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  Settling for Second Best: In Global Institutions, Mediocrity Is the Way to the Top

Settling for Second Best In Global Institutions, Mediocrity Is the Way to the Top

By SPIEGEL Staff

Part 2: A UN Leader Who Is More Secretary than General

Ban Ki-moon, the former South Korean foreign minister, has been UN secretary general for the past two-and-a-half years. At the organization's New York headquarters, and elsewhere, he is seen as a disappointment, and as the wrong man to assume a prominent role and lead the global community at a time when the world's political axis is shifting from America to Asia. It has always been said that Ban is more interested in being secretary than general, which is precisely what he is today.

The discussion over waste and inertia at the UN is as old as the organization, which was founded in 1945, and it has long been part of this utopian experiment to unite the 192 current member states. But it is worth the effort, and Kofi Annan -- Ban's predecessor and a true global politician -- became involved and made his voice heard. Annan, too, was a candidate of proportional representation at first, but he expanded his scope, plainly refused to toe the US line and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Under Ban, it seems like the UN first fell silent and then disappeared. It is as bureaucratic, slow and formalistic as ever. And it is silent, far too silent. Of course, a few things have changed since Ban Ki-moon succeeded Kofi Annan. US President Barack Obama is now the one giving the speeches on reconciliation, solidarity and a new beginning in world politics, and the fate of the planet.

A UN secretary general plays three key roles: to be a conciliatory diplomat, a speaker and a manager. Ban's English is difficult to understand, and he speaks softly and carefully in a constant singsong of consternation. This was known about him before, but the fact that he is a poor leader also diminishes the UN's worth and aura.

"We never know what he wants," says a European ambassador. "All he does is nod, and he never explains his position," says a confidante. It is said that his UN is weak and unimaginative, and that it is far too close to the Americans, as it has been in the past.

Ban travels a lot, spending more than a third of his time on the road. One-on-one conversations are his specialty, and at some point at every summit meeting, there is a moment when he asks all staff to leave the room, allowing him to spend half an hour with the world's presidents and dictators. "Personal relationships are always helpful," says Ban.

Granted, he has achieved a few things. As a result of his efforts, African Union peacekeepers were allowed into the Sudanese war zone, former US President Bill Clinton was named special envoy for Haiti, and the generals who control Burma allowed foreign aid workers into the country after Typhoon Nargis.

Leadership Deficiencies

But is this enough?

Times of crisis require leaders of a different caliber. Times of crisis are unforgiving for bureaucrats at the helm of large institutions. They reveal deficiencies all too clearly, such as lack of charisma and the will to shape policy. This dearth of leadership is all the more evident today at the World Trade Organization (WTO), where treaty negotiations have reached a stalemate. And even the proud World Bank is satisfied to play a secondary role -- during nothing less than a global economic crisis.

For two years, the World Bank suffered under then President Paul Wolfowitz, a friend of former President George W. Bush who had holes in his socks. The bank's new president, Robert Zoellick, 55, is a skilled negotiator who learned his trade in the administration of former President George H.W. Bush and as an advisor to Goldman Sachs. But Zoellick is a technocrat with a fondness for documents, not a motivator, strategist or gifted speaker. According to other World Bank executives, when criticism of bank practices is voiced in internal reports, the president, instead of trying to improve things, prefers to neutralize the critics.

The United States always appoints one of its own to the top job at the World Bank. Washington has a tendency to install someone like Wolfowitz in what is seen as a comfortable position, in this case as the White House's way of thanking him for his neoconservative justification for the Iraq war. Zoellick is also expected to submit to the wishes of the Obama administration -- the institutional prerequisite for the job.

NATO's Lowest Common Denominator Pick

In other organizations, the hierarchy is not as clearly arranged, and the appointment of personnel is more cumbersome. For instance, anyone who hopes to rise to the top of NATO must be prepared for a complicated arithmetic of power. One does not apply for the position of secretary general or, at any rate, one should not assert claims in public. Instead, one is appointed -- at least that's what the multi-talented Solomon Passy, 52, experienced.

The former Bulgarian foreign minister "drinks freshly squeezed hot peppers, speaks English to the penguins in Antarctica and can calculate in his mind the squared area of a circle." This, at any rate, is what he claims on his homepage, and as far as he was concerned, this seemed to be the ideal profile for the office of NATO secretary general. Passy was long the only official applicant, a fact that already guaranteed his failure.

Washington traditionally appoints the alliance's supreme military commander, while the diplomatic leadership is left up to the Europeans. This led to a certain amount of jostling when the term of Dutchman Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, who leaves the post on July 31, began drawing to a close.

Joschka Fischer was touted as a possible new secretary general. Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Störe expressed an interest in the job, as did Canadian Defense Minister Peter Gordon MacKay. Polish Foreign Minister Radoslav Sikorsky and former President Aleksander Kwasniewski, as well as former Slovenian President Janez Jansa, also felt that they stood a chance of securing the top NATO post. Each of these three men would have been the first secretary general from a former Soviet bloc country.

The man who will be applauded next Friday as the new secretary general of the alliance, former Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, 56, is a conservative politician who promoted an anti-immigration policy in an otherwise liberal country. He was the lowest common denominator that everyone could agree on. No one seems to be troubled by the fact that Rasmussen, an economist, is not a military expert.

And Bulgarian candidate Passy? A marginal curiosity.

The Tried and True Approach

Mohamed ElBaradei, 67, on the other hand, is an example of how a compromise candidate can become a highly respected figure. The Egyptian president of the International Atomic Energy Agency, headquartered in Vienna, criticized the US invasion of Iraq, prompting the Bush administration to attempt to obstruct his reappointment, but to no avail. ElBaradei also hasn't readily joined the ranks of Iran's detractors. Nevertheless, he and his institution were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

ElBaradei, who has turned a nuclear watchdog agency into a politically oriented forum, is retiring in November. His successor, 63-year-old Japanese diplomat Yukiya Amano, received the necessary two-thirds majority in the sixth round of voting.

Then Amano, an expert on international law and nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament, gave a speech. For six long minutes, he read his prepared remarks, speaking in a monotone. He is considered the candidate of the West and the United States, but he is said to lack the gift of communication -- which is quickly apparent to anyone who listens to him speak.

Perhaps the IAEA, too, has taken the tried-and-true approach: choosing a man of mediocrity.

RALF BESTE, KLAUS BRINKBÄUMER, MANFRED ERTEL, RÜDIGER FALKSOHN, HANS-JÜRGEN SCHLAMP

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan