Global Governance 16 (2010), 505 –523

Secretary-General Leadership Across the United Nations and NATO: Kofi Annan, Javier Solana, and Operation Allied Force
Kent J. Kille and Ryan C. Hendrickson

The UN and NATO have been jointly engaged in a range of conflicts in the post–Cold War era. Studies of these organizations, however, have largely overlooked the institutional interplay between their Secretaries-General. After brief reviews of the relationship between the UN and NATO and the leadership role that a Secretary-General can provide, this article examines the political relationship between Kofi Annan and Javier Solana across three stages of NATO’s 1999 Operation Allied Force in Kosovo. The find - ings show the important roles played and coordinated effort supplied by the Secretaries-General. This provides new perspectives on UN-NATO insti - tutional coordination and has important implications for considering the relative security roles to be played by the UN and NATO in the future. KEY - WORDS : UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, NATO Secretary-General, Javier Solana, Operation Allied Force.

IN AN AGE OF SHIFTING SECURITY CONCERNS AND APPROACHES MARKED by the end of the Cold War, the UN and NATO have faced a series of chal - lenges. In the process these two organizations, which primarily operated as distinctly separate entities during the Cold War, have needed to closely con - sider their relationship as they address common conflicts and continue to face a range of potential joint security concerns. Institutional interaction and coor - dination have largely evolved in an ad hoc manner in response to these situa - tions, but recent efforts to establish a framework for cooperation demonstrate how the UN-NATO institutional relationship remains an important and press - ing issue. Analysis of the relationship between the UN and NATO has also greatly increased since the end of the Cold War. The existing work often provides in - formative accounts of engagement between the two organizations, but secre - tary-general leadership is often overlooked. A range of secretary-general studies have demonstrated that the heads of these two organizations often play an active and important role, but analyses of a particular secretary-generalship are usually undertaken in isolation. Thus, in this study , we seek to draw from the strengths of both UN-NATO and secretary-general studies to provide a needed examination of cross-office coordination. We open the study with a brief review of the evolving relationship be -

505 506 Secretary-General Leadership Across the UN and NATO tween the UN and NATO and then detail the limited existing coverage of the roles played by the Secretaries-General in UN-NATO studies. We then present an overview of the leadership that a Secretary-General can provide. This dis - cussion sets the stage for an examination of the Secretaries-General engage - ment in relation to NATO’s 1999 Operation Allied Force in Kosovo, a key event for exploring UN-NATO relations. Analysis of this case revolves around a comparison of the roles played by the Secretaries-General, both in terms of their individual efforts and how the interactions between the two offices fos - tered organizational cooperation or competition across three stages of the op - eration. We conclude with a reflection on the leadership provided by the Secretaries-General and the implications for the relative security roles to be played by the UN and NATO.

The UN and NATO: Building Coordination During the Cold War, “no one worried about the relationship between” NATO and the UN because “while not wholly separate and certainly not wholly equal, [they] were different organizations, each operating in its own sphere, not ordinarily congruent nor in opposition.” 1 Understandably, until of late there has been little analysis connecting the two organizations , although there now is an increasing recognition that it is helpful to look back historically at the UN and NATO during the Cold War years in order to provide a clearer basis for analyzing how their relationship evolved over time. 2 In particular, the ways in which the founding documents of the two organizations are inter - preted can have important implications for the current functioning of NATO relative to the UN. The UN Charter specifically provides allowance for re - gional organization engagement in addressing breaches of the peace, as cov - ered in Chapter VIII “Regional Arrangements” (Articles 52 –54). However, the UN’s ultimate authority as a universal organization encompassing all member states that participate in such regional organizations is stressed. Of direct relevance to NATO is Article 51, which allows for “collective self-defense,” and can be used to justify such a regional alliance organization. The North Atlantic Treaty, established in 1949, directly references Article 51 of the UN Charter in its Article 5 , which ties the members’ security together and permits all allies to respond militarily if one member of the alliance is at - tacked. However, the importance of grounding NATO in relation to UN au - thority for the founders of NATO is highly debated, especially since the North Atlantic Treaty does not reference Chapter VIII that would classify NATO as a regional organization in the eyes of the UN. The growing number of studies examining UN-NATO interaction are mostly focused on the post –Cold War era developments that have drawn the two organizations together through their handling of common security crises. 3 The UN and NATO had little time to adjust to the post –Cold War security en -