It is tempting to propose leaving the UN and creating a United Democratic Nations instead, but whom shall we invite to join us?

Leaving Libya and Sudan behind but inviting France? How about Russia and China, with whom we have extensive and important economic relations?

Even close allies like Great Britain and Israel have their own ways and their own interests, not always our own.

The original UN was an organic outgrowth of the separate and interlocking alliances of the Second World War. We weren’t all friends, but we had one overarching interest in common, and that vanished on VE Day and VJ Day.

Romantic adherence to wartime propaganda led us to invite every other nation into the club, instead of restructuring it into a western alliance more like NATO, with the power to negotiate effectively with our enemies, instead of pretending they were becoming just like us.