Washington: Let's be clear – there are no bodies in dumpsters, no alcohol or drug-dazed advisers, and the national interest has not been compromised.

But there's a whiff of House of Cards in a shadowy race in which former prime minister Kevin Rudd seemingly has a chance – albeit remote – of being the next secretary-general of the United Nations.

The ruthless pragmatism, the manipulations and the power struggles of the Michael Dobbs-inspired political drama are all on show as the P5 countries – the five permanent members of the UN Security Council – wield their vetos as effectively as gangsters wield their blades. And the career failings that motivate Dobbs' anti-hero Frank Underwood, are not dissimilar to Rudd's – passed over, rejected for, or dumped from high office, they seek something even grander to prove their critics wrong.

Rudd is coy – obsessive about media control; he controls this one by refusing interviews.

But the names of a couple of dozen likely suspects, Rudd's among them, are bandied about at the UN bunker, which overlooks the East River in Manhattan. As the BBC puts it: "[Rudd] has long made the job the target of his immense personal ambition."

But most on-the-record support for his assumed bid to replace the outgoing Ban Ki-moon is from an Australian cheer squad. And if Rudd is getting the international support that is implied in some media reports, then his sponsors are hiding their light – or his – under a bushel.

The former Labor PM and foreign minister reportedly hawks his credentials as part of his relentless think tank and NGO travel between world capitals. But Foreign Minister Julie Bishop seemed to give his hopes the kiss of death when she told reporters that several leaders she had spoken to during a Washington terrorism summit in April mentioned that Rudd had been calling – but that none had indicated they would support him for the UN job.

To the extent that UN convention guides the appointment process, there's an emerging consensus that the appointee ought to come from eastern Europe, which would be a first in UN history; and that it should be a woman, which would be another first.

But slights and prejudices loom large in a selection process that dwells on negatives, rather than the positives of any particular candidate's talents that might make the UN less dysfunctional. Many of the nominees, declared and undeclared, carry baggage that can be used against them.

Heading the pack is Irina Bokova, 63, a former Bulgarian politician who serves as director-general of UNESCO. Complicating issues for the Sofia government, another Bulgarian woman is expected to garner strong support if she throws her hat in the ring – Kristalina Georgieva, 62, who is a vice-president of the European Commission, a former official of the World Bank and reportedly favoured by the departing Ban.

Other eastern European women include Natalia Gherman, 47, former deputy prime minister and minister for European integration in Moldova; and Vesna Pusic, 62, a former deputy prime minister and foreign minister in Croatia.

Helen Clark, 66, former prime minister of New Zealand and currently head of the UN Development Program, is a candidate. Susana Malcorra, 62, Argentine Foreign Minister and former deputy director of the World Food program; and Colombian Foreign Minister Maria Angela Holguin, 53, are also likely starters.

The men who have confirmed their candidacy are Antonio Guterres, 66, a former Portuguese prime minister and until last year UN High Commissioner for Refugees; Srgjan Kerim, 67, former foreign minister of Macedonia and once president of the UN General Assembly; Danilo Turk, 64, former president of Slovenia, once the Slovenian ambassador to the UN and a senior UN official; Igor Luksic, 39, former prime minister of Montenegro and currently that country's foreign minister; and Vuk Jeremic, 40, a former Serbian foreign minister and UN ambassador.

Rudd's big chance – perhaps his only chance – is to come through the gaps in that field, as more popular or more deserving candidates are struck down in crossfire between the P5 countries.

Historically undemocratic, the appointment of the secretary-general has long been a backroom power struggle – the Security Council's 10 elected member nations were allowed to participate in a straw poll, but it was the five veto-holding powers who would cut through a field of candidates to select a single nominee whose name was then passed ceremonially to the 193-member General Assembly to be rubber-stamped.

After a revolt last year by members of the General Assembly, the Security Council agreed to let in some light.

Candidates would be invited, but would not be obliged, to make their pitch to meetings of UN diplomats – after which darkness would descend and the Security Council would pick up on its traditional role of selecting a single candidate. The Security Council ignored an NGO campaign for it to recommend two candidates, one of whom would be blessed by the assembly.

The outcome of those pitch sessions in April was a general sense of disappointment in the eastern European applicants – male and female. A European diplomat told Fairfax Media: "Most were competent enough, but it was the Portuguese Guterres who performed best." Helen Clark impressed others.

