In the face of such hostility, the old splits between those interested in coalition-building and those who thought America should go it alone once again rose to the surface. As the organization became harder for its champions to defend, the consensus in Congress turned against it. After all, with the end of the Cold War the U.N. has become a friendlier place. Most General Assembly decisions are now made by consensus. The Security Council functions tolerably well, at least on most issues.
Communism is dead.
American market values have triumphed. The U.N. has similarly reformed its structure as Americans have demanded, attacking corruption and mismanagement from within, enhancing transparency and oversight, cutting redundancy and holding to a zero-growth budget. And yet instead of softening, the U.S. Congress has grown even more hostile. Yet to explain the origins of U.S. antipathy, Luck looks deeper, straight into the heart of American political culture. Such exceptionalism, grounded in a hostility to government and linked to the quasi-messianic fervor with which many Americans regard the founding of the country, helps explain the vitriol with which many of today's U.N. critics write.