Is the United Nations worth preserving?

By its failure to insist that Iraq destroy its weapons of mass destruction fully and immediately, the United Nations has dealt a devastating blow to its own credibility and usefulness. If the international body cannot be depended on to protect the world's nations from unacceptable damage at the hands of rogue states, it can hardly complain if they take independent steps to protect themselves.

Twice in recent years – first in Kosovo (where U.N. action was effectively vetoed by Russia), and now in Iraq (where the French performed a similar service) – efforts to work through the United Nations have been blocked by the machinations of veto-wielding individual states. In Kosovo, necessary military action was thereupon undertaken by a "coalition of the willing," and a similar response is now imperative in the case of Iraq.

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The conclusion is unmistakable: The United Nations is simply incapable of acting militarily in cases of serious disagreement among the five countries possessing veto power over decisions of the Security Council. This has always been true, of course, but it looms especially large at a time when France (and perhaps Russia) are intent on recruiting the United Nations as an element of a coalition designed to limit, and to some extent counterbalance, America's overwhelming influence as "the world's only superpower."

What should be Washington's response to this display of U.N. weakness? Conservatives will be tempted to suggest that the United States ought to pull out of the United Nations altogether. The time for such a drastic step may come, but it hasn't arrived yet. The United Nations performs many duties that only some sort of international organization of its type should discharge: Aid to refugees, for example. And there are certainly disputes among smaller nations – the spat between Greece and Turkey over Cyprus, to take one instance – where U.N. mediation, and even U.N. "peacekeeping" forces, may be possible and helpful. In addition, there is much to be said for a central forum where the world's countries, including the smaller ones without large foreign ministries, can gather to debate, negotiate and exchange views.

But, as indicated above, the United Nations is currently being enticed to participate in France and Germany's transparent effort to build a counterweight to the American superpower, and the effort is quite likely to succeed. From its founding in 1945 until about 1960, the United Nations largely served the purposes of the free world in its confrontation with communism. With the influx of ex-colonial nations, the General Assembly was taken over by the so-called "Third World," which thereafter used it to play the rivals off against each other, or even actively aided the communist bloc.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union that game ended, and the United Nations has been seeking a new role. The Franco-German bid to turn Europe against the United States offers the United Nations virtually limitless opportunities to aggrandize itself with their help, in return for furthering their purposes. The United Nations' refusal, at France's behest, to support American efforts to enforce the United Nations' own demands that Iraq disarm, is simply one early example of the process.

The fly in the ointment, of course, is France's veto power in the Security Council – a power it didn't even deserve in 1945, and certainly has no justification for today. If the United Nations is ever to be restored to full health, an end of France's veto is an essential step. Since France will assuredly resist this with all its might, it might be advisable for the United States to emphasize the Security Council's current absurdity by just refusing to vote, hereafter, on major political decisions that come before it. A few years of simply not being taken seriously by the world's biggest power might tempt the United Nations to redesign itself more realistically.

Meanwhile, the world's affairs would go on being conducted by the responsible powers, not always with the cooperation of the United Nations, let alone under its leadership, but if necessary in spite of it.