LOS ANGELES -- Reform of the United Nations -- that terribly tarnished crown jewel of post-World War II global order -- is, as everyone agrees, urgently needed. For all its imperfections, it is the best world political organization we have.
After the war, it soon morphed into the one institution that the world would turn to in a crisis. Without the U.N., we might have to invent some institution like it. Indeed, if the U.N. is unreformed, it may well crumble underneath its own antiquated weight -- and then something like a new geopolitical wheel would have to be started up from scratch. Time, money and lives would be lost.
Key to any real reform, for sure, is the long-overdue restructuring of the Security Council -- the U.N.'s political body. Its shape today reflects merely the global power grid after World War II. The two conspicuous losers then were Germany and Japan. Defenestrated, they were marginalized and left without permanent U.N. council status thereafter.