The Foreign Service Journal, September 2006

something that does need to be addressed. More broadly, the very reasonable concern of the full U.N. membership — the fundamental mul- tilateral principle that each member- state’s vote counts equally in the wider work of the U.N. — needs to be acknowledged and accommodated within a broader framework of reform. If the multilateral system is to work effectively, all states need to feel they have a real stake. New Global Challenges But a stake in what system? The U.S. — like every nation, strong and weak alike — is today beset by problems that defy national, inside-the- border solutions: climate change, terrorism, nuclear pro- liferation, migration, the management of the global econo- my, the internationalization of drugs and crime, the spread of diseases such as HIV/AIDS and avian flu. Today’s national security challenges basically thumb their noses at old notions of national sovereignty. Security has gone global, and no coun- try can afford to neglect the global institutions needed to manage it. Kofi Annan has proposed a restructuring of the United Nations to respond to these new challenges with three legs: development, security and human rights supported, like any good chair, by a fourth leg, reformed management. That is the U.N. we want to place our bet on. But for it to work, we need the U.S. to support this agenda — and support it not just in a whisper but in a coast-to-coast shout that pushes back the critics domestically and wins over the skeptics inter- nationally. America’s leaders must again say the U.N. matters. F O C U S S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 6 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 59 Using the U.N. almost by stealth as a diplomatic tool, while failing to stand up for it against its domestic critics, is simply not sustainable.