Last week, I was invited to discuss the United Nations with a group of students at Columbia's School of International Public Affairs. I began by saying, "Let's talk about the new pope."
More...
Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio had just ascended to the Throne of St. Peter, becoming Francis, and I pointed out that while the pope and the U.N. secretary general are more or less the sacred and secular versions of one another, the processes by which they are selected are pretty much the opposite. The consequence is that Catholics get Pope Francis I, while the world gets Ban Ki-moon. Of course, Francis may ultimately disappoint, but right now he feels like exactly what the Church needs. Ban is disappointing-by-design.
Since then, I have begun to ponder something: Is this, perhaps, one of the rare problems in the world that the United States could do a good deal to mitigate, if not solve?
Let's start with my premise that the jobs are mirror images of one another. The U.N. secretary general is often called "the secular pope," because his position permits him, indeed compels him, to speak on behalf of all men and women. The world is his flock. Like the pope, he has none of the usual instruments of power, but he does have great moral authority -- if he possesses the gift of exercising it. And like the pope, the secretary general must also be a shrewd diplomat as well as the chief executive of an extremely refractory bureaucracy. Of course, scarcely anyone possess all these skills in equal measure, and those making the choice have to decide which attributes matter the most.
The jobs are similar, but the institutions, of course, couldn't be more different. The Vatican is a sovereign state, a non-hereditary monarchy in which the princes choose their king. The cardinals, of course, differ radically over what makes a good pope, but a good pope is what they all want. The U.N. is an organization of sovereign states which choose someone not to rule over them but to transact some of their collective business. The secretary general is formally appointed by the U.N. General Assembly on the recommendation of the Security Council. In practice, the choice is made by the five permanent members of the council, any one of whom can use their veto to block a candidate. The most powerful states want a secretary general who fully understands that he serves their interests, first and foremost. They want, not the best man or woman for the job, but the one least likely to get in their way.
Of course, conservative popes choose conservative cardinals who in turn choose conservative popes (think of it like Supreme Court justices electing U.S. presidents). And the cardinals do choose some lemons, like Benedict XVI. But if you look at the lineup since World War II, you come up with two majestic figures in John XXIII and John Paul II, and one seriously compromised one, in Pius XII, who has been accused of failing to stand up to pressure from the Nazis. During that period, the ranks of secretaries-general included an actual Nazi -- Kurt Waldheim, and quite a few lemons.
Meanwhile, Francis -- though his papacy is barely one week old -- looks like another winner. He has already thrilled Catholics and non-believers alike by virtue of his humility, his gentle humor -- who knew there were cardinal jokes? -- and by his gift for speaking directly to, and from, the heart. Evidence has even emerged that some combination of compassion and pragmatism once led him to relax doctrinal strictures on the burning issue of civil unions for gays. No one save the cardinals themselves can say why they chose Bergoglio (though he was on deck last time around) but they seem to have recognized in him personal qualities that would afford him the moral authority that Benedict never managed to establish.
It is safe to say that no secretary general has been chosen for this reason. The first, Trygve Lie, was simply ineffectual. Dag Hammarskjold, the Swedish lawyer who succeeded him, was an unknown figure who was mistakenly thought to be a cautious bureaucrat. Hammarskjold turned out to be a giant who commanded the world's attention and thus drew the ire of every member of the Security Council. He was replaced by a series of quiet gentlemen, some admirable and some not. Then, in 1992, came Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who was considered anti-American, fairly or not; Washington replaced him four years later with the reliably pro-American Kofi Annan, a career U.N. bureaucrat. But Annan, too, surprised everyone, in his case by preaching a passionate gospel of human rights that unnerved Third World dictators and provoked the anti-Western left. Annan did more than anyone to gain acceptance for the linked ideas of humanitarian intervention and "the responsibility to protect."
SUBJECTS:
