A new start
for the U.N.

Corruption and other problems
make big changes necessary

World War II has been over for half a century. It's time for the United Nations to move on, and for the United States to let it do so. The United Nations is laden with a colonial-era mentality and bogged down in the staleness that has conflicted many governments -- in Africa, especially -- with patronage-based bureaucracies and passive efforts of governance and economic assistance. Even its most ardent defenders agree that the United Nations needs to be fixed. It faces immense problems of political, financial and social corruption.

The corruption in the Iraq Oil for Food program is only a symptom of more endemic bureaucratic problems that have undermined U.N. efforts for years. The United Nations operates politically as an authoritarian and unegalitarian system. Sexual abuse by U.N. soldiers in the Congo, Bosnia and elsewhere contradict the very image that nonpartisan and benevolent third parties want to present. Ineffectiveness in much of its development effort undermines the considerable good it does.

The United Nations was formed in the waning days of World War II and came into being on the back of the victorious Allies, a coalition built around the United States and its demonstrated military and industrial power. The United States essentially determined the United Nations' structure, its center of control, its mechanisms for future action and, ultimately, its direction. While the United Nations has many democratic trappings, at its heart it is ultimately a dictatorship of five -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, the permanent members of the Security Council who have unit vetoes over anything the United Nations might effectively do. This political corruption involves the United States as much as any other country.

The Security Council's permanent members reflect U.S. strength at the end of World War II and the victories of the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany. In half a century since then there has been a tremendous evolution in international relations. Not only has Nationalist China been replaced by communist China, and the USSR by its Russian core, but nations outside of that inner circle have grown in size and influence. The international economy has been globalized; that is, it has become highly interdependent. That interdependence involves countries that did not even exist as independent states in 1945.

The U.N. Security Council needs to be restructured to reflect a different outlook on the international system, how it has progressed and where it is going. Although the international system might be militarily uni- polar, economically the global system is clearly not. Both Japan and Germany, villains in the pre-U.N. age, now are powerhouses that should be included in the top level of decision making. If China is a permanent member of the Security Council, India has to be as well. And if India is, Pakistan's position will have to be more closely considered.

And U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan's concept of distributive representation is right on the mark: Regional representation among the permanent members has to be a part of a new federalist United Nations. Indonesia, Brazil, Egypt and Nigeria need to be central at this global body.

If the United Nations is expected to be a responsible and democratically functioning body, the single-unit veto power of the current Security Council members needs to be abandoned. A system more like that of the democracies President Bush promotes could be put in place, where the Security Council is like a Senate through which legislation must pass with a two-thirds vote, not a unanimous vote. Since the United States is the most likely objector to this restructuring (being a heavy user of the veto to protect Israel), America is the obstacle to democratization of the United Nations.

Looking at the United Nations' problems another way, its staid structure has come to be seen as an income and lifestyle opportunity for many of its members. Situated in New York, it sits in the heart of the West, detached on a day-to-day basis from the problems of the real world. Appointments to New York are seen as rewards, not challenges. They are escapes from the poverty, tedium and daily conflicts of the developing world.

The changes that are needed for the United Nations are revolutionary. Let's start over. On top of a political restructuring, three things need to be done to get the United Nations out of its doldrums.