As UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon completes six months in office, he has an opportunity to rescue the UN's mired reputation, argues Dan O'Brien
The job of UN secretary general is among the world's most prestigious. It is also one of its hardest. Ban Ki-moon, the Korean diplomat who replaced Kofi Annan at the UN's helm at the beginning of the year, knew this when he campaigned for the post.
Speaking in London on Wednesday, he gave no indication that his first half-year as the world's highest-ranking civil servant has caused him to think otherwise.
How has he measured up to his new role? Ban's early days in the job did not inspire confidence. In the words of one senior security council diplomat, he hit the ground stumbling.
His unceremonious clear-out of Annan's top layer of officials suggested that he lacked people skills. His appointment of an unknown as his deputy raised questions about his managerial abilities.
His familiarity with policy was thrown into doubt within days of his taking office when he said that the death penalty should be a matter for individual member countries, contradicting his predecessors' position.
His first weeks did nothing to endear him to UN staffers. Unlike Annan, he is not one of their own, coming from the Korean civil service, not the UN family.
He is neither as charismatic nor as cosmopolitan as his predecessor - he does not electrify with his oratory and his claim to fluency in French was embarrassingly exposed early on at a press conference.
Because it was Asia's turn for the top job, some cruelly claimed that he would not have been appointed if a wider pool of non-Asian candidates had been eligible.
But not all insiders' criticisms are valid. For many on long-term UN contracts his decision to push ahead with a plan to rotate staff more frequently has caused self-serving grumbling by too-cosy officials.
Moving staff around is among the most effective ways of limiting opportunities for graft, and that is sorely needed following a series of scandals in recent years that have badly damaged the organisation.
If the UN is to have any chance of avoiding scandal in the future, the corrupt and incompetent will have to be leveraged out of their comfort zones.
If his manner of handling internal UN matters has not always been smooth, he has been more sure-footed with those who really count: the member countries (there are, de facto, two UNs: Ban's relatively powerless institutions and the intergovernmental forums - such as the Security Council - where the real clout is wielded).
Humble and modest in his ambitions, he understands the limitations of the job, which is crucial if he is to have any genuine sway over the members, particularly when dealing with the planet's trouble spots.
Of the most pressing security issues in the world today, Ban has prioritised the one where he is most likely to have an influence - the continuing genocide in Darfur.
He has gently pushed the Sudanese government to accept the intervention of a hybrid force of UN and African Union peacekeepers, while at the same time avoiding any falling out with China, its protector on the Security Council.
He has also managed to raise the $1.5 billion needed to pay for the peacekeepers' deployment.
If a criticism can be levelled at him in his dealings with the great powers it is that he has been too timid. Although this may be more to do with the fact he is still finding his feet, some have detected excessive deference towards the big boys.
On this charge, Exhibit A for the prosecution is the resignation of Alvaro de Soto, the UN's point man on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
De Soto's leaked end-of-mission report suggested that Ban was less than impartial in dealing with the parties because he was too ready to bend to the will of the US, Israel's protector on the Security Council.
If dealing with governments externally and staff internally is tricky enough, affecting change when both the institutions and member countries are involved is even more difficult.
This is the case on reform of the UN's basic structures. With 192 members keeping a hawk eye on their position in the pecking order, a proposal to make even the slightest change is guaranteed to generate controversy.
Nowhere is this more obvious than in the unending debate over reform of the UN's most important body, the Security Council.
Its composition is woefully outdated, reflecting the global distribution of power in the first half of the 20th century.
Most egregious is Europe's over-representation. Britain and France, with 120 million citizens between them, have two of the five permanent seats. India, Africa and Latin America, whose combined population is 22 times greater, have not one.
Unsurprisingly, such an imbalance undermines the legitimacy of the body, particularly among the G77, the increasingly assertive bloc of 132 developing-world nations.
But no matter how justifiable a change would be, the "permanent five" are not about to dilute their own influence by making real change. Ban recognises this and has wisely avoided pushing a position on Security Council reform.
Instead, he has dedicated himself to more achievable ambitions, already succeeding in splitting the secretariat's peacekeeping division into operational and logistical units.
Although such a change may seem piffling to outsiders and will certainly not bring heaven to earth, by UN standards it is a considerable achievement, and most agree that it was a sensible move, particularly given how overstretched it had become.
Though much too early to say how Ban will compare with his predecessors, he is likely to be a safe pair of hands at the very least.
He could be much more if he plays his hand well because trends in world affairs give reason to believe that the challenges to be faced in the future will increasingly require his organisation to solve them.
To say that a globalising world needs ever more globalised solutions is beyond cliché. But that makes it no less true.
A shrinking world is throwing up more transnational challenges - global climate change, diseases spreading more rapidly across borders, increased competition for natural resources, nuclear proliferation, international terrorism, people-trafficking and many more besides.
If Ban avoids damaging clashes with the big powers, chooses his battles carefully and continues with his patient persuasion, the UN could become more indispensable than it has ever been.
Dan O'Brien is a senior editor at the Economist Intelligence Unit