Ban Ki Moon: The Most Dangerous Korean On Earth?
Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations’ eight secretary- general, can be described in several ways. Soft spoken? Yes. Diffident? Certainly. But the “most dangerous Korean on Earth?” Really? Secretary General Ban?
Midway through his five-year term, the former South Korean Foreign Minister has been battling a barrage of critical reports that have stopped just short of tarring and feathering him. In a piece entitled “Nowhere Man,” Foreign Policy magazine’s Jacob Heilbrunn tore into Ban, accusing the secretary-general of setting new standards of failure at the U.N.. “Trotting the globe collecting honorary degrees,” Heilbrunn wrote, “issuing utterly forgettable statements, and generally frittering away any influence he might command.” The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, dubbed Ban “The Invisible Man,” struggling to make a mark on the world stage.
And damning the secretary- general further, was a leaked confidential memorandum, published by one of Norway’s leading newspapers Afternposten, in which senior diplomat Mona Juul, the Norwegian ambassador to the U.N., wrote that “at a time when solutions by the U.N. and multilateral agencies are more necessary than ever to resolve global conflicts, Ban and the U.N. are conspicuous in their absence.”
Taking over a post once described by former secretary general Trygve Lie as “the most difficult job in the world,” Ban’s last 34 months in office has been anything but smooth. He has had to deal with not just the garden variety global crisis like a changing world order, Myanmar and Sudan’s authoritarian leaders, world poverty and a tough environmental agenda, but has also been tasked with upping his charisma–—trying to fill the rockstar shoes of his predecessor Kofi Annan. So far, he has had a tough time implementing all items on his agenda.
Can Ban be a Kofi?
Charming, articulate and never breaking into a sweat, Kofi Annan presided over the UN international organization for two five-year terms. Despite exiting the U.N. with the whiff of a scandal involving his son Kojo, Kofi was the King of Cool— the Obama of multilateral organizations. In a digital age, where the message and the media are both important to an organization battling the “obsolete” tag, square-jawed and deliberate Kofi harnessed his telegenic personality to draw attention to whatever crisis was in order and to how the U.N. was dealing with it. The world tuned in.
Ban, meanwhile, has yet to begin his love affair with the camera. Nowhere is this more evident than in an interview Ban gave Sir David Frost at the height of the global credit crisis and the Russian invasion of Georgia last year. With staid, uniformly dull answers, Ban plodded though his talking points, droning on in what some people call “his distinctly bureaucratic style.”
“By contrast with Kofi Annan, Ban Ki-moon certainly lacks presence and impact,” says Patrick Worsnip, chief correspondent for Reuters. “Where Annan was suave, eloquent and forceful, Ban often comes across as retiring and stumbling.”
“Television companies, especially American ones, turn and flee when they see him coming because his poor delivery is such bad television,” says Worsnip, adding even the interest of the South Korean media in Ban seemed to have waned.
Long time U.N. observer Betsy Pisik of The Washington Times notes the secretary general’s discomfort at being compared to his suave, globe-trotting predecessor, continues to this day. “Kofi had been in the institution for 30 years or so, so he knew the organization inside out,” Pisik explains. “Ban is new. The culture of the U.N. is something he is learning and not very quickly. He doesn’t like to be compared to Kofi.”
Ban confirmed as much in an interview with Pisik, saying plaintively, “I’m personally troubled on many occasions when I am compared with my predecessors. Different circumstances require different leadership styles.”
Secretary Vs General
A self described “country boy” from Chungju in the South Korean province of North Chungcheong, Ban was born in 1944 and earned a degree in international relations from Seoul National University. He went on to serve as one of South Korea’s longer serving foreign ministers, spending 36 years in the foreign office that included 10 years on U.N.-related missions. He also has a master’s degree from Harvard’s Kennedy School. Deeply involved in the six nation talks aimed at persuading the North to give up its nuclear weapons, Ban rose in prominence by talking tough with Pyongyang.
His nomination and subsequent election as U.N. Secretary General were seen by many as a deal between the Americans and the Chinese, with the Bush administration angered by Annan’s vocal protests against the U.S. invasion of Iraq. As the search for the new secretary-general intensified, diffident, inoffensive Ban—he once wrote handwritten letters of apology to 120 South Korean Foreign Ministry officials after being promoted ahead of them—seemed like a good choice.
A joke began to make the rounds at the U.N. about how “the Americans got what they wanted–—a secretary, not a general,” prompting Ban to defend his work style. “Modesty is about demeanor,” he said in his acceptance speech to the General Assembly on October 13, “not about vision and goals. It does not mean the lack of commitment or leadership.” Ban’s spokesperson did not respond to an interview request.
“He is quietly effective,” says Ambassador Thomas Hubbard, a close personal friend of Ban and the Chairman of The Korea Society, a New York based non-partisan, non profit organization promoting positive relations between the United States and Korea. “His leadership style is to work behind the scenes, bring people together for the resolution of serious issues.”
Dr. Abidoun Williams, Vice President of the Washington, D.C. think tank U.S. Institute of Peace and an adviser to both Annan and Ban, agrees that quiet diplomacy is indeed an important aspect of the job. “But you can’t have quiet diplomacy and invisible results.”
