The United Nations' second half-century: time for an overhaul.

• Author: Halper, Stefan

THE UNITED NATIONS' 50th birthday came and went in October, 1995, and? while some people treated the event as a celebration, others were far less enthusiastic. Indeed, there was decidedly more derision than congratulation in the U.S. That would have seemed odd only a few years ago. Few then thought the UN was in need of senous, much less radical, reform. To the contrary, with the end of the Cold War, most Americans, especially members of the opinion-shaping elites, regarded it as more relevant than ever.

By the organization's golden anniversary, however, criticism was being expressed even by UN sympathizers in the Clinton Administration, who view themselves as modern internationalists parrying the thrusts of uncouth Philistine isolationists. Suddenly, it seemed, critics of the United Nations no longer were confined to the political right, which long had considered the body a world government in the making. The recent relatively mild critiques from the foreign policy establishment, though, are woefully overdue and understated.

An increasing center of frustration with UN failures can be found in Congress. Some members even have called for U.S. withdrawal from the world body and the expulsion of the organization from its New York City headquarters. The arguments of the abolitionists are getting a respectful hearing from the mainstream press.

An American withdrawal almost certainly would mean the UN's collapse. Without the generous, if unwilling, support of U.S. taxpayers, the United Nations would face imminent financial ruin. A decision to leave the world body may be a decade or so away, but disgust with the UN is growing, not receding. Expensive peacekeeping failures in Angola, Cambodia, Bosnia, and Somalia have fueled the discontent greatly.

The rapid fading of the Clinton Administration's early, naive hope that the U.S. could off-load nettlesome foreign conflicts on the United Nations--by sending American troops, who would serve under international command, to second that body's efforts--is a measure of the current pessimism about the United Nations and its multitude of agencies that, with little rhyme or reason, have grown over the decades.

Reforming the United Nations, coupled with a less exalted vision of what it might do usefully in the next century, is now safely within the mainstream of American "informed" discussion of the world body. The prevailing assumption underlying much of the talk is that the organization is in trouble, but its problems are fixable: budgets and bureaucracies can be trimmed; waste, duplication, and traud can be uncovered and eliminated; and finances can be put on a sounder basis. Moderate reformers also concede that peacekeeping missions need to be more carefully deLned and that there should be less talk and more action, particularly in connection with humanitarian services. What if such steps are not taken? That question rarely is addressed.

Any prescriptions for measured reform may be much too little and much, much too late. After all, as members of Congress on both sides of the aisle well know, previous attempts at correcting the United Nations' many failings largely have come to naught. The most significant Congressional effort at overhaul was the Kassebaum-Solomon amendment passed in 1985. That measure required the U.S. to reduce its 25% share of the general UN budget to 20% unless a weighted system of voting on budget matters was introduced in the General Assembly. The legislation did spark some attempts at cutting spending and reducing the number of top administrators, but, in general, the UN has ignored or evaded the amendment's clear purpose. Such a frustrating record suggests that the situation may be inherent and irredeemable, rather than incidental and correctable. It also implies that the United Nations as constituted is so fundamentally corrupt that no redesign, no matter how clever the blueprint, ever would be carried out. Although that suspicion is not yet in the mainstream of debate, it deserves a careful hearing. First, though, it is necessary to understand how the UN has gotten itself in such a fix.

Many American opinion- and policymakers were convinced that the lack of an effective world organization was the root cause of World War II. Moreover, with the arrival of the atomic age, creation of a capable global security organization seemed not an exercise in idealism, but a stark need. Either a system of collective security would be forged by the wartime allies--large and small--or the planet's history would come to a swift and ugly end. To make sure this would not happen, the UN Security Council--in effect, its five permanent members--was given the power to decide what measures should be taken in case of a threat to peace.

Hopes for an effective United Nations became an early casualty of the Cold War. Any peace-preserving action could be stalled in the Security Council by a Soviet veto, while General Assembly resolutions passed under the aegis of the U.S. could be ignored by Moscow and its growing list of satellite natlons.

Nevertheless, the U.S. doggedly sought to use the organization whenever possible. Pres. Harry S. Truman, for example, insisted on a UN role as a collective guarantor of the Korean peninsula's security. That was obtained, but only after a major diplomatic effort to persuade reluctant allies to join in the effort to repel North Korea's armed aggression in June, 1950. (A fortuitous Soviet boycott of the Security Council prevented a veto of the UN "police action.") Later, when Soviet leader Joseph Stalin sent back his representative, the U.S. obtained what it needed to continue the mission through a constitutionally dubious Uniting for Peace resolution passed by the then-friendly General Assembly. Under that resolution, the General Assembly would assume the powers of the Security Council when the latter body...