Richard Gowan is research director at New York University’s Center on International Cooperation and senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

This week, Washington grasped that Ban Ki-moon might be a bit of a chump. The United Nations secretary-general, despite his seven years on the job and nearly four decades before that as a South Korean diplomat, appeared both overzealous and amateurish as he extended and then rescinded a last-minute invitation to Iran to join the Syrian peace talks in Switzerland. The Obama administration’s unconcealed irritation with this gambit has left Ban, who has always prioritized good relations with the United States, looking foolish. If this week’s turmoil leaves a lasting stain on his reputation it will, however, be both unfair and ironic.

The secretary-general’s outreach to Iran was a rare display of courage and independent thinking on his part. In the past, Ban has often failed to display either—and Washington has been just fine with that. While the Obama administration has persisted in working through the U.N. over Syria, it has not wanted Ban to make any serious strategic decisions related to the crisis. He has largely been confined to making stern pronouncements about the dangers of war and the need to aid the suffering. It’s little wonder his bid to play a more substantial diplomatic role went off the rails.


Ban has never been touted as a master strategist. The Bush administration engineered his appointment in 2006 because it wanted someone pliable to replace the occasionally difficult Kofi Annan. Mission accomplished; it’s hard to think of significant cases where he’s defied Washington. But U.N. officials were quick to note their new boss’s weaknesses: an obsession with protocol, a startling unfamiliarity with many urgent items on his agenda, including those in the Middle East, and a self-consciously labored public speaking style.

Perhaps most seriously, it is far from certain that Ban has the diplomatic agility necessary to maneuver effectively through acute crises. His forte is process-based diplomacy. He has shown a commendably dogged determination to move the flagging U.N. climate change negotiations forward through multiple conferences. He has recently invested heavily in outlining a new agenda for international development, which could be a worthy legacy. His approach is less well-suited to fast-paced decision-making, not least because he is notoriously reliant on his talking points. Global leaders including President Obama are said to be mystified by Ban’s inability to engage in freewheeling discussions about the problems he faces.

Ban’s weakness at crisis management came to the fore in 2009, when he and his advisers failed to pull together a credible response to the Sri Lankan government’s vicious campaign to eradicate the Tamil Tiger rebel movement, which claimed more than 40,000 lives. This grim episode has haunted the secretary-general’s term in office, and he has creditably pushed his staff to review the lessons from the killing. Ban has become bolder about speaking out about emerging crises, and surprised his critics by taking a firm line in favor of the Arab revolutions in 2011. But U.N. officials grumble that the secretary-general often seems to think these statements are enough and does not engineer any deeper political strategies to back them up.

If this is what the Bush administration wanted, the Obama administration has also found it congenial. Unlike Annan, Ban has never attempted to take a leading role in the Middle East peace process, leaving the field open for U.S. diplomacy. Ban loyally supported the Western military intervention in Libya even after many U.N. members—including Russia, China and the African Union—criticized NATO’s aggressive air campaign. When Ban ran for a second term as secretary-general in 2011, Washington smoothed his path.

Nonetheless, neither the United States nor other big powers seem convinced that Ban is up to handling a bloody first-order crisis like Syria. The secretary-general actually raised concerns about the conflict early in 2011, when many in Washington and other capitals believed that it could be contained. He earnestly tried to cajole President Bashar Assad into stepping away from violence, to little effect. But when the crisis began to escalate in 2012, the United States pushed him to pick Kofi Annan as envoy to Damascus.

That was not an especially pleasant decision for Ban, who has always believed his predecessor allowed the U.N.’s ethical standards to slip. It did not help when Annan set up his headquarters in Geneva and tried to act as independently as possible. Although the former secretary-general failed to make much progress towards a genuine peace deal, Ban looked marginalized.

Annan’s successor, Lakhdar Brahimi, does not represent such a direct threat to Ban’s status. But Brahimi has staked his mediation efforts on collaboration with the United States and Russia, further reducing the U.N.’s room for diplomatic maneuver. Ban did strike an independent pose during last August and September’s chemical weapons crisis, arguing against any American military action without a Security Council mandate, but had little real leverage over events.

This has worked well for U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who has leaned hard on Brahimi to sustain the agonizing diplomatic process leading up to this week’s Swiss talks, and at least once persuaded the exasperated envoy not to resign. But it has weakened the U.N.’s claims to be an impartial player in the crisis. Veteran U.N. officials argue that the organization’s underlying strength is its ability to talk to pariah groups—as it talks to Hamas and Hezbollah—and so mediate otherwise impossible peace deals.

This may overstate the U.N.’s capabilities (it has, after all, failed to magic up peace in conflicts from Bosnia to the Central African Republic) but in the Syrian case it has essentially been limited to playing a conference-organizing role for Washington and Moscow. Ban’s advisers have always been extremely gloomy about the chances for success at the talks and resigned to taking the blame if and when they fail. This has not stopped many of them, including the well-respected U.N. political affairs chief and former State Department official Jeffrey Feltman, from throwing themselves into the preparations in hopes of avoiding a total diplomatic wipeout.

The question of whether Iran should participate in the Syrian talks arguably cut to the heart of the U.N.’s independence—and Ban’s own role at the head of the organization. Should Ban insist on his right to invite whomever he liked to the talks in the belief that they might contribute to peace? Or should he accept that, given the central role of the United States in the talks, Washington could veto another state’s presence? He appears to have believed he could split the difference, persuading Iran to recognize the need for a Syrian transitional government potentially excluding Assad while guiding the United States into a position where it could live with this potentially unwelcome guest's presence. Kerry and other U.S. officials may well have initially signaled their interest, and trusted Ban to manage the process with his usual caution.

This is precisely the variety of high-stakes diplomacy at which Ban Ki-moon does not excel.

And so, when he announced his invitation to Tehran on Sunday, he faced a predictable catastrophe. The blame game over the episode will doubtless run on for some time. It appears that Ban may have misunderstood how far Iran was willing to compromise to get a ticket to Geneva. He most definitely underestimated the Obama administration’s willingness to squish the entire initiative. Washington insisted that the Iranians must affirm their commitment to the creation of a transitional government, and Tehran balked. Showing the depth of its displeasure, the State Department called on Ban to formally withdraw the invitation. He did. Rather than show his independence, he has confirmed that Washington has him on a very tight leash indeed.

That’s embarrassing for Ban, but it should also make American policymakers pause. Yes, it is nice to have the U.N. secretary-general firmly under control. But is it really wise to leave the organization, which serves U.S. interests in cases from Haiti to South Sudan, in the hands of leaders who lack the clout and guile to pull off smart diplomatic maneuvers of this type? A more independent U.N. leader, like Annan, may be an occasional irritant but also more useful when it really matters. Ban’s tenure will conclude at the end of 2016. The race to replace him will heat up over the coming year. It is tempting for the Obama administration to look for another pliable character. But the United States would just have to clean up more unnecessary messes like this one. For its own sake, Washington should avoid choosing another chump.