It was late February 2003, a few weeks before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and President George W. Bush's administration still lacked a real strategy for the would-be regional hegemon next door. As the Iran desk officer in the office of the secretary of defense, I felt desperate. We were about to invade Iraq without a definitive policy toward its most bitter foe. I feared a repeat of Vietnam and saw in Iran a new Ho Chi Minh Trail -- the enemy lifeline that snaked through Laos and Cambodia and helped dash U.S. hopes for Southeast Asia. I knew that the Islamic Republic would endeavor to replicate this disaster in the Middle East from the moment U.S. troops stormed Baghdad -- just as it had bloodied our noses in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere for decades.

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In fact, I knew from my sources that Tehran had already prepared an entire network of operatives, proxies, and weapons ready to challenge the United States as soon as it toppled Saddam Hussein. I also knew it would be foolish to assume -- as many in the Bush administration did -- that Iraq's many pro-Iranian political and religious leaders could be trusted to cooperate with the United States' stated goal of building "a peaceful … democratic, and united Iraq." I had spoken with many of these people myself and was on friendly terms with the representatives of several prominent Shiite religious leaders. I was not an ideologue, and I spoke Farsi. I was steeped in Islamic culture and history. I suspected that many of these individuals were essentially Iranian agents -- including the opportunistic "man for all factions" Ahmad Chalabi, a suspicion eventually confirmed when I was later told he had encouraged the pro-Iranian Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr to "dig in" against the U.S. Marines in Najaf.

I was not, however, very brave. I did not confront either my boss in the Office of Special Plans, Douglas Feith, or his boss, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, about my overriding fears that Iran could spoil our plans in Iraq -- and wreak havoc in the region. In the fevered atmosphere of the time, I didn't think they would take my concerns seriously, and I was convinced Feith was too ideologically committed to overthrowing Hussein and too enamored of Chalabi in particular to hear any doubts. So, in a foolish, spur-of-the-moment decision, I asked Steven Rosen, foreign-policy director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, to approach the National Security Council's Elliott Abrams with my concerns. This action ultimately led to my indictment, in 2005, for espionage after Rosen relayed my comments to an Israeli diplomat. But my intention was never to leak secrets to a foreign government. I wanted to halt the rush to war in Iraq -- at least long enough to adopt a realistic policy toward an Iran bent on doing us ill.

Today, still serving my 10-month sentence, I take little solace in the knowledge that my concerns were justified. As early as 2004, the editor of Kayhan newspaper, the mouthpiece of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, boasted that "the American invaders are our hostage in Iraq."

I often wonder what would have happened had we fully committed to overthrowing the Islamic Republic. Inside the Pentagon, I had long argued that regime change, not accommodation or war, would be our best policy. Competent counterparts in the State Department and the CIA, however, disagreed. That left us with a muddle: The hard-line mullahs who run Iran thought we were trying to oust them, but in practice we weren't. I sought alternatives, for example, the possibility of shocking Iran into ground-level neutrality in Iraq so that U.S. aims might succeed without unacceptable casualties. But ultimately, I failed.

My plan was designed to shake the foundations of Iran's mullahcracy without resorting to military action. I urged the United States to recognize a government in exile, perhaps in a nearby Central Asian country with a Persian heritage. I proposed a sophisticated propaganda offensive, planting stories both true and otherwise in the Persian-language media to undermine Iranians' confidence in their leaders. I urged that we highlight Iran's human rights record by focusing attention on at least one victim of the regime every day of the year, and that we expose the regime's "gulag archipelago" of prisons. And I proposed the selective declassification of documents that would embarrass Iran on the world stage.

I also called for our financial specialists to compile and publish a list of foreign-based bank accounts, properties, and businesses owned by key regime leaders, and suggested we disrupt the Islamic Republic's monetary transactions, for example, blocking its attempts to secure loans and grants from international lending institutions.

Finally, I suggested we make the same commitment to Iran's people as we did to Solidarity in Poland: to help train an entire generation of free unionists and political activists to surreptitiously exit and re-enter Iran. People forget that containing the Soviet Union didn't mean accommodating it; in fact, the United States spent millions to help overthrow that evil empire.

With the passage of time, the Iranian regime's grip on power has solidified further, even as opposition to the ruling theocrats has grown. But some of the same weapons short of war that I proposed could still be effective today. This past summer's election proved there are growing pockets of discontent in Iran. It also showed that not nearly enough has been done to broaden and focus that discontent beyond the middle- and upper-class confines of north Tehran.

