>I understand your position. In many ways, I agree with you. I think, though, that the major world powers see the UN as a force for peacekeeping in regional conflicts, like Darfur, while they reserve the right to do as they see fit. Hence the US in Iraq, the Russians in Georgia.
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>I seriously doubt the UN will ever be given more authority since it is fundamentally against our nature as a people to sacrifice any degree of sovereignty. In fact, the founding principles were to defend American interests and the rest of the world can hang.

Well that is not only US position in this respect but many others unfortunately. Perhaps we have to go trough something horrific
again until, they realise that in each common environment you need some sort of rules/law and body to enforce it.
If it is appartment blocks you need house superintendant and comitee of flat owners to take care of common environment,
if it is village you need major, communal services, police station etc. World became big village long time ago.

I was under impression back in 90-ties that there was such movement on world political scene aiming to upgrade international bodies
and give them more powers over countries and their own sovereignities. My country was actually gineau-pig sacrified on that experiment. And it ended up in complete failure. So called 'international community' blamed Serbia for more or less everything that was happening everywhere in Balkans, and as crown on all that was NATO bombing of Serbia where they bombed Danube bridges (my city of Novi Sad lost 3). Then there was Hag tribunal which has supreme rights over countries which ended up prosecuting mostly Serbs after bloody Bosnian and Kosovo's war which had all sides involved in massacres etc.
So when you look at it now from todays prospective, that 'internationa community' ended up looking more like 'vanity fair' of big powers enforcing their own agendas then realy genuine effort to enforce some law and order on countries.
Yet in Europe whole 'project' it is still alive. Europena union still acts on that path. Serbia gave up Milosevic , Karadzic and others to Hague tribunal for instance to satisfy strong request from EU. (Where we had full right to hang them all by ourselves!)
But if US secured exception from international war crimes court jurisdiction, then what is the point in all that ?
On the other hand US is very loud in demanding remaining fugitives to be handed over to a UN court whose jurisdiction they do not recognise ?? Sounds completely insane to me.

So why is UN important? Simply because it is only true (whole) world body by it's very definition, as opposed to 'international community' which I now see more like collection of powers (and vanities) acting together or agains each other, depending on current interest. By screwing up and undermining UN rather then promoting it, all that is remaining on world political scene is 'vanity fair'. <g>
And dangerous one at that.

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>I don't know why you disparage NATO. NATO is an example of a security and mutual defence pact that actually works. Looking forward, it's possible that NATO could become the arbiter of peace and stability you want the UN to be.

If it is under UN umbrella, (and under very tight legislation), rather then some imaginary 'international community',
then some very much downsized and reformed NATO might serve some good purpose in handling smaller regional conflicts (Africa Azia etc) If it is 'allies' power aimed at selling protection against imaginary enemies (Russia, Nort Corea etc) to everybody else then, no thks.

I have no axe to graind with NATO, despite the fact that they knocked down my bridges. They are bunch of soldier heads that acted on someone else orders. However, NATO is result of ww2 and especially cold war afterwards, therefore today it's role is kind of unclear to me. Mutual defence pact agains who exactly ? China ? Iran ? Al-qaeda ?
Cold war is over , yet instead of downsizing disproportionate military power, new carriers are being built, new nasty weapons developed, defence budgets were never higher then today. I understand business points of military industry, but hey what is to much is to much! Pumping money into more military power of NATO in today's post-coldwar world, is like swalowing viagra in the morning and then going to the public beach to play macho <vbg> Where is the merit in that ?