Does the UN Matter?

Fareed Zakaria writes in the WaPo:

There is a serious case to be made that it's not worth taking the United
Nations seriously, that it's an anachronistic institution based on 60-year-old
geopolitics and a platform for tyrants and weirdos. But while much of that is
true, the United Nations is the only organization in the world to which all
countries belong. As such it does have considerable legitimacy. And that means
power. As David Bosco points out in Foreign Policy magazine, over the past two
decades the Security Council has authorized "more than a dozen peacekeeping
missions, imposed sanctions or arms embargoes on 10 states, and created several
war crimes tribunals to prosecute those responsible for genocide and crimes
against humanity, including sitting heads of state." It's worth putting in the
effort to shape its decisions.

Obama's speech was part of a calculated strategy. In sentiment it
recalls Richard Nixon's line after losing the California governor's race in
1962: "You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore." Obama was telling the
world: The United States is willing to be cooperative, to rejoin international
institutions, to adhere to treaties. But in return, other countries will have to
help solve some of the world's common problems. You can't just kick us around
anymore.

Let's go back one year. Many countries had come to believe that America
showed little interest in the world. This hostility had become an easy excuse to
reject even modest concessions to U.S. requests. If this sounds partisan, recall
that after he was elected president of France in 2007, the pro-American
conservative Nicolas Sarkozy was asked by Condoleezza Rice what she could do to
help him. "Improve your image in the world," he said.

Obama's outreach to the world is an experiment, and not merely to see if
the world will respond. He wants to demonstrate at home that engagement does not
make America weak. For decades, it's been thought deadly for an American
politician to be seen as seeking international cooperation. Denouncing,
demeaning and insulting other countries was a cheap and easy way to seem strong.
In the battle of images, tough and stupid always seemed to win.

Obama is gambling that America is mature enough to understand
that machismo is not foreign policy and that grandstanding on the global stage
won't succeed.