Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: secretary or general?
- PART I Defining and refining the job description
- PART II Maintaining peace and security
- PART III Normative and political dilemmas
- PART IV Independence and the future
- 10 The Secretary-General's political space
- 11 The Secretary-General in a unipolar world
- 12 Resolving the contradictions of the office
- APPENDIX: selected documents on the Secretary-General
- Select bibliography
- Index
10 - The Secretary-General's political space
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: secretary or general?
- PART I Defining and refining the job description
- PART II Maintaining peace and security
- PART III Normative and political dilemmas
- PART IV Independence and the future
- 10 The Secretary-General's political space
- 11 The Secretary-General in a unipolar world
- 12 Resolving the contradictions of the office
- APPENDIX: selected documents on the Secretary-General
- Select bibliography
- Index
Summary
In January 1998, as Kofi Annan was labouring to persuade the Security Council that he should go to Baghdad to defuse the growing crisis over weapons inspections, Iqbal Riza, his Chef de Cabinet, got hold of a copy of a biography of Dag Hammarskjöld in order to have at the ready the precedent for such solo flights of diplomacy, which Annan's illustrious predecessor had established, later dubbed the “Peking Formula”. Such legalistic considerations were of great importance to the punctilious Riza – and of almost no importance at all to Annan, who understood that his capacity to act arose entirely from the specific situation before him, and from what he was able to make of it. When, after great feats of diplomatic delicacy and persistence, Annan managed to find a tiny patch of common ground among the five deeply divided permanent members of the Council, he flew off to Baghdad without so much as a word about the Peking Formula.
Rules and entrepreneurs
The United Nations is thought to be an excruciatingly rule-bound body, but the Secretary-General's political latitude is almost wholly a matter of entrepreneurship rather than rule. As others in this volume have noted, the right of autonomous action is in fact inscribed in Article 99 of the UN Charter. But this vague proviso, which empowers the Secretary-General only to “bring to the attention of the Security Council” issues that threaten international peace and security, assumes an unambiguously subordinate relationship between the Secretary-General and the Council. In reality, the relationship is much more complicated, and much more fluid.
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- Secretary or General?The UN Secretary-General in World Politics, pp. 185 - 201Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007
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