Yet many in the United States now see just two choices for dealing with Iran: military action or some form of accommodation. Bombing suspected nuclear-related facilities or other military targets would prove inconclusive and risk strengthening the regime. But allowing a hostile Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, or stop just short of doing so, would hardly be better.

There is a third option. The United States could offer its unwavering support to the Iranian opposition, strengthening and broadening this newly reawakened movement by arming it with satellite phones, digital cameras, and GPS units. America could train a cadre of countersnipers to neutralize the regime's rooftop shooters, many of whom have fired into peaceful crowds of protesters.

Data could be fed into the government's channels of information to confuse its intelligence organs, turning various elements of the regime on each other. Shortwave radio could be used to educate people in rural regions where the regime enjoys some support. America could eviscerate the regime's moral authority by showing its perfidy and corruption for what it is.

U.S. action might well precipitate a massive crackdown, though such a move by the clerical-military junta could spark widespread resistance. At last, the great majority of Iranians who oppose tyranny might rebel. In one scenario, the regime would end with a bang of terrible bloodshed, chaos, and reprisals. But if Iranians were coaxed into mobilizing a long-lasting general strike, the regime would end in a whimper. Then, we could finally toss Iran's vicious Islamic Republic -- a regime that has murdered and wrongly imprisoned thousands of its own citizens -- on the ash heap of history.

It was late February 2003, a few weeks before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and President George W. Bush's administration still lacked a real strategy for the would-be regional hegemon next door. As the Iran desk officer in the office of the secretary of defense, I felt desperate. We were about to invade Iraq without a definitive policy toward its most bitter foe. I feared a repeat of Vietnam and saw in Iran a new Ho Chi Minh Trail -- the enemy lifeline that snaked through Laos and Cambodia and helped dash U.S. hopes for Southeast Asia. I knew that the Islamic Republic would endeavor to replicate this disaster in the Middle East from the moment U.S. troops stormed Baghdad-just as it had bloodied our noses in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere for decades.

In fact, I knew from my sources that Tehran had already prepared an entire network of operatives, proxies, and weapons ready to challenge the United States as soon as it toppled Saddam Hussein. I also knew it would be foolish to assume -- as many in the Bush administration did-that Iraq's many pro-Iranian political and religious leaders could be trusted to cooperate with the United States' stated goal of building "a peaceful ... democratic, and united Iraq." I had spoken with many of these people myself and was on friendly terms with the representatives of several prominent Shiite religious leaders. I was not an ideologue, and I spoke Farsi. I was steeped in Islamic culture and history. I suspected that many of these individuals were essentially Iranian agents-including the opportunistic "man for all factions" Ahmad Chalabi, a suspicion eventually confirmed when I was later told he had encouraged the pro-Iranian Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr to "dig in" against the U.S. Marines in Najaf.

I was not, however, very brave. I did not confront either my boss in the Office of Special Plans, Douglas Feith, or his boss, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, about my overriding fears that Iran could spoil our plans in Iraq-and wreak havoc in the region. In the fevered atmosphere of the time, I didn't think they would take my concerns seriously, and I was convinced Feith was too ideologically committed to overthrowing Hussein and too enamored of Chalabi in particular to hear any doubts. So, in a foolish, spur-of-the-moment decision, I asked Steven Rosen, foreign-policy director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, to approach the National Security Council's Elliott Abrams with my concerns. This action ultimately led to my indictment, in 2005, for espionage after Rosen relayed my comments to an Israeli diplomat. But my intention was never to leak secrets to a foreign government. I wanted to halt the rush to war in Iraq-at least long enough to adopt a realistic policy toward an Iran bent on doing us ill.

Today, still serving my 10-month sentence, I take little solace in the knowledge that my concerns were justified. As early as 2004, the editor of Kayhan newspaper, the mouthpiece of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, boasted that "the American invaders are our hostage in Iraq."

I often wonder what would have happened had we fully committed to overthrowing the Islamic Republic.  Inside the Pentagon, I had long argued that regime change, not accommodation or war, would be our best policy. Competent counterparts in the State Department and the cia, however, disagreed. That left us with a muddle: The hard-line mullahs who run Iran thought we were trying to oust them, but in practice we weren't. I sought alternatives, for example, the possibility of shocking Iran into ground-level neutrality in Iraq so that U.S. aims might succeed without unacceptable casualties. But ultimately, I failed.

My plan was designed to shake the foundations of Iran's mullahcracy without resorting to military action. I urged the United States to recognize a government in exile, perhaps in a nearby Central Asian country with a Persian heritage. I proposed a sophisticated propaganda offensive, planting stories both true and otherwise in the Persian-language media to undermine Iranians' confidence in their leaders. I urged that we highlight Iran's human rights record by focusing attention on at least one victim of the regime every day of the year, and that we expose the regime's "gulag archipelago" of prisons. And I proposed the selective declassification of documents that would embarrass Iran on the world stage.

