In any event, please; continue to dig. Most illuminating.

The US has no ambitions for an empire, and anyone that says we do is a fool or a con man. I rather favor the con man idea, since it has the potential for drawing attention and cash to the country, just to stop the chatter, or to join the crowd of mostly envious mal-wishers of the US. Was it Carter that gave away the Panama Canal? Some empire building we have practiced there. Or in the Philippines.

One must not react weakly to irrational governments or their con artists. Try gaming those two aspects!

We face today a number of irrational nations, and gaming such situations is dangerous at best. Sit down and identify what nation or nations are really afraid of the US. Can't be anyone in Europe, unless Lichtenstein has gone cookoo recently. Can't be anyone in South America, unless you would want to count the nutcase in Venezuela. Can't be anyone in mid or lower Africa, unless they are paranoid, in which case showing them our genuflection to the UN would not serve any purpose whatsoever. Russia or China? You can't be serious there. India? Nope! Southeast Asia? Not hardly. Indonesia? Nope. Australia or NZ? Nope. So just where ARE these nations that live in fear of the US, such that we should limit ourselves and give power over us to the UN? Do I smell a left wing meme here? Yes, I do: 1) they want us to renounce preemption; 2)they want us to back off from Iran and Iraq; 3) they want us to allow the UN to tie our hands; and, 4) they want us to stop supporting Israel. And then, there is BDS!

Well, maybe in the Middle East and upper Africa! They might feel a bit of fear, and that is a very good thing indeed. The Islamic nations are just about the only ones that might feel fear, I believe, starting with Iran and Syria, and throw in Palestine for good measure.

So this gaming approach says we should delimit ourselves mainly because of Iran and Syria, two of the worst global terror supporters, and one that is approaching nuclear weapons capabilities? One would be mad, literally out of their minds, to do that. You are trying out a gaming approach with the suicidal maniacs of Islam? Forget it!

Not one iota of our sovereignty, and not one iota of our freedom of choice should we relinquish, through the UN, to Islamic nations, or any others, for that matter. Zero. Madness!

As to your challenges, it's one of the things I find the most amusing about you.

<golf clap>

The world, however, does not act on his assumptions, and specific conflicts have their own logic, not his, as we have found out over 200 years.

If you start an analysis with the idea to prove that restraint is a good thing, guess what? That will be the conclusion! Data and assumptions that don't fit the preconceived notions of what is will be suitably doctored or ignored.

Since you did not answer my challenges, but chose to fall back on a self-serving paper whose logic is suspect, I understand your feel-good position, and deplore it.

Further, I believe that big battalions and certain resolve speak loudly in all languages. Let the diplomats present the soft side of America, the willing to help side, the foreign aid side, and the commerce side, but the world should be totally assured that we will stand up and act for what we believe is right.

Are we working to satisfy the world, or to hold to our principles? If the former, there will be no solution, because the world will never be satisfied and we will compromise ourselves.

But seeing as how rational analysis really isn't your strong point, nor discussion of the actual analysis Meyerson has made, you simply continue to speak from your Birchian fever dreams.

In what conflicting situation would restraint be the preferred approach? If there is a conflict somewhere, do we let it roll? Do we sit back and watch the genocides of the world, or do we act with ever-increasing force? If we are harmed by a conflict, do we use our restraint till we are further harmed? Just where does restraint come in?

Only for the US? So we tell the world that we won't act with force until our restraint is overtaxed? Why should we use restraint if Americans are being slaughtered, or the commerce of the world is being disrupted, which in turn harms all of the smaller nations? Should we forgo preemptive war and take the first blow, the second, or third? Why? Should we come to the assistance of a small nation being overrun, such as Kuwait?

Seems to me that the certainty of a penalty would deter some conflicts in the first place, just as the death penalty deters murder (and it most certainly does deter).

Active law or rules and peace enforcement up front by such a Coalition just might be much preferable to after the fact of a conflict Talk-Talk in the UN, especially if you revere life.

A Coalition of strong and free nations would act to stop the genocides and the terror, I believe, as they would be more easily motivated to do so and more free from bureaucratic nonsense, procedural snags, and Talk-Talk for its own sake as the killing continues.

To influence and deter potential rivals, we need a deterrent strategy in which threats of conflict are balanced by promises of cooperation when rivals yield to our pressure. The threats and promises of our deterrent strategy can be effective only if they are understood and believed by our potential rivals. When Americans judge our leaders for effectiveness in foreign policy, the central question should be how our policy is perceived by the foreigners whom we want to influence and deter. Letting these foreigners judge our reputation for adhering to our deterrent strategy can help us to guarantee its credibility. So a policy of submitting American military actions to international judgment and restraint can actually make America more secure.

Any bomb by itself can only cause destruction. Our bombing can have a constructive purpose only as part of a strategy that defines when we bomb and when we do not bomb. But people have no incentive to yield if they think that their yielding would only invite further aggression and invasion. If our rivals do not understand the limits to our use of military force, then our bombing can only spread destruction and resolve to resist us. So we want our adversaries to understand the limits on our use of force, and we want them to verify that we are complying with these limits.

