Yeah, and Meg Ryan is going to put me on number three on her speed dial.
I don't care how many reports the UN writes about making itself more relevant, effective, and minty fresh, they will fail.
And really, I want the UN to fail.
Look, the world's thugs and reality averse nations of the EU will hide behind the skirts of the UN as an excuse to do nothing about the world's thugs no matter what. Effective UN or current ineffective UN, these states will pretend that the UN lives up to the highest ideals of the international community.
But if we actually get an effective UN, we might actually face some pressure from our own people to listen to the UN. And if you think an effective UN will side with us, look at the democracies of the world and count how many are supporting us in Iraq? I won't pause while you count since I know you are done already.
And as I wrote before, don't even think about withdrawing from the UN to form a League of Democracies. Those democracies are often less supportive of us than the thug regimes (let's see, Ukraine has 1,600 troops in Iraq. Belgium, France, and Germany have how many?).
No, work on improving the financial transparency of UN operations to keep the UN bureaucracy worried about what we will do to them rather than having time to worry about how to screw us over. And work on reforming the technical or humanitarian organs of the UN because it would be nice if those worked reasonably well. But leave the political organs alone to be ineffective. An expanded Security Council? Go for it! If aspiring veto holders want to add to the inertia of the international community of nations, I'm all for it. Twice in its history the UN has officially backed wars--Korea I and Gulf War I. The backing of the international community guaranteed that we could not actually make sure the war led to lasting victory. Just a ceasefire for our enemies to prepare for another round.
But I don't worry that the latest UN report will lead to anything:
All of the reformistas' efforts founder on the rocks of apathy and inertia. The reality is that most of the U.N.'s 191-member states, to say nothing of its 49,000 employees, aren't terribly interested in making it work better. They usually have other priorities. Even the Bush administration isn't making much of a stink over the oil-for-food scandal because it needs U.N. support in Iraq and elsewhere.
A slightly improved UN with a larger Security Council yet the same old political inertia will aid our foreign policy. We can rally the UN when we can to mollify those who give a rat's patootie about the UN's collective opinion. And when we can't? We'll defend our interests anyway and the allies we get will have an excuse to go with us based on the horrible nature of the UN. And the American people won't feel guilty at all about thumbing our noses at the corrupt institution.
I actually fear a reformed UN. But that outcome is highly unlikely.
