It was almost a year ago that President Bush stood before the United Nations General Assembly and threw down the gauntlet on the problem of Baathist Iraq. His speech was an artful blend of Colin Powell’s desire to work with the international community to diffuse the crisis diplomatically, and Donald Rumsfeld’s desire to diffuse the United Nations once and for all by taking care of the problem on our own. The result was an iron fist wrapped in a rhetorical velvet glove, with the president insisting that U.N. inaction would render that body “irrelevant.” And many think that was exactly what happened.

This judgment, however, seems premature — for, not one year later, the United Nations is apparently beginning to acknowledge some of the sense Bush beat into it. At a press conference two days ago, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, in a telling moment of introspection, offered some of the most realistic thinking to come out of the United Nations in years. “The war in Iraq”, he remarked, ” . . . [forces] us to ask ourselves whether the institutions and methods we are accustomed to are really adequate to deal with all the stresses of the last couple of years — or whether, perhaps, they are in need of a radical reform.” Not just reform, mind you, but radical reform — spoken like a man who has taken his lumps and learned from the experience.

So does this mean Kofi Annan is actually owning up to his institution’s contemporary irrelevance? Unlikely. But he did not stop there; Kofi continued:

Many of us sense that we are living through a crisis of the international system, or — as some put it — of the “architecture” of international peace and security. . . . We are told that we face new threats, that there are new risks, new challenges that we have to confront, and that one should be prepared to take pre-emptive action if necessary. Did what happen in Iraq constitute an exception, a precedent that others can exploit? If not, and indeed we are going to make preventive action, or war, part of our response to these new threats, what are the rules? Who decides? Under what circumstances? This is a discussion that I know is going around in many capitals and, I am sure, will come here.

Though he was not endorsing the pre-emptive use of force, the Secretary General certainly recognized that such action may now be a necessary strategic consideration — a huge intellectual concession if ever there was one.

There could be no better vindication than this for Bush’s rough handling of the United Nations last fall. Many criticized his speech as an arrogant lecture, an unwillingness to deal with the United Nations on its own terms. Though it may have appeared to be the former, it certainly was the latter — and for good reason. If the September 11 attacks taught the United States anything, it was that Cold War strategic thinking and security architecture, still the dominant paradigm 12 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, had to be thoroughly reevaluated in light of 21st-century international realities.

Just as the mission determined the coalition, it was argued, strategic necessity must determine the shape and form of international institutions — not the other way around. Bush’s message implied that if the old order (NATO or the U.N. Security Council, for example) inhibited America’s achievement of its new mission, then that old order would have to be torn down as the useless relic of a former era, an idol that had reached its twilight. Bush’s address to the United Nations, therefore, signaled he was willing to do just that if need be — that is, if the United Nations refused to abandon its illusions of security and accept the new understanding of international politics that was forced on the United States in the form of apocalyptical terrorism. (In the current issue of The National Interest, I describe the administration’s approach as making foreign policy with a hammer.)

So how far exactly has Kofi Annan come around, if he has really done so at all? The only way for the Bush administration to know is to swallow his bait (and its pride) and put its weight behind a proposal for “radical reform” of the United Nations. No matter how much conservatives wish the United Nations would just throw itself off a cliff once and for all, it is unrealistic to think such an event probable anytime soon. Rather, because the United Nations is most likely here to stay, it is in America’s national interest to transform that institution into the most effective arm possible for U.S. policy. President Bush’s shock therapy appears to have induced some signs of life; he should now attempt to operate.

U.N. reform must address central problems of power and principle. First, the United Nations cannot possibly hope to play a valuable role in the 21st century when the permanent structure of the Security Council reflects the stage of world power as it was set in 1945. On the occasions this body was effective throughout the Cold War, it was merely because it institutionalized the bipolar balance of power: It was “realpolitik by committee,” in Charles Krauthammer’s words. Without the inclusion of India, Japan, and Brazil as permanent members, as well as considering making the French seat into a greater European one, the Security Council will not realistically reflect the contemporary world’s major centers of power. This will prevent it from becoming a more effective body.

The second aspect of reform the Bush administration should pursue is one of principle. U.N. statements and actions will only carry moral weight if they originate from a responsible community of democratic states that upholds liberal principles and protects human rights. As Tony Blair stated in his July 17 address to Congress: “We need to say clearly to United Nations members: ‘If you engage in the systematic and gross abuse of human rights in defiance of the U.N. charter, you cannot expect to enjoy the same privileges as those that conform to it.’” With a community of potential democratic allies at the helm of the United Nations, the war against terrorism and the condemnation of tyranny would be perceived as more legitimate than if they solely remained U.S. endeavors. Good appearances are important, to say nothing of the positive results a determined coalition of genuine democracies could potentially achieve.

Based on Kofi Annan’s statements this week, it appears the Bush administration’s message is sinking in to some degree: He is at least intellectually engaging the U.S. conception of post-9/11 world politics. Obviously, there remain significant differences in outlook and expectation between the United States and the United Nations. That said, however, it seems there is a tiny but growing piece of common ground on which Bush and Annan could begin productive discussions about reforming the United Nations, perhaps with Tony Blair playing his favored role as intermediary extraordinaire. Such a process would certainly not be without its headaches and hang-ups. But that would be a poor reason not to make an effort to begin forging a compromise, for it is in everyone’s interest to do so.

— Christian D. Brose is assistant editor of The National Interest.