It has been evident now for a decade that the Security Council needs to be reformed, writes Noel Dorr.
The report of a high-level panel appointed by Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General, is important.
It is not so much because of its detailed proposals but because it makes a cogent case for a new comprehensive approach to collective security in the globalised world of the 21st century.
Mr Annan set up the panel a year ago following dissension over the war in Iraq, which, he said, had "shaken the foundations of collective security and undermined confidence in the possibility of collective responses to our common problems and challenges".
He asked it to analyse future threats to global peace and security; consider how to meet them through collective action; and recommend necessary changes to existing approaches. Much, though not all, of the report deals with the UN and how it might be adapted to face the new problems of the 21st century.
The UN was founded in 1945 by the 51 wartime allies to "maintain international peace and security", in other words to deal forcefully with aggressive action by states such as that which led to the second World War.
It has no right to intervene in member-states’ "internal affairs". But its charter, largely drafted in Washington in 1944, does provide for inter-state co-operation to promote human rights and economic and social development.
Over the second half of the 20th century the world changed greatly as colonialism ended: scores of new states emerged; and each joined the UN and accepted its charter.
True, the organisation did not work well as a "collective security" system because of Cold War divisions. It was "mutual deterrence" rather than the UN which averted major war.
But over that same period the UN grew into something different: no longer the alliance of 1945 but now a universal organisation of 191 states with a charter which became the fundamental rule of law in international life. In a world of great political and cultural diversity this important asset must be preserved.
The UN today is many different things: the centre of a network of international rules and organisations which regulate the inherent anarchy of international life; a multiplicity of specialised agencies dealing with refugees, children, food programmes, development, environment and human rights; 63,000 peacekeeping troops and 4,000 civilian police in world trouble spots; a secretariat which, though not always effective, runs the system at less cost than the New York police force.
But above all it is the memberstates, notably the major powers, which are central to making the system work. Often they blame it and turn away as if it were the system which had failed, rather than they who failed to use it.
Some, like the US, now claim a right to use force unilaterally or in "coalitions of the willing", a claim the Secretary General describes as a fundamental challenge to the basic principles of the charter.
It is primarily to the memberstates that the new report is addressed. Its central argument is that the serious threats to human security today go far beyond aggressive war between states which preoccupied the UN founders in 1945.
These threats are linked and interact: "Poverty, infectious disease, environmental degradation and war feed one another in a deadly cycle."
Air travel spreads new diseases; unsolved political conflicts, civil wars and failing states are fertile ground for crime or fanatical international terrorism which becomes more dangerous as nuclear, chemical or biological weapons spread.
A "mutual vulnerability of weak and strong" means that no state today, however powerful, can make itself invulnerable simply by its own efforts. A new approach to "collective security" is now imperative.
Terrorism, for example, requires a global strategy that also addresses root causes and strengthens responsible states, the rule of law and fundamental human rights. There should also be a comprehensive convention to establish an agreed definition of terrorism. This will not be easy to achieve.
Other proposals are sensible but hardly novel: a more coherent approach to development, centred on the millennium development goals; donor countries to meet aid targets of 0.7 per cent of GNP; stronger action against HIV/AIDS; better international monitoring of infectious diseases; more effective action controls on small arms and chemical and nuclear weapons.
The Non-Proliferation Treaty should be strengthened, since 40 countries could now make nuclear weapons; there should be a voluntary moratorium on constructing further uranium enrichment or reprocessing facilities; the UN needs a "peace-building" capacity; and peacekeeping forces must be ready for robust action if necessary.
The report welcomes the EU decision to establish self-sufficient battalions that could reinforce UN missions, an issue of interest in Ireland.
On some questions the approach proposed may cause controversy.
For example, is forceful intervention by the international community justified where a sovereign state causes or permits serious, large-scale human rights abuses against its own people? If this amounts to genocide, there is already a right, indeed a duty, for others to act under the 1948 Genocide Convention.
But the report goes further and argues that every state has a "responsibility to protect"; and it endorses what it calls "the emerging norm" that, where a state fails grossly in this, the international community has a responsibility to intervene.
More controversial will be the vexed issue of whether a state which considers itself under threat may take "pre-emptive" military action, as the US and the UK did against Iraq.
Is this contrary to the UN charter which allows the use of armed force in two cases only: when the Security Council authorises it in the common interest; and when a state defends itself against armed attack, pending action by the council?
The report enlarges "selfdefence" beyond the charter definition. It argues that "long established international law" allows a state to use force, not just to repel actual attack but where there is a threat of imminent attack, provided no other means would deflect it and the action is proportionate.
This principle was enunciated by the US secretary of state, Daniel Webster, in the 1840s. Many today would consider it dubious or outdated.
It is evident now for a decade that the Security Council needs to be reformed. There is little hope that the five permanent members will give up their veto. At least the constant danger of a veto does add seriousness to those decisions which are adopted; and it could be argued that allowing the council to authorise military action against a permanent member would lead to nuclear war.
But the permanent members should at least agree voluntarily to limit its use. Certainly, too, the council should be enlarged to make it more representative though still small enough to be effective.
But the panel could not agree on a proposal. Instead they offer two alternative models, grouping the existing five permanent members and all other states into four main areas.
One model adds six new permanent seats (with no veto) and three new two-year seats; the other would increase the present 10 two-year seats to 11 and also create a new category of eight four-year renewable seats.
Neither, it seems to me, is at all likely to provide a basis for agreement. Overall the report is timely and important, though some proposals may prove controversial.
Will it lie forgotten like other such reports over the years? Or will world leaders, at a special summit in New York next September, take difficult but necessary decisions?
At a moment which Kofi Annan sees as "a fork in the road", we must all hope they do.
Noel Dorr is a former ambassador to the UN and a former secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs.