Philip Gourevitch on Kofi Annan, the UN, and American politics:

It is worth remembering that Annan owes his position as Secretary-General to a similar White House power play. In 1996, the Clinton Administration, tired of resistance from Annan’s predecessor, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, maneuvered Annan into the job because, as the first career U.N. bureaucrat ever to rise to the top of the organization, he was assumed to be a company man, not a maverick. That assumption was not wholly mistaken. It took the Bush Administration’s radical hostility to international law and diplomacy to spark an equal animosity in Annan, whose distaste for the continuously escalating war in Iraq is, of course, shared by a majority of the U.N.’s members.

On related issues, here is a piece I published this past summer on why the Democrats have a hard time embracing the UN reform issue -- even though they're the ones who care about the UN. [Thx to reader JH.]

Posted by Laura at December 9, 2004 11:10 AM