UN reform isn't the answer.

Flag wavers for the United Nations like to point out that nations large and small have a voice in the "world forum." For instance, Julian Hunte of minuscule Saint Lucia (population: 160,000) currently finds himself as the president of the General Assembly.

But the power in the UN doesn't reside in the General Assembly; it's located in the Security Council. Originally made up of only 11 members (four more were added in 1965), only five have ever been designated "permanent" and each of these possesses a veto over Security Council decisions. (Non-permanent members serve for only two years, and their places are then awarded to others.) The language in the UN Charter's Article 27 states that Security Council decisions must include "the concurring votes of the permanent members." The five permanent members originally named were the Republic of China (Taiwan), France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Two of these memberships were later transferred to the People's Republic of China and Russia.

Possession of veto power supposedly assures Americans that no Security Council resolution would ever unfavorably impact the United States. The veto power's very existence persuaded some of the senators in 1945 that there was nothing to fear by approving UN membership. Most surely expected that our nation's leaders would always use the veto to protect America's interests, an expectation that is by no means realistic today.

Still, because possession of the veto power leaves the door open for any of the five permanent members--especially the United States--to thwart UN designs, a rising number of UN partisans have suggested that it be abolished. In December 1985, for instance, World Federalist Association Vice President John Logue testified before a subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. He stridently called for action to "reform, restructure and strengthen the United Nations." To "be able to make and enforce law on the individual," he pointedly declared, "the Security Council veto must go."

Though Logue may have been ahead of the pack, the number of those wanting to reform the UN as he suggested has grown. During a convocation at Notre Dame University in April 1991, retired President Father Theodore Hesburgh called for restructuring the UN in part by "eliminating the veto possessed by the five permanent Security Council members." An unabashed partisan of the "new world order," Hesburgh has spent much of his adult life joining and playing an important role in various globalist organizations.

In April 1996, former Soviet dictator Mikhail Gorbachev convened a gathering in Bhurban, Pakistan. Delegates to the affair produced a 12-plank "Bhurban Statement" urging that the UN "should become the principal custodian of global human security." To accomplish this goal, stated the document: "There should be no veto power."

Canadian oil billionaire and New Age heavyweight Maurice Strong has served the UN in a variety of ways, including secretary-general of the UN's 1992 "Earth Summit" and senior adviser to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. He has frequently called for revising the UN's structure, including the removal of the Security Council veto.

In 2000, the little-known United Nations University (UNU) produced a study offering the following conclusion: "To respect sovereignty is to be complicit in human rights violations." Formed in 1973 to assist the UN in resolving "global problems," the UNU produces recommendations such as urging the world body to "remove the Great Power veto" to facilitate its ability to sanction "humanitarian war."

In 2003, David Davenport of the supposedly conservative Hoover Institution suggested that the UN could become a "more effective decision-making body" by limiting the veto power to a requirement that "at least two nations ... exercise it to be effective." The Weekly Standard, also a supposedly conservative voice, has called for eliminating the veto power.

Brookings Institution senior research analyst Parag Khanna authored an op-ed piece for the December 6, 2003 New York Times proposing ways to make the world body function more efficiently. Khanna wants the UN to add Japan and India to the roster of Security Council permanent members, collapse the French and British places into a single seat for the European Union, and further beef up the permanent membership by awarding slots to the Organization of American States, the League of Arab States and the African Union. "But most importantly," he wrote, "if the United States sincerely wants a more effective Security Council, it will have to relinquish its veto power in favor of majority voting."

The Brookings Institution is currently led by former Time magazine columnist and former Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott. Perhaps his most revealing utterance is that in the next hundred years "nationhood as we know it will be obsolete."

For an American, the proper response to cries for UN reform and restructuring is to demand that our nation leave the world body altogether. Even with veto power, a succession of U.S. administrations has shown little interest in using it to protect our nation's independence.