![[Re]Group: A Playbook for Turbulent Times](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!PUHU!,w_120,h_120,c_fill,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff2fb4256-d509-4e61-827b-2ee678efbba9_256x256.png)
![[Re]Group: A Playbook for Turbulent Times](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!OvcZ!,e_trim:10:white/e_trim:10:transparent/h_182,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa2653539-a634-4ef5-9aab-bc4a7546ebc9_1344x500.png)
This week on World’s Toughest Job, a podcast co-produced by Foreign Policy and the United Nations Foundation, we bring you a bonus episode from the 81st session of the UN General Assembly. Recorded before a live audience, we ask: What should the next Secretary-General tackle in their first 100 days?
We still don’t know who will become the 10th Secretary-General, but the winner will face an endless list of challenges, and take over a divided organization that has been battered by budget cuts.
As Elizabeth Cousens has argued, “They must prioritize visibility and results, demonstrating the UN is back on the front lines of global crisis management and prepared to be a clarion voice for international cooperation as the essential ‘operating system’ for a livable world.”
The goal? To deliver the early and visible wins that will “rebuild trust and generate the political support required for the longer and harder institutional battles to come.”
The episode opens with co-host Mark Malloch-Brown’s interview with Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley. Not only does she have clear ideas for what a 100-day sprint should look like, she wants a Secretary-General with the instincts of a champion surfer: “nimble of thought and nimble of action,” and with the balance to ride the geopolitical waves.
Next, Foreign Policy’s Ravi Agrawal takes the stage to play the Triage Game with the International Crisis Group’s Comfort Ero and historian Thant Myint-U. The game is pretty simple. Three rounds: what should the next Secretary-General OWN, what should they DELEGATE, and what should they DROP.
As always, the episode wraps with host Jasmin Bauomy joining Mark Malloch-Brown to unpack the panel’s choices and work out what it all means.
Listen to the episode first and then read on for my takeaways. And if you haven’t already, there are eight episodes from the first season to catch up on and our historical deep dives to read.
1. Blessed is the Peacemaker (OWN)
Everyone wants the next Secretary-General to own peace and security. The panel, the public, and Member States as well.
The Triage Game kicks off with Thant Myint-U arguing that a new leader needs to “own the historical moment that we’re in.” They need to judge which conflict would most benefit from the UN’s “universal impartial mediator role.” The goal should be to demonstrate utility “in the way that, say, Dag Hammarskjöld during the Suez Crisis in 1956 or U Thant [during the Cuban] Missile Crisis [in] 1962, surprised even the great powers.”
🗞️ Related Reading
Read our deep dive into U Thant’s Cuban Missile Crisis playbook from episode 2 of World’s Toughest Job.
Comfort Ero agrees that a new Secretary-General should “reclaim the peacemaking role and be the peacemaker, the universal peacemaker in which the UN was born.” She nominates Sudan as the crisis to own, calling it a geopolitical catastrophe and the world’s worst humanitarian disaster, and advises the incoming leader to go directly to the Security Council with a fresh diagnosis and new ideas.
🗞️ Related Reading
Read Jeffrey Feltman’s advice for how the Secretary-General needs to be ‘caught trying’ something different to bring peace to Sudan.
However, Mark Malloch-Brown warns against putting “all your money on one horse” by focusing exclusively on Sudan, saying the Secretary-General should also explore opportunities for peace in Haiti, Somalia, Tigray, and Yemen. Prime Minister Mottley also argues for flexibility: A new leader will need experienced mediation teams ready to deploy to conflict zones whenever a breakthrough seems possible.
2. Don’t Manage, Lead (DELEGATE)
Think of delegation as three concentric circles: the office of the Secretary-General, the broader UN system, and, beyond that, the “cooperation ecosystem” that Elizabeth Cousens and Susana Malcorra explored in a recent Devex op-ed. According to Ero: “Delegate doesn’t mean abdicate.”
The incoming leader should not be personally involved in everything the UN does, nor does the UN need to jostle to the forefront of every global initiative when others are better placed to play that role. As Ero puts it: “It’s not a beauty contest. It’s a division of labor. It’s about who has legitimacy, who can drive, who has leverage, who exerts pressure. And about recognizing that, for the United Nations, you don’t have to lead all the time.”
