Written by: Beck

One thing I'm seldom--if ever--accused of is possession of a surplus of optimism. But I'm beginning to feel just a tinge of it with regard to the United Nations. Yeah, yeah, of all the things to actually be optimistic about, this is probably the single least likely candidate. But read on.

First of all, I was reading a post over at Protein Wisdom highlighting this excellent article over at the Weekly Standard. I'll go ahead and excerpt from the article briefly--not because it's central to my main point; rather, because it merits quotation.

Those who think (or hope) that the U.N. will fade into irrelevance fail to consider the enormous and very valuable benefits the Charter confers on aggressive outlaw states. The most important of these is the elimination of what lawyers call "self-help" enforcement: the right to enforce one's rights unilaterally. Before the Charter came into existence, your violation of a treaty triggered my right to enforce the terms of the treaty by force. Today I need the Security Council's permission. This encourages violators to do as they please and hide behind the Charter, knowing that law-abiding states will face an unpleasant choice between legitimacy and security.

The problem's roots go deeper than many U.N. critics realize: The United Nations is in a sense systematically destroying international law. In his magisterial 1950 commentary on the U.N. Charter, the Austrian-American jurist Hans Kelsen wrote, "To the extent a Member is deprived of its right of self-help, enforcement action of the Organization must actually take place, otherwise the Organization constitutes, instead of an improvement, a dangerous deterioration in the content of general international law." The reason is simple: A rule that carries no penalty for violations does not rise to the level of law and is at best merely a voluntary norm.

Consider the International Atomic Energy Agency's disastrous Iran policy. Here the Annan panel report makes among the most intelligent of all its recommendations: It adopts President Bush's far-reaching proposals for reform of the nonproliferation regime. The panel recognizes that enrichment and reprocessing capabilities constitute a threat, even though they may technically be legal under the nonproliferation treaty.

Back to my main point--my sudden discover of a measure of optimism--reading Jeff's post triggered an idea in my head which I promptly jotted down in the post's comments section. Rereading that today, I decided it was important & relevant enough to reprint here. And yes, I did just spend six paragraphs to say, "I'm going to reprint something I wrote elsewhere." Anyway, here's what I had to say (in all its unedited glory--enjoy the subject-verb agreement errors, tense changes, and general rambling):

Having just done two anti-UN posts myself, then seeing this one, a heart-warming thought popped into my head: anti-UN sentiment has reached critical mass.

I see it everywhere now. When it was just Instapundit taking the UNSCAM details as they emerged and running with it, well, it got a broad audience, but it still had the feel of a lone voice in the woods. Even with plenty of other blogs linking to Reynolds's work on the subject, it remained one man's private crusade.

Now, you can't miss the feeling in the air. There has been a change. Editorials are popping up everywhere. Pundits and officials from the other side of the isle have become openly critical of an institution once regarded as a Sacred Cow of the Left.

I think the end of the election was the key event. For one thing, Bush's victory constituted an endorsement of US policy of invading Iraq--a policy increasingly at odds with the noises coming out of the UN and Kofi Annan. More importantly though, it denied the blogosphere--which this election really began to flex its muscle and become conscious of its influence and power--of its main discussion topic. The occasional Ohio/Washington recount story, voting fraud story, and "What's wrong with the Democratic Party?" story still popped up, but they lack the spirit (and the volume) of months past. The excitement that existed on the right during RatherGate and on the left with the debut of Fahrenheit 9/11 just wasn't there anymore. There was a vacuum.

The UN filled it.

I know it sounds a touch on the ludicrously optimistic side, but I really think this movement could have long term impact. It could be the resignation of Kofi Annan (which won't be enough for me, but which will quiet down much of the anti-UN criticism and bog down the discussion in blather about "reform"). It could be the formation of a Democratic Nations Caucus within the UN. It could even be--though I'm not betting on it--the USA's withdrawal from the UN.

Either that, or I picked a hell of a week to quit smoking crack.

Am I being too optimistic? Perhaps. But I think there's a decent chance that I'm right.