I also called for our financial specialists to compile and publish a list of foreign-based bank accounts, properties, and businesses owned by key regime leaders, and suggested we disrupt the Islamic Republic's monetary transactions, for example, blocking its attempts to secure loans and grants from international lending institutions.

Finally, I suggested we make the same commitment to Iran's people as we did to Solidarity in Poland: to help train an entire generation of free unionists and political activists to surreptitiously exit and re-enter Iran. People forget that containing the Soviet Union didn't mean accommodating it; in fact, the United States spent millions to help overthrow that evil empire.

With the passage of time, the Iranian regime's grip on power has solidified further, even as opposition to the ruling theocrats has grown. But some of the same weapons short of war that I proposed could still be effective today. This past summer's election proved there are growing pockets of discontent in Iran. It also showed that not nearly enough has been done to broaden and focus that discontent beyond the middle- and upper-class confines of north Tehran.

Yet many in the United States now see just two choices for dealing with Iran: military action or some form of accommodation. Bombing suspected nuclear-related facilities or other military targets would prove inconclusive and risk strengthening the regime. But allowing a hostile Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, or stop just short of doing so, would hardly be better.

There is a third option. The United States could offer its unwavering support to the Iranian opposition, strengthening and broadening this newly reawakened movement by arming it with satellite phones, digital cameras, and gps units. America could train a cadre of countersnipers to neutralize the regime's rooftop shooters, many of whom have fired into peaceful crowds of protesters.

Data could be fed into the government's channels of information to confuse its intelligence organs, turning various elements of the regime on each other. Shortwave radio could be used to educate people in rural regions where the regime enjoys some support. America could eviscerate the regime's moral authority by showing its perfidy and corruption for what it is.

U.S. action might well precipitate a massive crackdown, though such a move by the clerical-military junta could spark widespread resistance. At last, the great majority of Iranians who oppose tyranny might rebel. In one scenario, the regime would end with a bang of terrible bloodshed, chaos, and reprisals. But if Iranians were coaxed into mobilizing a long-lasting general strike, the regime would end in a whimper. Then, we could finally toss Iran's vicious Islamic Republic -- a regime that has murdered and wrongly imprisoned thousands of its own citizens -- on the ash heap of history.

In the 1950s, as the nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union was threatening to spiral out of control, U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower hired Oskar Morgenstern, the Princeton University economist who cowrote Theory of Games and Economic Behavior in 1944, as an advisor on national security issues. "With bluffs so much easier to make and threats so much more portentous than any previous time in history," Morgenstern later wrote, "it is essential not only for our own State Department but for the entire world to understand what ... is the sanest way to play this deadly, real-life version of poker."

Eisenhower clearly absorbed Morgenstern's advice. In March 1955, for example, he pulled off a classic nuclear bluff, convincing China's Mao Zedong to back down from a threatened attack on Taiwan by implying that he would nuke the mainland. His successor, John F. Kennedy, played a series of bluffs and counterbluffs with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962, until, as Anthony Holden wrote, Khrushchev "folded his hand and conceded the pot." The office demands such skills: As Richard Nixon used to quote one of his college professors, "A man who couldn't hold a hand in a first-class poker game isn't fit to be president of the United States."

China and Russia are mostly out of the nuclear-bluffing business for now, but America's 44th president today finds himself across the table from some new antagonists. Iran and North Korea have proven themselves no-limit wizards when it comes to the bluff, leveraging the world's uncertainty about what they're holding and what they might do with it to keep their enemies off balance. To be successful, President Barack Obama will have to learn not just how to bluff, but how to read when Tehran and Pyongyang are misrepresenting their hands.

One thing he'll have to do is pay close attention to patterns. An opponent who "has dust on his chips" -- who hasn't entered a pot in an hour or more -- is more likely to have a big hand when he does finally bet than a player who enters nearly every pot. Tracking the patterns of very loose players such as Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or North Korea's Kim Jong Il should persuade the U.S. president that they often won't possess the nuclear capability they are claiming. Sometimes, however, Obama will have to ignore their previous patterns. One common poker tactic is slowplaying -- trapping opponents into betting against what they think is a weak hand, while planning an unpleasant surprise for them at the showdown. But because this tactic is so often deployed, from time to time it makes sense to use reverse psychology. If I'm holding two aces and a third ace comes up, I will bet, counting on my opponent to raise on the assumption that because any smart player would slowplay a set of aces, I must have a much weaker hand.

