RUTHFULLY YOURS

Kofi Annan, United Nations secretary-general between 1997 and 2006, died on Saturday in Bern, Switzerland. Messages of sympathy after the loss of a high-profile public figure are understandable, but praise for Annan’s legacy is misplaced. Simply put, Annan’s U.N. tenure was marked by cravenness, corruption, and cover-ups.

He was in charge of U.N. peacekeeping in 1994 but dismissed warnings of an impending genocide in Rwanda. Annan’s apologists might cite a narrow definition of his bureaucratic mandate, but they ignore his decision to not inform the U.N. Security Council when evidence of plans for genocide surfaced. In short, if Annan had done what was morally right rather than easy, he might have saved a million lives. To do so, however, might have made waves and complicated his career.

Annan’s Rwanda experience should have been disqualifying enough, but the U.N. is more about quotas and regional rotations than it is about principle. In short, Annan was in the right place at the right time and so, in 1997, he became the U.N.’s secretary-general.

While he did not create the U.N.’s Oil-for-Food program, his tenure coincided with its operation. In March of 1991, U.N. Security Council Resolution 687 marked Kuwait’s liberation from invading Iraqi forces. Beyond recognizing the inviolability of Kuwait’s borders, the resolution mandated that Iraq “shall unconditionally accept” its unconventional weaponry and ballistic missiles with a range greater than 90 miles. To verify this, the resolution authorized on-site U.N. inspections. While Iraq labored under sanctions, Resolution 687 exempted food and medicine. Iraq, however, repeatedly refused to cooperate with inspectors. Rather, Saddam Hussein embraced a new strategy: Deny food and medicine to his public, blame the U.N., and seek to break international consensus.

It worked. And so on April 14, 1995, the Security Council passed Resolution 986, the basis for the Oil-for-Food program. The resolution created an escrow account for Iraqi oil proceeds and decreed the U.N. could use these proceeds to purchase supplies and monitor their distribution. Saddam’s government refused to accept the program, however. On May 20, 1996, Annan’s predecessor, Egyptian politician and diploma Boutros Boutros-Ghali agreed to a Memorandum of Understanding to win Saddam’s cooperation: Rather than force Saddam to comply with international consensus, he agreed to a compromise by which the Iraqi government would contract directly with suppliers and to be the sole body allowed to request supplies. In short, Boutros-Ghali may have set the stage, but it was under Annan’s tenure that corruption exploded.

Despite the poverty Iraqis suffered under Saddam, Iraq was never a poor country. The U.N. held tens of billions of dollars of Iraqi money, and Saddam had siphoned off billions more under the watchful eyes of the organization’s bureaucrats. Perhaps Annan could have be forgiven for even this had he not subsequently tried to cover up the corruption and end any independent probes. Far from being a reformer, Annan proved himself a conspirator.

Annan did not contribute to the U.N.’s moral authority either. It was Annan who, on September 12, 1997 appointed Ireland’s Mary Robinson to be the U.N.’s high commissioner for human rights. Robinson defined her legacy with the Orwellian “World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance,” which gave U.N. imprimatur to the basest anti-Semitism. Annan’s response? Apologia and praise.

And when it comes to the U.N. Human Rights Commission, Annan’s tenure confirmed its transformation into a farce, and his moral fecklessness ensured its successor did little better.

PBS might have praised in its eulogy Annan’s legacy of reform but this is a whitewash of reality. Annan’s real legacy was to continue the trend of morphing the secretary-general’s administrative responsibilities into a symbolic role to justify jet-setting across the globe. He continued that in his retirement, flailing hopelessly in Syria (despite his organization’s huge budget), and bankrupting his own Global Humanitarian Forum through gross mismanagement. His son Kojo first used his father’s credentials to make a quick buck, and then took corruption to a new level, as his prominent feature in the Panama Papers.

Annan’s legacy was his role in the United Nations. No matter his successes as a Ghanaian diplomat, he would never have been a household name nor would he have attracted six-figure honoraria had it not been for his tenure as secretary-general. Therefore, in death, it is fair to judge Annan by his record in that role. Alas, there’s no avoiding the truth: He was incompetent, corrupt, or both. He repeatedly placed his own prestige and bureaucratic interests above real reform and the lives of those he was charged to defend and aid. On a personal level, he may have been a nice man, but to lionize him for what he represented as a U.N. figurehead rather than what he actually accomplished does more to illustrate the problems of the United Nations and its imperviousness to reform than anything else. So long as the international community allows U.N. figures to eschew personal accountability, then ineffectiveness will reign, and the organization will hemorrhage the respect so many believe it deserves based on its founding principles.

Michael Rubin (@Mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former Pentagon official.