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John Ruggie on the United Nations

How will new leadership at the United Nations affect the international community as it faces a litany of 21st century challenges? On January 1st Ban ki-Moon, the former South Korean foreign minister and a Kennedy School graduate (MPA 1984/Mason Fellow), will begin his tenure as U.N. Secretary-General, succeeding Kofi Annan. John Ruggie, director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, is a former assistant secretary general at the U.N. who has worked closely with Annan over the past ten years.

Q: In his recent address at the Truman Library in Missouri, the outgoing Secretary-General made an impassioned plea for multilateralism in international affairs, saying that the nations of the world are dependent on each other for security and prosperity. How can that sentiment be reconciled with the critique that the U.N. has historically been too slow and too bureaucratic to respond effectively to looming international crises?

Ruggie: The slowness of response in the United Nations is often due to the fact that member states don't agree on what to do in a particular situation. They didn't agree in the case of Somalia; they didn't agree in the case of Rwanda; they didn't agree in the case of Yugoslavia. Today they don't agree on Darfur. They've had trouble agreeing on Iran and on North Korea, although they are reaching some closure on that. So the slowness of response in times of crisis more often than not has to do with trying to reconcile different national interests.

In terms of bureaucracy, the U.N. is a large organization and like other large organizations, it has its drivers and it has its passengers, as Kofi Annan likes to put it. That isn't really very different from any other large governmental organization in that respect, but it could always stand more reform. But those two issues- disagreement among governments and bureaucratic processes-shouldn't be confused with one another. The slowness on major world issues typically has to do with disagreement among the governments.

Q: Kofi Annan has also spoken of the need to reform the composition of the U.N. Security Council to reflect the modern era. Is there sentiment in favor of this proposal among member nations? And if so, what specific reforms are being considered?

Ruggie: The Secretary-General has pushed Security Council reform for a number of years. As you would expect, the countries that now have permanent membership on the Security Council-that is to say the United States, Russia, China, France, and Great Britain-are not eager for newcomers to have equal status. At the same time, in principle everyone recognizes that the victorious coalition from 1945 can't go on forever being the management committee of the collective security system. Everyone agrees that countries like Germany and Japan, India and Brazil are major players and ought to be recognized as such. I think the compromise that will eventually be struck is to increase the number of non-permanent members and to give some of them longer terms. I could imagine a compromise formula emerging whereby a Japan or a Brazil or an India would get elected to a new category of membership, say five- or eight-year terms as opposed to the current two year terms. I don't think that any of the permanent members will ever agree to admit new permanent members with veto powers.

Q: What are the other reform measures Kofi Annan believes are top priorities for the U.N.?

Ruggie: He has been pushing a number of reform initiatives over the years. The most recent was to get governments out of the business of line-item management because it is one of the contributory factors to making the U.N. such a clumsy organization. You can imagine a business with 192 members of its board of directors, each of which has an interest in line-item managing of the organization's budget, which is essentially what happens today. The Secretary-General does not even have the authority to transfer people from one department to another without authorization from the General Assembly. This is absolutely dysfunctional. Budgetary reform, including giving far greater discretionary authority to the Secretary-General, is critical to making the organization run better. This is something the United States very strongly supports.

Q: What are the greatest challenges that Ban ki-Moon will face as the next Secretary General and what are some of the creative techniques he may deploy to confront them?

Ruggie: Ban ki-Moon will face a number of crises. Iran nuclear issues are coming to a head. North Korean nuclear issues are coming to a head. The whole Iraq situation is of course extremely precarious at best, and the U.N. is likely to have some role in going forward in that. The Israeli-Palestinian crisis continues, and again, the U.N. is involved in that. So he has a number of geo-political conflicts staring him in the face that will require his immediate attention. He, as foreign minister of South Korea, has paid particular attention and has been personally involved in the North Korean discussions, so he is well briefed on those. Some of the others-the Iran question and so on-will be relatively new to him.

What does he bring to the table? He brings a fresh face and a different approach. Leadership styles, like other styles, come and go out of fashion. Kofi Annan was extraordinarily popular and effective for a number of years. Then he ran into some brick walls, including the Iraq war and the oil-for-food scandal, and lost some credibility, particularly in the United States over that.

Ban ki-Moon is a fresh face. He was supported by the United States. He was supported by China. So he has a bit of a honeymoon, but honeymoons don't last long in international politics, and he will have to hit the ground running.

Q: Moving forward, what role can and should the United States play at the U.N.?

Ruggie: The United States, as the world's most powerful country, has a key role to play. The United States needs to realize that it cannot simply support the United Nations only when it absolutely needs it and dump on it when it's politically expedient to do so. You don't treat institutions that way, the same way that you don't treat friendships that way. You'll have neither friends, nor allies, very long if you do.

As a nation, we need to commit ourselves to some degree of institutional investment and ongoing support for the United Nations so that when we do need it for something critical, it is actually capable of responding quickly and effectively.

Reporters:

Please contact 617-495-1115 to arrange an interview with John Ruggie.