A related strategy is "advertising." Although the rules don't require us poker players to show our cards if everyone folds to our bet, we will sometimes turn over bluffs to create an aggressive, loose, or just plain crazy table image -- in diplomacy, think of Nixon's "mad bomber" image during the Vietnam War or Kim Jong Il's erratically defiant behavior of late.

Other times we will turn over "monsters," huge hands, to reinforce the notion that we only bet when we have them -- and thus allowing us to bluff more effectively with weak hands. Iran's use of children as minesweepers during the Iran-Iraq War, for example, advertised that Iran would defend itself by any means necessary. The late, great poker player Stu Ungar dominated no-limit hold 'em tournaments with aggressive, flashy bets. When his opponents got tired of his bullying and decided to take a stand, he often was able to bust them by showing them a monster he'd been slowplaying.

Finally, there is "small ball" -- the steady, controlled aggression deployed by today's toughest no-limit hold 'em players. Small-ball artists enter a lot of pots with small raises, either winning on the first bet when everyone folds, or taking a larger pot on the second round of bets by relying on the fact that two thirds of the time, their opponents' hands won't have improved. Their small bets keep them involved in a series of winnable confrontations, allowing them to take advantage of less confident opponents.

Events so far have suggested that the U.S. president is a classic small-ball artist in the diplomatic arena, and he even seems to embrace the card-playing analogy. Asked in 2007 to list a hidden talent, Obama told a reporter, "I'm a pretty good poker player." Let's all hope that claim will prove true.

For such a seemingly crucial position, the secretary-generalship of the United Nations has historically had a rather low bar for success. Kurt Waldheim? In his memoir, A Dangerous Place, Daniel Patrick Moynihan recounted that Waldheim functioned as "a post office, a somewhat antique but reasonably efficient public service run along Austro-Hungarian lines. As one sat down with him, he would be mentally sorting the mail while making small conversation." Boutros Boutros-Ghali? His arrogance and fecklessness as the Serbs laid waste to Bosnia prompted the Clinton administration to veto a second term. Kofi Annan? Brought low by his son Kojo's financial peculation in the Iraq oil-for-food scandal.

Even in this unimpressive company, though, Ban Ki-moon appears to have set the standard for failure. It's not that Ban has committed any particularly egregious mistakes in his 2½ years on the job. But at a time when global leadership is urgently needed, when climate change and international terrorism and the biggest financial crisis in 60 years might seem to require some—any!—response, the former South Korean foreign minister has instead been trotting the globe collecting honorary degrees, issuing utterly forgettable statements, and generally frittering away any influence he might command. He has become a kind of accidental tourist, a dilettante on the international stage.

Not for him bold speeches or attempts to mobilize public opinion behind what could be an organization that helps tackle nuclear proliferation or reconstruct Afghanistan. Not for him championing human rights, or even rallying in defense of beleaguered civilians. Visiting Malta in April for yet another honorary degree, he was evasive when asked about the island's penchant for sending illegal African immigrants packing off to Italy, saying, "I am not in a position to intervene." As tens of thousands of Tamil refugees lingered under fire on a narrow strip of beach in Sri Lanka, Ban and his advisors did little more than huddle in New York and wring their hands, only making a trip to the war zone after hostilities ended. Under his stewardship, the United Nations isn't merely an unhelpful place—it's a largely irrelevant one.

Ban's flaws were obvious dating back to his decades toiling in the South Korean foreign ministry, where he earned a telling nickname, "The Bureaucrat." Luckily for Ban, if not for the rest of the world, The Bureaucrat was exactly what the Bush administration was looking for after years of tussling with the assertively anti-American Annan. When it became Asia's turn to nominate a secretary-general, Bush's secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, made Ban's election her pet project. But Ban failed to charm outside observers. In his book The Best Intentions, James Traub recounts a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations during Ban's campaign to become secretary: "[B]etween his anodyne oratory, and his unsteady grasp of English, I found that I had been lulled to sleep."

As secretary-general, Ban's soporific effect has never left him. One U.N. watcher told me that Ban is like the proverbial tree falling in the forest with no one around to witness its crash—if you don't hear him, does he really exist? Aside from his role as a subsidiary of South Korea, Inc.—lining his office walls with Samsung televisions and hiring his South Korean buddies as senior advisors—his imprint has been negligible. Even Ban seems aware of what a nonentity he is: Last August, speaking to senior U.N. officials in Turin, he described his management style as elevating teamwork over intellectual attainment. But he went on to bemoan his difficulty overcoming bureaucratic inertia, ending with a gnomic admission of general defeat: "I tried to lead by example. Nobody followed."

