As I’ve mentioned here and here the Security Council should be a forum for security producing nations not security consuming nations. The committee acknowledges, as I’ve said, the problems with the General Assembly. How does making the Security Council more closely resemble the failed General Assembly render the Security Council more effective? My own solution is to establish formal membership criteria for Security Council membership and make veto-wielding membership automatic on meeting the criteria. Since any reasonable membership criteria would either remove current veto-wielding members or include nearly the whole General Assembly, this will never happen. The Security Council, too, is irremediable”

All good points. I’ll add taking up a *substantial share* of the UN budget, something that of the prospective candidates, only Japan can afford. Japan is the only true ” great power” among the candidate that deserves membership on the merit of having a stake in the stability of the world economic system worth the requisite sacrifices. India would make sense as the next best choice for obvious reasons. The others are there as a political sop to the Gap or to win brownie points for us with those particular states.

The UN is unreformable in the sense that it will always reflect it’s membership. On the day the bulk of the General Assembly are stable Core states with reasonably liberal-democratic political economies, the UN might be relatively useful. I do not expect that day to come much before the year 2100.

In any event, the principle of collective security – which requires that nation’s sacrifice their own interests to send blood and treasure to rescue other states that are unwilling and unable to defend themselves is as unrealistic today as when the League of Nations was tut-tutting about Japanese annexation of ” Manchukuo ” and Italian Fascists marching through Abyssinia. The UN will *never* function as it was conceived, regardless of it’s membership. At best, all we can do is harness humanitarian motives to self-interest when contemplating intervention. If you have any doubt, just ask the people of Dar Fur.

What to do ?. The UN needs to be – like a dysfunctional brother-in-law in family matters – discreetly but determinedly marginalized over time and by competing and effective organizations. The Anglosphere, the G-20 and democratic states are all viable starting points for such organizations with the intent that this conglomeration of new entities be created with the purpose of enforcing what Dr. Barnett calls ” a new A-Z Rule-Set “. None of these organizations should be allowed, like the UN has since Bush I. and Clinton, to become more existentially important than the principles for which they were created to serve. They will be tools and means, not ends.

POSTSCRIPT: The Glittering Eye is vying for a top blog position and needs your vote ! As we say in Chicago, ” Vote early and vote often “.

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