The 2016 Secretary-General Election and the Erosion of United Nations Authority

The election of a Secretary-General of the United Nations is a rare moment when the institution comes briefly into the centre of global politics. In 2016, as Ban Ki-moon’s second term drew to a close, there was widespread expectation that the new Secretary-General might come from Eastern Europe, the only UN regional group never to have held the office. Several candidates were advanced, among them the Serb former Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremić, who gained considerable traction in the Security Council’s informal “straw polls” that year and often came in second. Yet his candidacy was ultimately vetoed, and the man who emerged victorious was António Guterres, the former socialist Prime Minister of Portugal and past head of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

The Veto and Its Political Meaning

The United States, under President Barack Obama, made plain that Jeremić’s candidacy was unacceptable. Washington judged him too close to Moscow, too assertive on the Kosovo issue, and too ready to present himself as the spokesman of Serbia’s ambivalent position between East and West. A single negative vote from a permanent member of the Security Council is sufficient to block any Secretary-Generalial candidate, and Jeremić was eliminated.

The outcome was the elevation of Guterres, who had consistently placed well in the straw polls and was perceived as a compromise candidate. His political background in the Socialist Party of Portugal and his professional record at UNHCR were widely praised. Yet from the start some observers worried about his political affinities: as a European socialist with a record of dialogue with Moscow, he was acceptable to Russia and China, and indeed supported by them. This meant that Washington, by vetoing Jeremić, had effectively ensured the installation of a candidate whose global alignment tilted more subtly in favour of Russia.

Guterres and the Perceptions of Bias

Since 2017, critics of Guterres have accused him of being excessively cautious in the face of Russian assertiveness. After the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, for example, the UN Secretary-General made strenuous diplomatic efforts but rarely issued unequivocal condemnation of Russian aggression. His emphasis upon humanitarian corridors, prisoner exchanges and food-export agreements was valuable but also illustrated the limits of his willingness to confront Moscow directly.

Whether it is fair to call Guterres a “Russian asset” is a matter of interpretation. What is beyond doubt is that Russia has consistently found him a tolerable interlocutor, and that Ukrainian and Eastern European diplomats often perceive him as too pliant. In a period when the legitimacy of the UN is already under strain, this perception corrodes confidence in the Secretariat’s neutrality.

A Recurring Structural Problem

The 2016 outcome is not an isolated case of geopolitics shaping the office. Rather, it sits within a longer pattern where great powers have repeatedly used the veto to mould or truncate the careers of Secretaries-General.

In 1953, during the Cold War, Dag Hammarskjöld’s unexpected election followed a deadlock between East and West. He was chosen precisely because he seemed a colourless compromise, though he later became one of the UN’s most independent leaders. His accidental elevation underscored how the office was never insulated from power bargaining.

In 1981, Kurt Waldheim of Austria sought a third term. Although initially backed by many members, China cast repeated vetoes, insisting upon an Asian candidate. After sixteen inconclusive ballots, Javier Pérez de Cuéllar of Peru emerged as the consensus figure. Again, the veto had shaped the office not through merit but through the arithmetic of permanent member prerogatives.

Perhaps the most telling precedent is Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s failed attempt at a second term in 1996. Widely respected across Africa and the Middle East, he won the support of fourteen Security Council members in the first ballot. Yet the United States cast her veto, declaring his leadership unsatisfactory, and forced the search for a successor. This was the first and only time a Secretary-General was denied a second term, and it sent a clear signal: the occupant of the post ultimately survives only at the pleasure of the great powers.

Against this backdrop, the 2016 process was typical rather than aberrant. The United States vetoed the Serbian candidate, Russia and China supported Guterres, and a compromise was struck. The outcome illustrated how the Secretary-General is less the representative of the “international community” than the residue of power politics in miniature.

Consequences for the United Nations

The implications extend beyond personalities. The 2016 episode illustrated the structural flaws of the UN’s leadership selection: permanent members of the Security Council, acting according to national preferences, can veto candidates regardless of regional rotation or global sentiment. That power politics produced a Secretary-General seen by some as beholden to Russia is symptomatic of the wider devaluation of the institution.