At their best, U.N. secretaries-general can serve as a goad to the world's conscience and a genuine catalyst for change. Dag Hammarskjold, for example, sought to expand the United Nations' mandate by undertaking high-profile and frequently risky missions, from meeting with Chinese leaders under Mao to securing freedom for 15 American pilots captured during the Korean War to traveling several times to the Congo in hopes of averting warfare during decolonization. During the 1980s, the urbane Javier Pérez de Cuéllar earned high marks for conducting talks between Argentina and Britain after the Falklands War and for bringing about Namibian independence from South Africa.

So far, Ban has no such successes to his credit. It's not as if there aren't enough crises around the globe for him to make his mark, whether in Sri Lanka or Sudan or the Middle East. But Ban hasn't given any indication that he's going to have an impact in any of these places—or even that he wants to.

Next: Responses to Nowhere Man

Mark Leon Goldberg responds:

Ban Ki Moon is certainly not above criticism. In contrast to his predecessor, he is much more "secretary" than "general." No one looks to him as a "secular pope" as many looked to Kofi Annan for moral leadership.  Rather, in his 2 1/2 years in office, it's become clear that Ban's diplomatic style is one that favors quiet, direct diplomacy over grandstanding.  

There are benefits and drawbacks to this leadership style.  But he is far from, as Jacob Heilbrunn asserts in Foreign Policy, "the world's most dangerous Korean" that has "set the standard for failure" among Secretary Generals.

Heilbrunn is a gifted writer, but his analysis of Ban's first two and a half years shows only a passing familiarity with what the United Nations has been up to since January 2007.  For example, Heilbrunn suggests that Ban has been passive when it comes to climate change.  This is just plain wrong. Ban has made climate change his signature issue.  In September 2007, Ban invited world leaders, ranging from Nicolas Sarkozy to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to Al Gore to the United Nations headquarters for a climate change summit. (Foreign Policy even covered the event!)  And there will be a repeat of this summit in September, which is intended to build some momentum for the climate talks in Copenhagen in December. 

At the center of Heilbrunn's assertion that Ban is somehow "dangerous" is that in his 2 1/2 years, Ban has no successes of which to speak and that his quiet diplomatic style is making the UN irrelevant.  There are two points to make here.  First, 2 1/2 years is not a very long time with which to pass such sweeping judgments on a Secretary General. Most serve for five or ten years.  Second, Heilbrunn seems to think that the Secretary General is a position with all means of authority over global affairs.  Sure, it's a big title, but the Sec Gen has no real power other than the moral authority that comes with the title.  Kofi Annan was skilled at wielding moral authority to press for human rights.  For his part, Ban's been spending his moral capital on climate change. 

The Sec Gen does have some (but not much) authority over how the General Secretariat runs itself.  For example, he can't open or close new offices or bureaus with out the General Assembly's approval -- but he can make a few suggestions and prod the General Assembly to take them up. One important institutional reform he saw through was dividing the overburdened Department of Peacekeeping Operations into two directorates.  That may not sound like much to outsiders, but it was a huge change in how the UN manages its over 100,000 peacekeepers in the field. 

The bottom line is that Heilbrunn passes some sweeping judgements on the current Secretary General without showing that he knows very much about the position itself. A more useful way of judging the success or failure of a Secretary General is to analyze the extent to which he is able to achieve certain goals within the institutional and legal constraints that he faces.  Simply picking a problem in the world and blaming the Secretary General for not fixing it is an easy way to beat up a Secretary General, but it is pretty unhelpful as a heuristic device.

Originally posted on U.N. Dispatch, a blog sponsored by the U.N. Foundation, and reposted here with the author’s permission. 

A response from Vijay Nambiar, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's chief of staff:

Jacob Heilbrunn's account of United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in Foreign Policy's July- August issue abounds in innuendo and patronizing commentary instead of serious analysis. Where others have seen Ban Ki-moon's commitment to "big picture" issues such as climate change and the global food crisis, Heilbrunn only sees smoke and mirrors. Where others see the soft-spoken but tough-minded Secretary General speak out forthrightly amidst the rubble in Gaza, the author sees a "nowhere man", and a "dangerous Korean".

Ban's breakthrough in getting humanitarian assistance to Myanmar after cyclone Nargis received wide acclaim as did his proactive engagement with G-20 leaders at Washington and London in voicing the plight of the "bottom billion" affected by the financial crisis.  Ban's oratorical style and accent are less important than his grasp of issues and his diplomatic tenacity in seeing them through.

Certainly these would be apparent to any journalist who is not shaping his rhetoric on facile, preconceived conclusions or motivated agendas.