In a number of key meetings during and after the Second World War, world leaders drew up rules to govern international behaviour and established a network of institutions to work together for the common good. Both the rules and institutions – the system of global governance with the United Nations as the core – are under serious challenge. The Iraq War brought to a head the larger question of the changing nature of threats in the modern world, the inadequacy of existing norms and laws in being able to address such threats and the need for new ‘rules of the game’ to replace them. Too often has the UN been shown to be proof against occasions of the larger kind. The United Nations is the arena for collective action, not a forum where nations who are unable to do anything individually should get together to decide that nothing can be done collectively.

How can the United Nations be so restructured as to empower it to enforce resolutions against recalcitrant regimes like Saddam Hussein's but not take any action against Israel? Unless and until this is done, will Washington re-commit to the international organisation? Conversely, if and when it is done, how many others will walk away from the world body, viewing it ‘not as an independent broker but as a glorified sub-contractor to the United States’?