So what all this means is that at a time of heightened global tension, Washington, Moscow and Beijing have to be able to agree on a single name.

Here, Bokova has a couple of problems – one, as head of UNESCO, she infuriated Washington by admitting Palestine to her organisation; two, Moscow likes her and therefore Washington can't like her. Ditto her compatriot Georgieva – she will likely feel Moscow's enmity because of the EU's economic sanctions on Russia. Clark might be too left-wing for the Americans.

The result is an opaque process in which frontrunners easily get shot down, writes Dr Phil Orchard, research director for the University of Queensland's Asia Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect.

In April 2014, a spokeswoman for Rudd seemingly threw cold water on talk of a campaign by invoking the need to rotate appointments geographically when she spoke to The Saturday Paper: "Last time I looked, Australia was not in Eastern Europe [and for that reason] Mr Rudd is not a candidate."

Her use of the present tense is important – it does not preclude Rudd from becoming a candidate at a later stage.

Similarly, when he was interviewed by Fairfax Media in April 2015, Rudd declared himself to be "utterly pragmatic" about it being the turn of the east Europeans – but without expressly denying his own interest in the job.

The crazier aspects of the Rudd profile obviously were not held against him in his appointment at a string of prestigious institutions around the world – the Harvard Kennedy School; the Asia Society Policy Institute and the Independent Commission on Multilateralism, both of which are New York-based; the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington; and Chatham House in London.

But a German media report on Bokova in December 2015 reveals the depths of the nit-picking as rival camps tear at each other's candidates – it seems that Bokova's official biography said she was Bulgaria's foreign minister for a time in the late 1990s, when in fact she held the ministry in an acting capacity.

It's not immediately clear that as an Australian candidate Rudd will be immune from Moscow's anger over Canberra's reaction to the MH17 tragedy in 2014 – particularly then prime minister Tony Abbott's threat to "shirt-front" Russian President Vladimir Putin; or that Beijing has forgotten Rudd's widely reported reference to being "rat-f---ed" by the Chinese in the 2009 talks on climate change in Copenhagen, or his belief that the Chinese leadership is "paranoid … sub-rational and deeply emotional".

Moscow might see Rudd as too pro-US. And were the Americans to dip back into the confidential cables from their Canberra mission, which were shared with the world by WikiLeaks, they too might pause before endorsing Rudd – basically, they said that Rudd was blunder-prone; an egotistical, insecure control freak who would "only grudgingly share the decision-making on foreign policy".

A UN diplomat assured Fairfax Media that the P5 countries in particular would have their embassies research all candidates' backgrounds – in the case of Rudd, that would include his infamous temper tantrums and the sorry demise – twice – of a prime minister "who pissed everyone off".

Inevitably Rudd will have grand designs on re-organising the UN – after all, he currently heads a two-year investigation into the organisational effectiveness of the UN by the Independent Commission on Multilateralism. And that could put the frighteners on those among the P5 who like the UN just as it is – more often than not, struggling like a beached whale.

When is the last time Rudd was described as 'status-quo' or 'inconspicuous'? There's a UN cliche that asks if the process is about appointing a secretary or a general. Fairfax Media was told that Russian diplomats frequently were heard to make this distinction – the appointee was to be the head of the UN secretariat, not the head of the UN.

The European diplomat who spoke to Fairfax Media said: "The Security Council has yet to reveal if it wants an energetic, high-profile civil servant, or just someone to do the bidding of the P5."

If Rudd decides to make a run, he'll have to declare himself in the coming weeks – the formal process starts in the Security Council in July. But there's an expectation among diplomats at the UN that Rudd will calculatedly make a late run and only if his soundings tell him that there is a sliver of daylight through which a compromise candidate might wriggle to win the Security Council's blessing.

"Rudd is not one who has been noticed particularly," a diplomatic source told Fairfax Media. "For starters, he's the wrong gender."

Observing that Rudd was the kind of candidate who would prefer being duchessed and imposed as the new secretary-general by the P5 countries, the source observed that times had changed: "It'll be difficult for the Security Council to appoint someone who did not come before the general UN membership."

But before Rudd can get into any of that, he'll have to convince the Turnbull government of the good sense of formally supporting his nomination. And while it seems that Rudd wants the job, for now at least there's not a lot of evidence that the world wants him.