What It Takes to Lead the United Nations

As United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon takes part in his last annual General Assembly meeting, delegates from all countries will be looking to see who might replace him.

The four secret straw polls that the Security Council has already conducted offer few clues. Their results have been leaked, but not to the point of revealing how the five veto-bearing permanent members voted. So the putative front-runner, former Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Guterres, could in fact be out of the running.

It’s much easier to see what kind of person should get the job. For starters, it should be someone who can marshal the international community to confront humankind’s one truly existential challenge: climate change. Getting countries to build on last December’s groundbreaking Paris accord is the most essential task he or she will face.