And although the secretary-general’s diffidence is often pinned by his supporters to an “Asian style” of leadership, Williams dismisses that argument, pointing out that U Thant, secretary-general from 1961 to 1971, was Asian and didn’t attract any such criticism against his working style. In fact, the Burmese diplomat was so popular, he had to insist at that time he would under no circumstances, serve a third term.
So far, mid-term evaluations of Ban’s leadership style haven’t been too kind either.
He traveled to Sri Lanka after government forces took out the LTTE on the beach and made a trip to Myanmar after the military dictatorship put democracy campaigner Aung San Suu Kyi on trial. Two fruitless trips that Mona Juul, the Norwegian ambassador to the U.N., offered as evidence of the secretary general’s failure to contain crisis. “After a seemingly fruitless visit (to Burma) by the secretary-general, the United Nations ‘good offices’ will be made even more difficult. (United Nations Envoy, Ibrahim) Gambari will have major problems after ‘the top man’ has failed and the generals in Rangoon will no longer meet him,” wrote Juul.
On Ban’s visit to Sri Lanka, Juul wrote, where the secretary-general could only stand by as thousands lost their lives and were driven from their homes. “The authorities in Colombo refused to receive the secretary-general during military operations. But he was invited—and accepted an invitation—as soon as the war had been ‘won’,” Juul noted. The Norwegian diplomat—who is married to Terje Roed Larsen, a Norwegian and senior U.N. official who has worked closely with Ban on several missions in the recent past—added that the secretary-general lacks “moral authority.” “Common to all of this is the fact that high-profile aides cannot compensate for a bland secretary-general who is lacking in charisma,” the report continued.
“In the past, there was no CNN, no blogs, and the Internet,” says Williams, but today with the advent of such technologies, it is critical to reach out to different audiences.
” The organization needs a leader, in symbolic terms and practically,” he says, “Whether or not the secretary general likes it, he personifies the international community. It is critical to reach out to different audiences. You need a charismatic leader, so NGO’s, nations, leaders, universities—all listen to him, so he can articulate what the U.N. is doing and how it addresses global issues.”
Ban’s leadership has also renewed the debate on the role of the Secretary General.
“Kofi Annan’s election came right after Rwanda and Srebrenica,” said says John L.Hirsch, Vice President of the International Peace Institute and a former ambassador to the U.N., “and he played a big role in highlighting genocide and began the discussion in the international community about humanitarian intervention and the need to act responsibly.”
Which leads to the question of the larger role of the U.N. secretary general—should he be articulate and state guidelines for ethical action like Annan did or should he just be the Chief Operating Officer, making sure management and budget of the staggering multinational organization with a $5 billion budget are OK.
Williams, of the U.S. Peace Institute believes that an effective leader, in these times, has to be a mix of diplomat, manager and executive who oversees the almost 100,000 peacekeeping troops across the world and is also able to use the bully pulpit. “The SG must have a vision for the office and must be able to grow into the job,” said says Williams. “You can’t have the vision if you are too modest, too cautious, too minimalistic.
Five More Years?
As criticisms pile up against Ban, U.N. observers proffer his biggest success to date: that he managed to mobilize aid agencies into Myanmar after the devastating Cyclone Nargis and helped save almost half a million lives. On the political front, Ban has devoted much attention to Darfur, where an estimated 300,000 people are believed to have died and 2.5 million were displaced from their homes since fighting broke out in 2003 between the Sudanese governament and its allied Janjaweed militia and other armed rebel groups.
“But progress there has been very slow,” says Worsnip of Reuters, adding “huge numbers of people remain in IDP camps, the peacekeeping force UNAMID [an African Union/UN hybrid effort] is struggling to deploy, and peace talks have so far gone nowhere.”
He concedes, though, that the jury is still out on the situation in Darfur, as it is with Myanmar.
The secretary-general has also made climate change his top priority and his place in history might well be determined by what he manages to achieve at the Copenhagen Conference this December. Ahead of that meeting, Ban welcomed 100 heads of state in New York, the week of September 18 for an unprecedented climate change summit.
In recent weeks, his press even seems to have improved. Newsweek predicted he would win a second term, despite the barrage of criticism, and offered this rather helpful note: “He may never be able to wow a crowd, but he would score major points for rehabilitating his image if he forges a global deal on cutting carbon emissions.”
Ambassador Hubbard explains notes are quick to the gun when it comes to the secretary-general, and says it is very similar to being the President of the United States. “People are very impatient and criticisms come out very early,” noting that, ironically, Ban’s predecessor Annan was criticized for being too outspoken.
Insiders point out that the U.N.’s 38th floor, which houses Ban’s office, buzzes with activity, with the secretary general keeping long hours and working hard. “My problem is that I do not talk too much,” Ban told The Washington Times. “I’m just seen as invisible. … We have [had] many distinguished secretary-generals. … They have done their best, and I’m doing my best.”
But is his best good enough for the U.N.? That’s an open question.
