Volume 54, Number 2 · February 15, 2007
Is the UN Doomed?
By Tony Judt
The UN Exposed: How The United Nations Sabotages America's Security and Fails the World
by Eric Shawn
Sentinel, 316 pp., $23.95; $14.95 (paper)
The Parliament of Man: The Past, Present, and Future of the United Nations
by Paul Kennedy
Random House, 384 pp., $26.95
The Best Intentions: Kofi Annan and the UN in the Era of American World Power
by James Traub
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 442 pp., $26.00
The United Nations is a curiously contentious topic. Mention it in the United States (especially in Washington) and you will likely be referred to 'scandal,' 'waste,' and 'failure'; to the popular image of an expensive international excrescence, a breeding ground for inertia, sinecures, and time-servers, an impediment to the efficient pursuit and prosecution of American national interest. In these circles, the UN is at best a good idea gone badly 'wrong.'
Review, 5084 words
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