The Best Intentions: Kofi Annan and the UN in the Era of American Power.

• Author: O'Brien, Terence
• Position: Book review

THE BEST INTENTIONS Karl Annan and the UN in the Era of American Power

Author: James Traub

Published by: Bloomsbury, London, 2006, 442pp, $39.99.

As UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan achieved a personal standing that exceeded to a measurable degree the respect for the United Nations itself as an international organisation. That paradox is well captured by James Traub in this first assessment of Annan's tenure. Traub, an American journalist, enjoyed privileged access over some three or more years to the Secretary-General and to the organisation that produced him. The very fact that such access was granted implies, of course, a concern on the part of Kofi Annan himself with his place in history. Nonetheless, the book avoids the uncritical adulation of simple hagiography. It is a journalistic insider's account that is immensely readable and very topical. A deeper and more reflective analysis of Annan's achievements and failures will probably, however, require the passage of more time; and will inevitably be coloured by what the future holds for the United Nations itself.

As Traub tells it, Annan's ten-year tenure (1997-2006) was very much a game of two halves. At the end of his first five years in 2001, Anan's standing was high. He had replaced the condescending, status-conscious Boutros Ghali, and by dint of his temperament, judgment and public manner restored mana to the office of Secretary-General, and indeed to the fortunes more widely of the organisation itself after the dreadful 1990s experiences of the Balkans and Africa. This was all the more remarkable because there was real sensitivity in the fact that during his earlier charge of UN peacekeeping, Kofi Annan had, as the author recounts, been directly implicated in events and decisions leading to the gruesome Rwanda genocide.

The second part of Annan's stewardship, from 2001 onwards, was overshadowed entirely by the policies, attitudes and profound disdain of neo-conservatives in the United States for the United Nations. After 9/11 the United States, driven by a deep sense of revenge and unable or unwilling to work through the UN Security Council, disavowed the organisation as a viable useful instrument and strove systematically to render it irrelevant. Traub captures the deep mental anguish and depression that engulfed Annan at the time of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Yet by the end of his tenure, and of the book, Traub records that President Bush and Condoleezza Rice reaffirmed a...