Today, the United Nations finds itself marginalised in key security crises. On Ukraine, real diplomacy occurs in Washington, Moscow, Brussels or Ankara, not in New York. On Syria, Libya, and Sudan, the UN has struggled to exert authority. The perception that the Secretary-General is acceptable to Moscow, and therefore constrained in criticism, reinforces the sense that the UN cannot be a neutral moral arbiter. This is not solely Guterres’s fault; it reflects the deeper structural imbalance of an organisation dominated by veto powers. Yet the symbolism of the 2016 choice lingers: by vetoing Jeremić and thereby producing a compromise favourable to Russia, the United States inadvertently weakened the moral stature of the office.

The results of 2016

The 2016 election of António Guterres marked a turning point in Eastern Europe’s exclusion from the highest UN office, but it also reaffirmed a longer story: Secretaries-General are chosen through veto politics rather than global consensus. Just as Boutros-Ghali was struck down in 1996 by an American veto, so Jeremić was blocked in 2016; just as Pérez de Cuéllar emerged in 1981 after a veto deadlock, so Guterres arose from compromise. The consequence, eight years later, is a Secretary-General whom Moscow finds tolerable, whom Kyiv distrusts, and whose authority is correspondingly diminished.

The credibility of the United Nations suffers not because of one man alone but because the office itself has been structurally subordinated to the veto of the few. Each time the selection process is seen as geopolitically manipulated, the UN’s claim to universality is undermined. Guterres’s election thus stands not only as a product of its moment but also as a symbol of an institution whose authority has been steadily eroded by the very states that created it.

Comparative Reflections: How Other Institutions Select Their Leaders

The distortions in the UN Secretary-General selection process become starker when placed beside the leadership mechanisms of other major international organisations.

The European Union, for example, selects the President of the European Commission through a blend of parliamentary legitimacy and intergovernmental bargaining. The European Council nominates a candidate, but the European Parliament must approve by majority vote. This two-step procedure tempers the dominance of the largest member states and provides a measure of democratic accountability. Even if the process is opaque in its own way, no single country enjoys an outright veto.

NATO follows a convention of consensus but within a smaller club. The Secretary-General is appointed by the North Atlantic Council, composed of permanent representatives of all member states. The selection is typically made by informal agreement, but once consensus is reached, no permanent veto applies. Candidates such as Jens Stoltenberg or Anders Fogh Rasmussen have been chosen because they could satisfy both Washington and the Europeans, but the appointment does not rest upon a single capital’s fiat.

By contrast, the United Nations vests its leadership decision within the Security Council, where five states hold vetoes over any nomination. The General Assembly must then approve the chosen candidate, but only after the Council’s choice is made. In practice, the Assembly has never rejected a nominee sent forward by the Council. Hence, unlike the EU or NATO, where some institutional counterweights exist, the UN process is structurally captive to the geopolitical priorities of the permanent five.

The difference explains much of the devaluation of the Secretary-General’s office. Whereas leaders of the EU and NATO can claim a measure of legitimacy derived from collective approval, the UN Secretary-General often enters office already branded as a compromise among rival powers. This is why Dag Hammarskjöld’s independence in the 1950s was the exception rather than the rule.

Conclusion

The 2016 election of António Guterres confirmed once more that the Secretary-General is chosen not as a moral tribune for the international community, but as the least objectionable candidate to the Security Council’s permanent five. By blocking the Serb candidate and favouring a compromise, the United States and its partners produced an outcome that Russia found comfortable, with consequences still visible in the UN’s hesitant stance on Ukraine.

When compared with the leadership selection practices of the European Union or NATO, the structural flaws of the UN are clear: the veto system guarantees that the office of Secretary-General will remain subordinate to great-power politics. The result is an erosion of the very universality that the UN was created to embody. If the organisation is to recover credibility, it must one day reform the way it chooses its leaders, so that the head of the Secretariat represents not merely the tolerance of the powerful but the voice of the world as a whole.