The Foreign Service Journal, September 2020

54 SEPTEMBER 2020 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton applied tandem pres- sure on Ban to say no. Given Iran’s defiance of Security Council resolutions and the incendiary remarks by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calling for the destruction of Israel, they argued, a state visit by the U.N. Secretary-General would reward outrageously bad behavior and undermine the importance of U.N. principles and resolutions. The problem for Ban was that a majority of U.N. member states would participate in the summit and expect him there, a fact he weighed against the unyielding U.S. opposition and his own revulsion over Khamenei’s anti-Israeli and anti- Semitic rhetoric. “Translating” U.S. objections into a U.N. context, I proposed that to offset the risk that a trip exclusively focused on Tehran would appear to bless Iranian behavior contrary to U.N. norms, Ban wedge the Tehran stop between visits to the UAE and Saudi Arabia, where he would surely get (and indeed got) earfuls of complaints about Iran’s regional meddling. My understanding of U.S. motivations helped Ban find a way to mitigate U.S. concerns, as the additional destinations altered the public image of the trip. One of the most unexpected moments of my entire profes- sional career occurred in Tehran, when I ended up as Ban’s “plus one” in a restricted meeting with Khamenei. The Supreme Leader’s hours-long rant against the United States persuaded me that whatever gaps in knowledge we in Washington may have had regarding Iran, they paled in comparison to the chasms of ignorance Khamenei displayed regarding the United States. Transition and Trepidation With António Guterres taking the oath of office as Ban’s suc- cessor as U.N. Secretary-General just three weeks before Don- ald Trump was sworn in as U.S. president, the question “What does Washington think?” assumed a more urgent tone in Turtle Bay circles. Would the U.N. inadvertently cross an ill-defined American red line, provoking President Trump to withdraw U.S. support from, and membership in, the body? Leadership transi- tions are never easy, and Guterres took office when the sense of an existential threat to the U.N. was palpable among staff and member states alike. An articulate and persuasive communica- tor in multiple languages, Guterres had received the blessing of U.N. member states in October 2016, at which point a different outcome in the U.S. elections seemed likely. Perhaps naturally suspicious and prone to micromanage- ment already, Guterres took no chances of a misstep with the unexpected new administration. He quickly centralized as much control as he could of the unwieldy U.N. structures (while claiming, and perhaps even believing, he was empower- ing staff). What senior leaders and mid-level managers could routinely decide on their own under Ban Ki-moon soon became subject to second-guessing and, ultimately, clearance by the Secretariat’s 38th floor, occupied by the offices of Guterres and his inner circle. Career professionals soon got the message that his staff considered them and their ideas untrustworthy, as potential creators of problems between Guterres and member states and especially with a now unpredictable U.S. govern- ment. A Portuguese diplomat once remarked to me that, to understand Guterres, one needed to study his political career in Lisbon: As prime minister (1995-2002) in a minority govern- ment, he constantly sought allies, built coalitions and avoided making enemies. Above all, he wanted to avoid making an enemy of Donald Trump. To his credit, Guterres used his considerable political skills to form a symbiotic partnership with Nikki Haley over the issue of U.N. reform. Haley could burnish her foreign policy creden- tials and report to her boss that the U.N. was improving under his direction; Guterres could fiddle with the U.N.’s bureaucratic machinery (telling other member states that reformwas essential to continued U.S. support) in ways that suited his 38th-floor hyper control while preserving a relationship with Washington. The list grows of U.N. entities and international agreements abandoned by the Trump administration, and the United States is now behind in its assessed contributions by more than $1 billion, single-handedly creating a financial crisis in the U.N. But the U.S. (so far) remains inside the United Nations. Not unreasonably, Guterres probably considers that his top accomplishment. 1918 vs. 1945 … and Today But what should the United States think about its U.N. membership at this point? The relationship between Washing- ton and the United Nations has always been somewhat uneasy, as it rests on American willingness to constrain some of its All of us who have toiled in Turtle Bay can identify parts of the U.N. that seem dysfunctional or irrelevant (although we may disagree exactly on which parts those are).