12 Nov 2004 Eliminating the U.N. — By Stealth

From an article by Irwin M. Stelzer in the November 22 issue of the Weekly Standard:

More than one of the policy wonks scattered throughout the administration is giving serious thought to a radical change proposed almost 10 years ago by Charles Krauthammer (a contributing editor to this journal): marginalization of the U.N. At a conference last week in Washington, sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute, Krauthammer re-floated that idea. The U.N. can’t be eliminated, its gleaming tower converted to higher-value uses. So parallel institutions should be created. Over time, these new institutions — which will consist only of the world’s democracies, if Soviet dissident and Israeli minister Natan Sharansky has his way with the Krauthammer proposal — will replace the U.N., which will wither into irrelevance.

That won’t mean that America will always have its way. But it will mean that the new body will consist of nations whose main incentive is to produce better lives for their voters, rather than create external enemies as excuses for impoverishing their people. Right now, the development of these alternative institutions is only a gleam in the eye of far-thinking policy types. Rather as the U.N. was in the 1940s.

Interesting.