After what is shaping up as a U.N. debacle, we’re going to have to think about what we want the effectively post-U.N. world to look like. But conservatives should avoid getting caught in the “unilateral” trap. Yes, the U.S. sometimes has to act alone. But how often do we haul off and start a war without any international backing? Allies and international legitimacy are important for all sorts of reasons, not least of which is that they matter to the American public. So, the battle should be between different kinds of multilateralism, the U.N. multilateralism of moral neutralism and low-grade pacifism or a liberal multilateralism of like-minded democratic nations. This latter multilateralism would be defined by institutions like NATO that—with all its current problems—at least has a moral core, and perhaps by a new U.N. follow-on organization made up only of liberal democracies. These organizations, then, should become the definers of international legitimacy rather than the random mish-mash of the U.N.