“Less Bound to the Desk”: Ban Ki-moon, the UN, and Preventive Diplomacy

Abstract

WHAT SORT OF DIPLOMATIC STRATEGIST IS BAN KI-MOON? SINCE BAN TOOK office as Secretary-General of the United Nations in 2007, there has been a great deal of discussion about his personal diplomatic style. Until the Arab Spring, he was typically characterized as an archetypal (though not always effective) quiet diplomat. In January 2011, Human Rights Watch accused of having an undue faith in his professed ability to convince by private persuasion when dealing with repressive governments in cases such as Myanmar, Sudan, and Sri Lanka. (1) As I argued in a previous article for Global Governance, Ban's belief in diplomacy meant that he took too little Interest in peacekeeping during his first term leading the UN. (2) Since the beginning of the Arab Spring, however, appears to have lost some of his faith in diplomatic niceties. He spoke out early in favor of the protestors in Egypt, became a consistent supporter of military action in Libya, and publicly condemned the Syrian regime's violence against civilians as early as May 2011. (3) As the Syrian crisis deteriorated in 2012, appointed first his predecessor, Kofi Annan, and later the stalwart UN mediator Lakhdar Brahitni as envoys to Damascus but repeatedly escalated his own criticism of President Bashar Al-Assad. Previous leaders of the UN have experienced similar tensions between the imperatives of quiet diplomacy and the impulse to speak out over certain crises. Indeed, it is standard practice to evaluate each Secretary-General according to how he has balanced the two. (4) Given Ban's change of priorities in 2011 and 2012, it is likely that future biographers will use a similar framework to examine his record. In judging Ban's performance as diplomatic strategist, however, it is necessary to look beyond his statements and consider his broader impact on the UN's diplomatic machinery. Experts on the UN often distinguish between the personal political role of a Secretary-General and his managerial functions. (5) This distinction is only partially justifiable. It is equally possible to distinguish between the personal role of a national foreign minister and the ministry that he leads. But to understand the minister's performance overall, it is necessary to judge his or her relationship with and impact on the bureaucracy. It is often argued, for example, that Hillary Clinton's tenure as US secretary of state has been defined not only by her own diplomatic aptitude but also by her widely noted ability to motivate the State Department. (6) An assessment of the Secretary-General's record must similarly take into account his ability to shape the broader diplomatic performance of the UN during his tenure. (7) In my earlier contribution to Global Governance, I concluded that, as of mid-2011, Ban had not transformed the UN's intellectual agenda, at least as far as peacekeeping is concerned. (8) If this was, in part, because was more interested in diplomacy than in peace operations, did his leadership make an appreciable difference to the UN's diplomatic structures, missions, and practices during his first term? It was his stated intention to have such an impact, specifically through boosting the Department of Political Affairs (DPA). In his first two years in office, he emphasized the need to significantly strengthen DPA to help it become more proactive in tackling global crises, especially in the realm of preventive diplomacy. (9) This article addresses whether did indeed equip DPA to undertake preventive diplomacy more effectively (it does not cover other aspects of Ban's diplomacy, such as his interventions at climate change summits). This is meant to complement my article on peacekeeping but is also relevant to analyses of Ban's personal diplomacy, before or after the Arab Spring, as I place his individual efforts in an institutional context. To address these issues, the article does three things. First, I review the state of DPA as inherited it in 2007; the department was generally agreed to be in severe need of renewal. …