Walter Russell Mead declares the U.N. a failure (via Andrew). Some of his specific complaints focus on antiquated Security Council arrangements:

A majority of the Security Council’s permanent members are European states and ex-great powers to boot. This is farcical, and the Security Council’s growing weakness is the natural and inevitable result.

Daniel Solomon makes a good observation in response:

But, counter Mead’s assertions, the Council’s paralysis is a symptom of evolution, rather than stagnation. As the “responsibility while protecting” debate indicates, the Council has encountered political and normative divides between traditional powers and emerging states, as well as within the non-monolithic “emerging states bloc.” That Brazil and South Africa, as emerging actors continue to rely on the UN–rather than, say, just the IBSA Dialogue Forum–as a mechanism for expressing political contention, indicates the international body’s continued relevance, in spite of the fits and starts associated with muddled processes of international cooperation.

I would add that a reformed Security Council would be more representative of the modern distribution of power in the world, but it would also be less likely to reach consensus on major issues. If Mead finds the current U.N. structures lacking, he would likely be even more frustrated with a reformed version of the organization. Besides, if the U.N. is being “flouted and ignored” by individual states, that isn’t going to change if the Security Council better represents the international political landscape.

One of the main flaws that Mead identifies is the “patently false idea that the governments of the world are equal in some real (as opposed to formulaic) sense to each other,” but it is hard to see why most states would have joined an organization if the equality of member states had not been affirmed from the beginning. One can see obvious reasons why small and weak states would want to be counted the same as larger and more powerful states. Further institutionalizing disparities between weak and powerful states would hardly make the institution more effective, and it would probably contribute to its rapid loss of legitimacy in the eyes of most states. Mead asserts, “Nobody cares what a collection of micro states, weak states and corrupt, shambolic states thinks about anything.” He might as well have said, “I don’t care what most of the governments in the world think about anything.” Bizarrely, this comes just two paragraphs after his lament about the declining importance of the General Assembly. If “nobody cares” what a majority of the member states think about anything, why should anyone pay attention to their voting?

Something else that Mead overlooks is that the best way to ensure that there would be a single international organization was to keep the criteria for membership as limited as possible. Mazower explained this in No Enchanted Palace:

Its relaxed criteria for entry were designed to encourage universality of membership precisely in order to avoid the creation of international factions and rival alliances outside the world body. Thus the sole criterion for membership was deliberately established as an external one–the fact of a state’s “peace-loving” nature….This may have blunted the organization’s ability to shape global moral or political norms but also allowed it to endure, to adapt to rapid shifts in international politics, and to offer enemies the chance to meet and talk. (p. 198)

Mead’s complaint reflects a nostalgic view of what the U.N. once was. Mazower addressed a related view:

Successfully mystified, believers in and detractors of the UN both talk about its sad loss of moral purpose, and seek either to restore it or to find it elsewhere. But both groups mistake rhetoric for reality and misunderstand what the UN has been, and still more, has been able to become. What the UN’s present member-states have in common is basically a shared acceptance of diplomatic and legal norms regarding the recognition and mutual interaction of states. (p. 199)

That is what the U.N. provides to its members, which is why they continue to belong to it in spite of the organization’s other flaws and limitations.