Creating the UN from scratch...

Claudia Rosett asks some questions about what the UN would look like if we were creating it from scratch.

Would we choose to start with an organizational chart anything like that of the U.N. today--a labyrinth so vast and secret that according to Mr. Volcker's findings even the U.N.'s own management cannot decipher it?

Would we start with a Secretariat like the one we have today, which has in some disturbing respects evolved into a sort of singularly privileged 192nd member state? The original purpose of the Secretariat was to implement the decisions of the General Assembly and Security Council--in other words, to serve the member states. Over the years, the Secretariat acquired a budget in the billions, but somehow failed to develop the skills to handle it well. Now, Mr. Volcker's report informs us that no one these days expects the secretary-general to be hired for his administrative or managerial skills. Instead, he has become the "chief diplomatic and political agent of the United Nations." OK, but in that case, who or what at the U.N. does the secretary-general represent? When Kofi Annan says "we"--as in "from our point of view" the liberation of Iraq was "illegal," who exactly is he speaking for? The administrative staff? The Security Council? The General Assembly? Has he in contradiction of the U.N. charter (which is what he was at that moment claiming to represent) been promoted to the status of royalty, the head of a world state--in which case all now owe allegiance to the figure originally mandated to perform the functions of U.N. chief administrator and clerk?

Would we create a Security Council in which the despotic People's Republic of China holds a permanent seat and a fascist state such as Syria rotates through the presidency, but democratic Israel is systematically excluded from serving at all?

Would we create a General Assembly in which Zimbabwe, North Korea, Burma and Turkmenistan all wield a vote, but the elected leader of democratic Taiwan is not even allowed to set foot on the premises?

Would we create a U.N. in which the financial accounts are secret, the auditing is inadequate, and the standards are double or worse--lax for the highest officials and severe for lower-tier staff who lack patrons in the right places?