UN transformation in an era of soft balancing

Abstract

Between 2003 and 2006 UN Secretary General Kofi Annan pursued the most ambitious overhaul of the United Nations since its inception. This transformation effort aimed to make the UN more effective in addressing non-traditional threats and to persuade the United States to re-engage with the world body. Launched during a time that was unpropitious for achieving far-reaching change, the effort nonetheless produced some surprising agreements. Several factors prevented greater achievement: the episodic attention of the Bush administration and the personal agenda of John Bolton, the US permanent representative to the UN; the failure of the UN Secretariat to pursue a capital based strategy that engaged heads of state and foreign ministers; and the decision by many member states that they would rather have an ineffective United Nations than an effective one that furthered the interests of the Bush administration. Whether future efforts to transform collective security will fall victim to the same fate depends in part on the actions and words of a new American president in 2009. © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd/The Royal Institute of International Affairs.