Myint-U underlines the “critical distinction between the importance of issues” such as development, climate, or AI, “and how much time the Secretary-General personally has to give to that issue.”
Ero applies this logic to peace and security, advising the UN to lean into a division of labor, allowing “networked middle powers” to lead mediation in conflicts that they have the power to help resolve. “A supporting role is not second fiddle,” she says. Instead, it means coordinating behind the scenes, providing infrastructure that allows others to play their role, and deploying the legitimacy of the Security Council and wider UN when that can make a difference.
🗞️ Related Reading
Read The Year One Playbook for why the new leader cannot “look inward and launch a structural reform agenda,” but needs to focus on visible results that will make the UN relevant again.
The panel also strongly advises the new Secretary-General against getting dragged too far into internal reform or day-to-day operations. Ero urges the incoming leader to delegate the UN80 reform process (which she describes as a “liquidation agenda”). Rather than trying to act as the UN’s Chief Operating Officer, the Secretary-General needs to “let that go” by appointing a trusted COO or Chief of Staff to mind the shop.
3. Fewer Ops and Much Less Oversharing (DROP)
Stop trying to be the world’s project manager. Provide the platform for others to implement. And, above all, give up competing for a shrinking pool of donor money. As Myint-U puts it: “I think it’s so important that the UN no longer be a delivery mechanism for donor assistance, right?”
Ero describes this as partly a question of bandwidth, but also of capacity. Malloch-Brown, one of the few at home in both the UN and the multilateral development banks, agrees. “The resources for implementation now lie elsewhere,” he says.
But development matters to Member States, as Prime Minister Mottley makes clear: “What we can’t do is abandon the development agenda or the humanitarian agenda,” because it traps vulnerable countries in a vicious cycle of decline. Malloch-Brown splits the difference. The UN could drop the lion’s share of its operational activities, while offering expert advice and convening, and “championing the cause of development.”
🗞️ Related Reading
UN development is a problem with six faces. Twist any side of the Rubik’s Cube and you inevitably shift all the rest.
UN legend Brian Urquhart believed the Secretary-General needed “a certain detachment, reticence, even mystery” to play their role in diplomacy, conflict resolution, and peacekeeping. “If you’re speaking all the time about every issue,” Myint-U argues, “I think that diminishes [that detachment] to some extent.”
In the week ahead of UNGA alone, the Secretary-General spoke out on everything from hate speech and AI’s impact on sustainable tourism to cluster munitions and safe seafaring. “I think the thing the Secretary-General has to drop is making statements on every single issue every day,” Myint-U says.
Malloch-Brown agrees: “A little more mystery and a reduction of the volume of communications, I think would be much appreciated by everybody.”
4. Yes, But What About? (PUSHBACK)
In a 40-minute recording, there isn’t much time for pushback from the floor, but Microsoft’s Erica Moret, UN Foundation Next Generation Fellow Ishaan Shah, and Marie L’Hostis, from the FORUS network of NGOs, seize their chance.
Moret argues for the importance of AI during an UNGA that was obsessed with it: “Should the next Secretary-General own this challenge of ensuring that AI becomes an accelerator of development and economic growth rather than yet another accelerator of global inequality?”
🗞️ Related Reading
Can the UN afford to wait on AI? Dr. Nur Laiq argues that “AI governance is a core planning issue for the next decade of multilateralism.”
Shah, fresh from launching a report on young movements and the future of multilateralism, pitches the idea that every UN strategy and reform agenda should be assessed for its impact on future generations. He wants a senior official to hold that responsibility.
L’Hostis highlights just how far off track the Sustainable Development Goals now are. “Considering expectations from communities around the world, how can the incoming UN Secretary-General galvanize commitment for the agenda now and beyond 2030?”
The panel counters that little progress on these priorities is possible if the world is on fire. For Myint-U, only a Secretary-General who is successful as a peacemaker will have the credibility to push for action on AI, development, or any other issue.
Ero agrees: “I will simply say your future depends on reversing 65 conflicts. [Without that,] nothing else can be done.”
