A Toehold In The UN

Unlike the solid, sometimes jingoistic, support they gave to L.N. Mittal in his bid for Arcelor, the media have greeted Shashi Tharoor's nomination for UN secretary-general with mixed feelings. Some have accused the government of having 'rushed' into announcing a candidate for the post without realising that this implies a surrender of its claim to a permanent seat on the Security Council. Others have criticised it as an example of the opacity of decision-making in this government, as it was taken by the PMO and left the MEA out of the loop.

Still others feared that the announcement might have been premature. India is not the most liked or trusted member of the UN. It is too big; too imperious and has too many border and other conflicts. It is a nuclear state with regional hegemonic ambitions, but not recognised as one. Traditionally, secretaries-general have come from smaller, uncontroversial countries. I have never doubted that Tharoor would be the best man for the job, but his chances are brightest if he is not seen as an Indian candidate, but as a capable UN insider who, having worked with outgoing secretary-general Kofi Annan, is in the best position to ensure continuity of policy at a time when the organisation's fate, and of the international order, hangs in the balance.

Ideally, India should have circulated Tharoor's name as a possible alternate, and announced it when consensus around one of the declared candidates proved elusive. The decision to announce his candidature now has put Tharoor in the front rank of contenders, and opened him to all the above objections from his opponents, and India's many detractors.

Despite this, it would be distinctly premature to write off his chances. The secretary-general's election is not like an election to the Security Council or the new Human Rights Council. In the latter it is nations that are elected. In the former it is individuals. How little the country of origin matters once the elections are over can be judged from the way past secretaries-general are remembered. How many people know, let alone recall, that Trygve Lie, the UN's first secretary-general was from Norway? How many people associate Dag Hammarskjold with Sweden, U. Thant with Burma (Myanmar) or Kofi Annan with Ghana? Of all the commentators, only Rajeev Shukla, writing in The Indian Express, understood this when he noted that there was no opposition to Tharoor's candidature in any country, even Pakistan.

A secretary-general's country of origin matters only at the beginning of the nomination process. Even that is only because the UN is a hybrid body, part democratic legislature and part executive, in which the former regulates and limit the latter's use of power. Since executive power has to be exercised on the UN's behalf by member states, it is respect for the principle of separation of powers that has inhibited large and powerful nations from putting forward candidates.

India is not big enough, powerful enough or threatening enough to make other nations disregard the assets Tharoor would bring to the post. The first, of course, is that he is an insider. The disadvantage of being an outsider was illustrated by the difficulties Kurt Waldheim faced when he was confronted by the Yom Kippur war in 1973 and was forced to take a crash course in what he could and could not do from two insiders in senior positions close to him. Boutros-Ghali, too, became an easy target for those looking for a scapegoat for the UN's failure to respond to the Rwanda genocide, because he was an outsider. But the most striking example of the virtues of an insider is Kofi Annan himself. He has guided the UN through the worst crisis in its history—beginning with the Serbia bombing, through Afghanistan's invasion to the Iraq invasion, the US and, regrettably on the first occasion, NATO had violated article 2 of the UN charter which requires all member states to respect the sovereignty of other member states and refrain from intervening in their internal affairs. The US has gone a step further and resumed the right to attack any country at any time with its Security Doctrine of 2002. Together, these have destroyed the UN's foundations.

But Annan has not only kept the edifice from crumbling, but has continued to build the skeleton of an alternative model of global governance that, he is convinced, is the only one that will prove sustainable in the long run. Two path-breaking reports, The Right to Protect and Towards a more Secure World, created the intellectual foundations of this model. The creation of an International Criminal Court, Human Rights Council and a Peace Building Commission are the first steps towards giving it concrete shape.

But we are only at the beginning of a long road. That is why having a Secretary-General who has been part of this process from its infancy is so important.