The veto and closed-door antics of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council are behind a lot of what's wrong in the dysfunctional UN these days. Narrow national objectives, not international good, are what drives decisions. An altruistic ideal of nations has been subverted. And a power structure based on the world 55 years ago has no place at the UN today.
Threat alone prevents temporary members from proposing reform.
Three extraordinary apologies were issued by the UN during the past six weeks over Security Council failures to act in international crises. Screw-ups in Srebrenica, East Timor and Rwanda exploded into catastrophic but avoidable massacres of hundreds of thousands of civilians and dislocation of hundreds of thousands more. The UN could offer neither protection nor intervention. Lewis Mackenzie, a retired commander of United Nations forces, rightly pulls no punches in slamming this gang of five for failing those who needed UN protection. They should have been fired for incompetence long ago.