Few Americans would dispute that the United Nations plays a crucial role in saving lives, protecting children, and improving health of people around the world. Despite years of UN-bashing in Washington, the global organization remains one of the most popular institutions among US voters.

At the end of the cold war, the US used the UN to provide a multilateral coalition framework to legitimize the essentially unilateral anti-Iraq mobilization of Desert Storm. As other post-cold war conflicts erupted in the early and mid-1990s, the UN was assigned peacekeeping tasks, in Somalia, Bosnia, Rwanda, and elsewhere-largely in the impoverished global South. The US and its allies refused to provide the financial, military, and strategic backing required to implement these mandates. When these missions failed, the UN, rather than Washington and the other major powers, was blamed. The UN shifted from instrument of US foreign policy to scapegoat for US policy failures. Read more…