ven worse—to try to manage civil wars, which it is trying to do in Bosnia. Overreaching in that way discredits the organization.”Peacekeeping is not the only role for which some experts say the U.N. is less suited than many once predicted. The organization includes fifteen agencies working to improve health care, nutrition, human rights, and other social and economic goals. With the Cold War’s end, it was hoped that the U.N. would be free to concentrate more of its member states’ resources on improving living conditions in the poorest areas of the world. But critics say that the U.N. agencies are too politicized, poorly managed, and wasteful to carry out their mandates. “Whenever possible, I think the U.N. ought to utilize nongovernmental organizations more than it has in the past,” Carpenter says.U.N. supporters say that such diminished expectations for the world body are misplaced. “Clearly, the roles of the U.N. should be changed from time to time, depending on what the international community needs done that require multilateral solutions,” says Luck of the United Nations Association. “But in general terms, the U.N. should be more needed at a time when there is a multipolar world without a bilateral competition that tends to freeze so much in the security area. There are many, many functional, technical problems in the economic, environmental, humanitarian, and social realms that require very broad international cooperation. The U.N. in that sense should have a major role to play.”Urquhart agrees. “I don’t think it really makes any sense not to make the U.N. work,” he says. “You have to make it work because there isn’t anything else.”Should the United States reduce its support of the United Nations?All members contribute funds to the United Nations, and some of these contributions are mandatory. The amount of each country̵...
