Kofi Annan (1938-2018) was UN Secretary General from 1997 to 2006. He wanted a United Nations that favored a rational diplomacy as opposed to military based intervention. There were many challenges during his tenure. The Second Congolese Civil War, the NATO invention in Kosovo, and the Iraq War. The Bush administration wanted to get support of the United Nations for military action against Iraq. Secretary of State Colin Powell went to the UN claiming that Iraq was arming itself with chemical and biological weapons. This message of weapons of mass destruction was based on unreliable intelligence and had an ulterior motive to it. The US was not honest about Iraq and was seeking to remove Saddam Hussein to remake the Middle East. Kofi Annan urged the US and UK not to intervene. This nation building project led to the rise of ISIS and a more powerful Iran. Kofi Annan had been a supporter of responsibility to protect, which some criticized as violation of national sovereignty. The reason he became an advocate of such a policy was due to the Rwandan genocide. The UN was under criticism for the conduct of the Yugoslavian collapse in the 1990s. Annan as shown in the video from 2003 shows that he advocates peaceful resolutions, rather than humanitarian intervention by means of military force. Kofi Annan was attempting to reform the United Nations and prevent the world from losing faith in the international organization. The Ghanaian diplomat will best be remembered for reforming an international body in which the world powers too often dominate. His leadership encouraged other to change the way in which the UN was run, but challenges still remain in the complex world of international affairs.
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