LOVELY PARADOX FOR THE UN

LOVELY PARADOX FOR THE UN noted by Andrew Sullivan, who writes:

In one of the loveliest paradoxes of this battle, the U.N. therefore laid the groundwork for its subsequent self-destruction twelve years later. Without the U.N.’s restrictions on American force twelve years ago, Saddam would not be around today. Any non-U.N., American-led coalition with any sense of military opportunity, would have finished off the old Stalinist more than a decade ago. 1991 was therefore, in one sense, the U.N.’s post-Cold War high-point. Too bad it guaranteed its future nadir.

It didn’t have to guarantee that nadir–but the accumulated weight of the UN’s actions in the post Soviet 1990s certainly did.