As the new secretary general of the UN, South Korea's Ban Ki-moon faces a choice: style himself as the next self-serving pop star of global diplomacy or dedicate himself more humbly and bravely to transforming the corrupt UN into an honest institution.
If Ban chooses chiefly to promote himself, he can follow the trail blazed by his predecessor, Kofi Annan. He can spend his five-year term preening himself as - in Annan's words - "chief diplomat of the world." He can glad-hand tyrants and troublemakers and block genuine global security by covering up crooked UN programs, a la Oil-for-Food, and demanding more resources for ultimately unworkable "peace" deals, as Annan did this past summer for Lebanon.
He can expand yet further the sprawling, secretive and crooked UN system, filling positions with cronies, collecting money for murky initiatives, blaming failures and scandal on others (especially the U.S.), and raking in prizes from the likes of Mideast potentates and Swiss financiers. He might even win himself a second term.
But if Ban attends to his real job - which the UN charter defines not as top diplomat, but as "chief administrative officer" - he can far better serve the public interest. The UN suffers problems enough by way of a General Assembly and Security Council stacked with despotic regimes. If, on top of that, there is no integrity in the secretariat then even the best-meant policies stand little chance of working well in practice.
