It's in the P-I

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer wants to reform the United Nations:

There are plenty of reasons why we need the United Nations -- and why its reform is worth pursuing.

As I read this, I thought, "great!", maybe someone at the P-I has access to a set of clues after all. But that was before I read this line:

The United Nations could (like most governments) be improved on a number of levels.

[emphasis mine].

Oy. The UN is not a government, it is an arena for international cooperation. It has never been a government. It should never be a government. The Seattle Post Intelligencer might like the idea of delegating US sovereignty to a collection including, say, Iran, North Korea and Zimbabwe, but most of the rest of us will say "no thank you!" to this proposal.

The UN does need reform -- in the direction of reducing its clout and lowering the expectations we have of it, not in the direction of trying (and naturally failing) to turn it into a "government".

Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at September 10, 2003 05:47 PM