Blair gives his speech. Photograph: Gerald Herbert/AP
Do world leaders really want a reinvigorated United Nations?
The question arises because of Tony Blair's policy speech today in the US in which he called for a radically reformed UN with a powerful secretary general.
But this latest attempt by the prime minister to burnish his internationalist credentials after Iraq should be taken with a pinch of salt. Even if Blair really wanted a stronger UN, it really suits the major powers, particularly the US, to see an enfeebled world body.
We have been here before. When the cold war ended and the first George Bush proclaimed the advent of a new world order, the time seemed ripe for a more robust world body.
Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Kofi Annan's predecessor, took such promptings seriously and there was much excited talk at the UN headquarters in New York of a standing UN force that could be deployed rapidly to deal with international crises.
Boutros-Ghali forged ahead with his Agenda for Peace, a plan to transform a moribund bureaucracy into a vigorous diplomatic presence. Agenda for Peace called on states to provide troops for rapid deployment to world hotspots. Rightwing critics damned the plan as a UN attempt to have its own "standing army", a slur but nonetheless an effective one. The US would have none of it. Boutros-Ghali was slapped down for his pains and his initiative dismissed as brazen power-grab.
The former UN secretary general did not help his case with his less than diplomatic demeanour - he was widely seen as aloof and arrogant - but any one else in his position would have run up against the same brick wall. The US was the world's superpower and would not brook any challenge to its supremacy that a renewed UN might pose, no matter how ludicrous that notion was.
Even the Clinton administration, with its professions of "assertive multilateralism" - the phrase was coined by the secretary of state Madeleine Albright - had little enthusiasm for a really strong UN. Imagine how the present Bush administration would feel towards attempts to bolster the UN, especially when its present secretary general dared to declare the war in Iraq to be illegal.
The inescapable fact is that a weak UN suits the major powers. That goes for China, Russia and probably Britain as well, whatever Blair says. Attempts to enlarge the security council to make it more representative recently ran into the sand yet again.
That provided telling proof, if it was needed, that the status quo suits the five permanent members: the US, Britain, France, China and Russia.
This is not to say that the UN is completely irrelevant. UN peacekeepers are currently deployed in substantial numbers in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan. But on issues where the big powers feel really strongly about, like Iraq, they have no compunction in leaving the UN on the sidelines.
