Ban Ki-Moon’s second term as the Secretary General of the United Nations is
ending this December. He was the most ideal man for the job as far as the United
States and its allies are concerned.
Of course, there will always be other Ban Ki-Moons. In fact, the man himself
was a modified version of his predecessor, Kofi Annan.
The unspoken, but unmistakable rule about UN Secretary Generals is that they
must come across as affable enough so as not to be the cause of international
controversies, but also flexible enough to accommodate the US disproportionate
influence over the United Nations, particularly the Security Council.
At the end of their terms, the ‘success’ or ‘failure’ of these Secretaries
has been largely determined by their willingness to play by the aforementioned
rule: Boutros Boutros-Ghali had his fallout with the US, as Kurt Waldheim also
did. But both Annan and Ban learned their lessons well and followed the script
to the end of their terms.
It would be utterly unfair to pin the blame for the UN’s unmitigated failure
to solve world conflicts or obtain any real global achievement on a single individual.
But Ban was particularly ‘good’ at this job. It would be quite a challenge to
produce another with his exact qualities.
His admonishment of Israel, for example, can come across as strong-worded and
makes for a good media quote, yet his inaction to confront Israel’s illegal
violations of numerous Resolutions passed by the very UN he headed, is unmatched.
Even his purportedly strong words of censure were often cleverly coded, which,
ultimately, meant very little.
When Israel carried out its longest and most devastating war on Gaza in the
summer of 2014, a large number of international law experts and civil society
organizations signed
a letter accusing the UN chief of failing to clearly condemn Israel’s
unlawful action in the Occupied Territories, its targeting of civilian homes,
and even the bombing of UN facilities, which killed and wounded hundreds.
The signatories included former UN Special Rapporteur, Richard Falk, who, along
with the others, called on Ban to either stand for justice or resign. He did
neither.
The signatories criticized him, specifically, about Israeli shelling of a school
managed by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), in which ten civilians
were killed.
In his ‘condemnation’ of the Israeli attack earlier, Ban even failed to mention
Israel by name as the attacker, and called on ‘both parties’ to provide protection
for Palestinian civilians and UN staff.
“Your statements have been either misleading, because they endorse and further
Israeli false versions of facts, or contrary to the provisions established by
international law and to the interests of its defenders, or because your words
justify Israel’s violations and…