Could Angela Merkel become the next secretary-general of the United Nations?
The notion that the German chancellor, now at the epicenter of Europe’s refugee crisis, could replace Ban Ki-moon at the helm of the U.N. is suddenly curiously widespread.
“No candidate could magically restore the United Nations’ prestige,” Mark Seddon, a former adviser to Ban, noted in The New York Times earlier this month, “but there is a compelling logic in favor of a Merkel candidacy.” Or, as Gideon Rachman observed less charitably in the Financial Times, Merkel’s critics in Berlin could use this as “a graceful way to ease the chancellor out” before the refugee issue forces her from office in Berlin.