The Eternal U.N.: Is there anything America can do?

'One thing is certain," runs the magnificent old journalistic cliche, "things will never be the same again." The correct response, usually, is a dry "Oh, really?" But the war that is about to burst upon us almost certainly justifies this prediction. The unique status of the United States as a quasi-imperial power; the Atlantic Alliance and NATO; relations with Russia, China, France, and Germany; the future of Iraq and other Middle Eastern regimes; nuclear proliferation; the world's attitude toward "rogue states"; the war on terrorism -- all are likely to be transformed by the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. Will the war also transform that shimmering mirage of international comity on the East River, the United Nations? If the alternative is its own disappearance, the U.N. will certainly accept transformation. Ever since its inception in 1944, the U.N. has been a reflection of the prevailing international power struggle -- a distorted reflection, to be sure, but a reflection nonetheless.

From 1948 to 1956, the U.N. was dominated by America and its allies -- to the point that when the Soviets threatened to veto intervention in Korea in the Security Council, the U.S. persuaded the General Assembly to authorize it via a controversial and probably illegal "Uniting for Peace" resolution. From 1956 to circa 1968, the U.S. shifted sideways from its European allies to join the gaggle of newly arrived Third World states in condemning semi-colonial ventures such as Suez; there was some loose talk about America's really being a "revolutionary" power.

Vietnam brought that alliance to an end, and from 1968 to 1989, the U.S. shifted back to its European allies to resist a de facto Third World-Soviet axis over such issues as South Africa and the "Zionism is Racism" resolution. The General Assembly became a theater for the psychodrama of Western guilt and Third World accusation; Yasser Arafat addressed the chamber in guerilla fatigues with a revolver tucked into his waistband. Since 1989, the U.N. has been confused -- especially in its attitude toward the U.S.

For practical purposes, the Security Council has wanted the cooperation of the sole remaining superpower in peacekeeping operations, such as Kosovo; meanwhile, the secretary-general has been organizing non- governmental organizations into an "international civil society" as a kind of moral counterweight to American power. Other things being equal, Kofi Annan -- who has desired, for some years, an independent military force under his command -- would like the Security Council to order military action against a notorious war criminal. But using U.S. forces against an Arab dictator arouses all the usual anti-colonial hackles on the left; so, in the recent diplomatic bargaining, an ambivalent U.N. has looked nervous and increasingly irrelevant. In the end a divided Security Council was stymied by the threat of a French veto, and Annan was reduced to muttering halfhearted warnings that U.S. action without U.N. approval would be tainted with illegitimacy. The final sad impression was of exhausted contestants in a carnival speech marathon from which the fickle crowd was drifting away to the strong man next door. If the war turns out well for the U.S. and Britain, the U.N. will have to find a role that suits these new realities.

But which U.N.? There are really four U.N.'s, and the U.S. might reasonably take four different attitudes toward them. First, there is the Security Council, which is occasionally useful to the great powers because it enables them to reach compromises on delicate problems under cover of collective diplomacy. Its veto exists for good, conservative reasons -- namely, to prevent one great power from using the U.N. to bless its intrusion into the vital interests of another great power. And when the great powers agree, the Security Council can actually do good. For instance, if they want to halt genocide in a situation like Rwanda, they can arrange for the Security Council to approve intervention and even to bring in troops from neighboring countries to provide the peacekeeping force. If the U.S. does not have a colonial secretary in the cabinet -- on the British imperial model -- in ten years' time, this will be partly because the U.N. has an assistant secretary-general in charge of peacekeeping.

The second U.N. is the General Assembly, which anthropologists have frequently mistaken for the parliament of mankind. In fact, it is a heterogeneous collection of genuine democratic governments, efficient authoritarians, utopian dreamers, kleptocrats, and bloodthirsty maniacs. Since the General Assembly has almost no powers, it really does deserve to be dismissed as a talking shop. And in recent years, public interest in its doings has sharply diminished. But the fact that all governments, including the monstrous, enjoy an equal footing does some harm; there is a case for either expelling some of them under new rules of good government, or -- if that proves impossible -- for creating a separate tier of constitutional democracies whose decisions would over time become respected and thus more important than General Assembly votes. But be not afraid: If nothing is done, the General Assembly will sink, unobserved but still speechifying, into the murky shallows of the East River, a thousand unpaid parking tickets floating on the surface as its sole memorial.

Third, there are U.N. special committees -- like that on human rights currently chaired by Libya. These committees are technically impotent, but they do harm because Western governments treat their hearings with punctilious respect. One solution to this would be to ensure that Western countries, cooperating with human-rights organizations, keep up a steady barrage of criticisms of Third World dictatorships. What we learn of Saddam's prisons may stimulate such a new and daring approach on these lines.

Most dangerous, however, is the fourth U.N.: the Special Conferences such as the one on sustainable development in Johannesburg, the anti- Western fiesta in Durban, and the Rio conference on the environment. These events really change the direction of world policy -- invariably in the wrong direction. U.N. bureaucrats draw up an agenda for change; they arrange a conference attended by the major governments (a government's failure to send the highest-ranking minister possible becomes a public-relations nightmare); they set up a conference of leftist NGOs next door, which promptly becomes a sort of jury judging the results of the official discussions; and -- using the argument that not signing a final communique would be a betrayal of mankind -- they blackmail Western governments into producing bad policies.

Two simple reforms can halt this leftist harlequinade. First, remove the power of initiative from the U.N. bureaucracy, placing the agenda of such events in the hands of a specially convened Security Council committee. That should bury a mountain of bright ideas. Second, insist on a method of selection for NGOs attending the unofficial conference that would reflect the full range of opinion -- the religious Right, for instance, should be eligible for U.N. subsidies to conferences on women's rights and the family.

But why bother with reform? Why not leave the U.N. to wither on the vine? Nice idea, but simply unrealistic. For almost 60 years the American Right has ruthlessly ignored the U.N., but the U.N. has disobligingly refused to go away. Even the Azores communique included a pledge, courtesy doubtless of Tony Blair, that the U.S. would seek a U.N. mandate for the postwar government of Iraq. Great changes are afoot for the postwar world, but they almost certainly do not include the abolition of the U.N. And if you can't beat it, join it -- and make it serve your own purposes, or at the very least prevent it from serving the purposes of your enemies.