UN-divided.

• Author: Feinstein, Lee

FAILED REFORMS. A fight over a controversial nomination for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. A congressional threat to stop payments to the UN. We have seen this movie before. It played to large audiences during the Clinton years and has made a comeback during the first half of the second Bush Administration.

But an indie film is quietly making its debut. Newt Gingrich signs onto a report mandated by Congress whose principle conclusion is "the firm belief that an effective United Nations is in America's interest." George Mitchell, Gingrich's Democratic co-chairman on the task force, describes the results of the September UN reform summit in New York as "disappointing" and a source of "frustration." Or there's this admonition against jumping to conclusions about the failure of the UN to undertake reforms: "While it is easy to blame the UN as an institution for some of the problems we confront today, we must recognize that ultimately it is member states that must take action, and therefore bear responsibility." Was that John Kerry? No, it was John Bolton in recent testimony before the House International Relations Committee. In the same hearing, Ambassador Bolton relayed the Bush Administration's opposition to withholding payments to the UN, which would be required by legislation adopted by the House and sponsored by HIRC Chairman Henry J. Hyde himself.

What's going on here? The familiar and flawed discourse that has characterized the debate over the United Nations for at least the past 15 years still gets the ink, but a more fundamental shift in America's approach to international institutions is at work. This change is a response to structural shifts in the geopolitical landscape. It reflects pragmatic adjustments within the Republican Party driven by the realities of five years in power and the search for new ideas within the Democratic Party after five years out of power. The shift encompasses elements of the political Left and Right, and it has the potential to advance this debate beyond the extremes of loving the UN or leaving it.

If you look closely, you will find something approaching an improbable consensus emerging on the question of America's relationship with the United Nations, something that might be called "UN Plus." UN Plus is the idea that UN reform is important and necessary but not sufficient to meet the need for the United States and the world to respond collectively to many of today's most pressing international challenges. This consensus rests on four points: the imperative to prevent or stop atrocities, including genocide; the growing importance of cooperation among democracies to enhance the legitimacy and effectiveness of international action; the need for accountable and agile international institutions to address today's transnational challenges and threats; and the inadequacy of existing UN structures to deal effectively with questions involving the use of force.

Contingent Sovereignty

THE NEW consensus about America's relationship to international institutions is driven by a transformation in the nature of sovereignty. This is a genuine revolution resulting from the experience of the genocides of the 1990s and today's transnational threats and challenges, which are radically different from those anticipated at the UN's founding sixty years ago. This transformation has been hastened by a period of self-examination and intellectual ferment stimulated by the Security Council rupture over Iraq in 2003. This will be seen as a watershed as important as the Congress of Vienna, which established what we now refer to as the Westphalian system. For international law, this...