Thus, we can benefit from a reputation for accepting strategic limits on our use of force, using proportionate retaliatory force only as necessary for deterring attacks on us. But strategic communication is essential. Our strategic limits must be clearly communicated to potential adversaries, because our reputation for resolve and restraint is effective only to the extent that our adversaries recognize it. For questions of whether our use of force has been appropriate under our deterrent strategy, the ultimate judge and jury are the potential rivals whom we want to deter and reassure. That is, on a question of whether a particular use of military force was justified under our deterrent strategy, the judgment that counts is that of the foreigners whom we want to deter. If our invasion has been justified only to American voters, then it has not been justified at all.

It has sometimes been suggested that Americans who doubt that everybody can always trust America should be denigrated as unpatriotic. Of course, patriots should have some basic faith in the good qualities of our country, but that does not imply that patriots must always assume that everybody in the world will accept our good faith without any proof or guarantee. As has been argued above, ignoring foreign fears of our power and denying any need for restraint can inadvertently stimulate more militant reactions against us in the world. So Americans who want to accept multilateral restraints, to reassure foreigners about the limits of our power, may be true patriots who are asking the hard questions that are essential to our national security.

Perhaps you have not read the spate of books on the UN that detail its many failings, notably (for one) Jeb Babbin's "Inside the Asylum", which, among other things, shows authoritatively how virtually all of the departments of the UN are corrupt, broken, and adamantly anti-American. The cost to us of some 7 billion dollars a year is pure "charity", and it is being set up for a raise to a significant percentage of the GNP: 0.7 percent. Most of the 17,000 employees of the UN are paid in the 100 to 180 thousand dollars a year level, plus no tax and other perks, in order to run a hostile-to-the-US operation, totaling over 1 billion dollars a year in salaries alone.

There can be little chance of reforming the UN either, since any legislation to that effect must pass the General Assembly, which it won't. In short, as Babbin says, the GA is broken, the Security Council is broken, and the SG office is broken.

To help America, we should wean ourselves from the UN and into a coalition of developed democratic nations that have common goals and respect for humanity, instead of riding a crippled and ever more expensive and sick horse into oblivion. Let the UN be the Talk-Talk house on a theater budget, but for effective world solutions, use this coalition of the strong and free that has been suggested by many as the right way to go.

The thought that the UN confers legitimacy to anything is truly laughable, except it seems to do so in the minds of dedicated internationalists, but not the US public at large. Perhaps the public has more common sense.

Many national representatives to the UN have stated openly that the main purpose of the UN is to control the United States, and shackle it to the whims of the UN. Many other representatives in their great wisdom don't even consult with their governments when voting, writing or speaking officially in the UN.

Support of organizations by the UN that are fronts for terrorists is a proven fact.

Those that do want to ride this UN horse, and I see that you two do want to ride it, are simply misinformed, idealistic, and blinded internationalists that will take us into the rapidly flowing rivers of the world on the spindly legs of the UN, to our deaths by drowning.

I have not realized how the UN has diffused conflicts, rather than the US and its partners. Did the UN diffuse the Tamils in Sri Lanka? The Chechnya insurgency? The Iraq-Iran war? The Israeli-Palestine conflicts? The Vietnam war? Shall I go on? How about Darfur? They did very well there, didn't they? How about Angola?
Somalia? No. Kosovo? No. Did the UN act in Iraq? How well has the UN done in thwarting the nuclear ambitions of Iran?

We don't seem to be getting any payoff from UN actions in settling conflicts. We do the settling, when settling is needed. How about Oil for Food? There is a true UN cockup!

The world is not ready for an idealistic organization, to be run by far less than idealistic men from amoral institutions and nations. The Sudan running the Human Rights Commission? Sure.

Mannning, I know it's like asking the wind to stop blowing, but would you please read the paper I linked to? It's very accessible and understandable. If you were to actually read it, it would be interesting to find out why you think he's full of it. Absent that, I'll just have to echo Tano and say that your approach speaks more of beating your chest like a monkey rather than doing anything useful for us as a country. Foolish and brash.

It's amusing to note that many of the "immoral" states you're screeching about are clients of the US. And also very interesting to hear you use the word "immoral" when you're an advocate of the use of torture.

The General Assembly is powerless. The Security Council can do absolutely nothing without our consent.

The UN is a tool that can be used to bring order and legal process to international relations. Its failings are, in no small part, due to our lack of leadership - for the structure of the organization gives us enormous space for exercising leadership.

You can either use institutions like this to defuse conflicts and to bring other nations under the rule of law, or you can sit back and watch the world spiral out of control, and then be forced to use our military, our young men and our treasure, to clean up the mess. That seems to be your approach, and it strikes me as very foolish.

When over half of the membership is amoral or immoral, many utterly hostile to America, and use the UN as a way to gang up on us with block voting; and when the only power chamber is the Security Council, which has a composition made largely from a war a half century ago, with additions that are irrelevant, why should we be the largest underwriter of its flailing?

There is a continuing maneuver to use the UN to ban citizens guns worldwide; a Law of the Seas treaty that is an open ended tax law and passes control of the sea and undersea environment to that agency of the UN, with infringements on US sovereignty, The ICC that wanted to prosecute our officials, a push to give the UN an independent military force, and on and on...

It is obvious to me that as long as there are amoral and immoral nations in the world we should not give up any part of our sovereignty to an organization such as the UN.

Talk-Talk is fine, but no further under any UN authority. We do not need yet another layer of government bureaucracy and sweeping laws from such a crowd.