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Annan's Principled Pragmatism

By Ian Williams

This article appeared in the January 8, 2007 edition of The Nation.

December 28, 2006

Ban Ki-moon was sworn into office as the new United Nations Secretary General on December 14. Soon he will be sworn at, when once again the UN fails to obey US orders. Any secretary general's honeymoon in Washington is likely to be short. Who now remembers that outgoing Secretary General Kofi Annan was a US nomination back in 1996, or that he managed to persuade Jurassic Jesse Helms to cut a deal on paying off Washington's debt to the UN?

As Annan leaves, it gives him some wry satisfaction that John Bolton, the US ambassador who thought he was a viceroy, has been sent off the field by the new Democratic Congress. After spending his first term perceived almost as a secular saint, Annan spent much of his second being reviled by Bolton's soulmates as a global kleptocrat.

It was mostly in the United States that the sustained neocon Swift-boating, through the alleged "Oil for Food Scandal," muddied Annan's reputation. Fortunately, the rest of the world took little notice of those furious and hyperbolic exaggerations. Annan's historical position is now clearer, and it is not just customary valediction to say that he has been one of the most effective secretary generals in UN history. Successes in Sierra Leone, Liberia, East Timor, Lebanon and Congo's first free elections in four decades are no mean vindication of Annan's principled pragmatism.

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About Ian Williams

Ian Williams is The Nation's UN correspondent.

He frequently comments on world events on Hardball, The O'Reilly Factor, Scarborough Country, UN TV and other media outlets. He is the author of Rum: A Social and Sociable History of the Real Spirit of 1776 (Nation Books). more...
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