Ban's Way

Here is some of what the secretary general of the United Nations did in May: helped coordinate UN responses to the H1N1 virus in New York and Geneva, where he also attended a World Heath Organization assembly and persuaded heads of pharmaceutical companies to donate vaccines; addressed a summit in Bahrain on dealing with disasters; met with Congressional committees to discuss UN funding decisions; visited the last battlefield in the ugly quarter-century war in Sri Lanka and toured a camp for displaced Tamils, then prodded Sri Lanka's president to hasten relief and reconciliation; urged global business executives in Copenhagen to act on climate change; and held twenty-one meetings in one day with various Danish leaders and environmental experts before moving on to an official visit to Finland.

Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is halfway through his first five-year term in office. Whether he gets another five years will depend not on how many air miles he logs but on what all this activity achieves. From his perspective, he is laying the diplomatic groundwork for shared problem-solving, not looking for instant results. He does not showboat.

Ban, who previously served as the South Korean foreign minister, is all but unknown in the United States. The UN is getting less and less coverage from fewer American reporters at its headquarters. But the United States, as always, will decide the secretary general's fate. Bill Clinton dumped Boutros Boutros-Ghali after one term when the too-foreign Egyptian was perceived as a political liability. Kofi Annan endured shrill calls for his resignation after branding the US-led invasion of Iraq "illegal" and opening himself to a revenge attack over a corrupt "oil-for-food" program that had fed Iraqis under sanctions. Though cleared of corruption charges by an independent investigation, he suffered considerable physical and emotional damage, and the scandal tainted the final months of his tenure.

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