In recent years, the United Nations has often gone out of its way to avoid getting involved in the world’s trouble spots. It ignored genocide in Darfur. Pulled out of Iraq in 2003. Done nothing to stem Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Can an organization this compromised do much to improve things?

Well, the world body is about to welcome a new leader -- South Korea’s Ban Ki-Moon, who takes over at the end of this month from Secretary-General Kofi Annan. A change at the top usually prompts renewed optimism, so we need to encourage Ban to fundamentally reform the organization. After all, an effective United Nations is in everyone’s interest.

We all aspire to be free and to live peaceful, productive and abundant lives. And totalitarianism, terrorism and genocide threaten us all. The free world must unite to defeat rogue regimes, terrorist networks and state sponsors of ethnic cleansing.

However, the U.N. isn’t meeting these challenges.

Instead of reaffirming “fundamental human rights,” the United Nations shelters the worst human-rights abusers. Faced with rape, pillage and nearly 200,000 deaths in Darfur, for example, the Security Council hasn’t acted to stop the violence.

Part of the reason the U.N. fails is that it has 192 member countries, and more than half repress their people to some extent -- politically, economically or both. The U.N. naturally mirrors the community it represents.

So while we push for an ideal U.N., we must work with what we have -- a body that won’t in the foreseeable future advance the cause of liberty -- and focus on what it can do well and what it cannot.

The World Health Organization, for one, does good work. We need a body like that to prevent and control the spread of major threats to human health. Additionally, U.N. peacekeepers have helped protect people in troubled areas such as El Salvador, East Timor (after a slow start) and Angola. But we should remember the United Nations is a peacekeeper, not a peacemaker. Continued...