Just a drive by here…busy day. The only point I’d like to make is that while most of the major powers pay lip service to the UN and the whole ‘global accountability’ thing, we are far from the only nation that goes our own way when the UN goes against what the government thinks is the nations interests. And Iraq is hardly the only instance of the US bucking the UN or going against some ficticious ‘global accountablility’. There are myriad examples of nations not bothering with the UN, going against the charter, etc when they decided (usually independantly, or in small groups) that their interests lay elsewhere.
As to the OP, certainly the UN has a place and a role as a discussion forum…discussion is good, and the UN DOES do some good, inspite of its toothless and longwinded nature. However no really powerful nation is going to take that too seriously if they feel their national interests lie contrary to what the UN ‘consensus’ is at any given time. The UN is set up in such a way to give a psudo-stamp of global approval to the actions of the SC, or to be used as a propaganda tool between them. They pretty much have always played along when it was going their way (or when they could use it as a club against less powerful nations), and disreguarded it when it diverged from what they felt their interests lay.
-XT