. triumphalism. It used to be that the Cold
War stymied the United Nations. Today the United States does. It is dominant in
politics, economics, culture. To the rest of the world, U.S. foreign policy is
"We're Number One-ism"--an insufferable combination of gloating and bullying.
The United States has its own ill feelings toward the United Nations.
Conservatives see the organization as a mob of meddlesome, anti-American nags
plotting for world government. (In some Americans' eyes, the United Nations'
principal accomplishment is collecting loose change during UNICEF's
trick-or-treat fund drives.) Bob Dole got his biggest round of applause during
the 1996 presidential campaign when he mocked Secretary-General Boutros
Boutros-Ghali's name. Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., threatened to stop all U.S.
funding for the United Nations, and many of Helms' Republican colleagues in
Congress have proposed U.S. withdrawal.
Since he
took over as secretary-general 13 months ago, Annan has begun to do the
improbable: restore America's faith in the United Nations and the United
Nations' faith in America. Annan's United Nations has shelved Boutros-Ghali's
grand ambitions. Annan is building an organization we can live with, one that
is smaller, better run, and more deferential to the United States.
On paper, Annan isn't a promising candidate to reunite the
United States and the United Nations. He is too attached to his organization,
the first secretary-general to rise from inside its bureaucracy. (This does not
exactly recommend him to anyone outside that bureaucracy.) He has spent
his life as an "international civil servant," a phrase that conjures an image
of someone wasting millions of U.S. dollars pushing paper around the Third
World (which is basically what he did).
Born to a
powerful family in Ghana--his father was a hereditary chief--Annan attended
Minnesota's Macalester College in the late 1950s on a Ford Foundation grant. As
Ghana's promising democracy collapsed into a dictatorship, Annan, like many
bright young West Africans, decided to remain overseas. He went to work for the
United Nations, rising gradually through the ranks at the World Health
Organization, the High Commission on Refugees, and the Secretariat. Eventually
he supervised peacekeeping operations in Somalia and Bosnia. In the Byzantine,
languorous U.N. bureaucracy, Annan earned a reputation as someone who actually
Got Things Done. Thanks to his straightforward manner and overwhelming decency,
he was the only U.N. official associated with Bosnia and Somalia to survive
with his reputation unharmed. When the United States decided to dump
Boutros-Ghali in late 1996, everyone touted Annan as the compromise
candidate to replace him. (Everyone, that is, except the French. They wanted a
secretary-general from Francophone Africa.)
Annan is a true internationalist: He speaks
English, French, and several African languages fluently. He has lived in
Geneva, Nairobi, Cairo, Accra, and New York, among other places. His wife is
Swedish (the niece of Raoul Wallenberg, in fact). But Annan is an
internationalist with an American inflection. He was educated here, he loves
living here--and, according to an aide, he'll probably retire here.
A U.N.
secretary-general is a CEO, someone who needs to be independent enough to take
the initiative but tractable enough to heed his board members (that is, the
member states). Annan is well suited to this dual role. For example: Americans
have been demanding management reform for decades, and Annan is the technocrat
who may do it--after all, he has a management degree from MIT. Annan's recent
reform package cuts 1,000 jobs from the 10,000-person Secretariat, slashes
administrative costs by one-third, and streamlines the United Nations' absurd
bureaucracy. Annan is pushing merit-based promotion and management training,
ancient ideas that are new to the United Nations. Americans say Annan hasn't
cut enough; others say he has cut too much. In other words, he's doing it just
right. Under Boutros-Ghali, the United Nations kept 80,000 peacekeepers in
uniform. Now, post-Bosnia, post-Somalia, and post-Boutros-Ghali, there are
barely 20,000.
Annan is the world's most gentlemanly politician. Where
Boutros-Ghali was highhanded and arrogant, Annan is gentle, soft-spoken, calm.
Boutros-Ghali spoke English poorly, rarely visited American leaders, and
regularly berated U.S. misbehavior. He was vicious without being tough. Annan
is tough without being vicious. The United States would never have let
Boutros-Ghali negotiate with Hussein. He was too reckless, too erratic, too
anti-American. But Annan has formed a strong friendship with Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright. She and her colleagues could trust him to win peace without
appeasement.
For the United Nations to
thrive, it's not enough that the United States trust it. The United Nations
must also trust the United States. That is Annan's next test. America's
reputation is at an ebb in U.N. Plaza. The United States owes more than $1
billion in U.N. peacekeeping dues. These arrears are crippling the United
Nations, which gets a quarter of its $2.6-billion budget from the United
States. The organization has already curtailed essential activities, and may be
forced to shut down next year if the Americans don't pay.
Annan has been trying to pry
the cash out of Washington since he took office. Last fall, Congress all but
OK'd a $1-billion payout. Then a few conservative members killed the funding
bill by attaching an unacceptable anti-abortion amendment. Annan visits
Washington this week to push again. Albright is on his side. Clinton is on his
side. And--perhaps the best indication of Annan's appeal--even Jesse Helms is
on his side. Helms, who just two years ago threatened to end all U.N. funding,
was charmed when Annan called on him last year. Helms, too, favors settling the
U.N. debt. When a U.N. secretary-general can get Jesse Helms and Saddam
Hussein to fall in line, he is doing something right.
