> I've often speculated in my head about the desirabilty of closing down the UN to replace it with a "United Democracies" You still need the UN as a mechanism

> I've often speculated in my head about the desirabilty of closing down the UN to replace it with a "United Democracies" You still need the UN as a mechanism by which international diplomacy can get done as much as is possible, including with non-democracies. Every time a decision has to be made (e.g., North Korea, Libya, etc. or worse a war between major powers), we don't want to have to create a new framework and mechanism with new rules. > I've often speculated in my head about the desirabilty of closing down the UN to replace it with a "United Democracies" I think that's made much more possible and relevant by the spread of democracy. 30 years ago, it would have been almost exclusively the West. Now there are democracies all over the world; the old world order mechanisms (the UN Security Council, World Bank, etc.) don't include them, and the number and diversity of nations makes the old U.S.-led consensus much harder to achieve. Also, morally, the people in those nations deserve just as much of a vote in world affairs as Americans do - that's democracy.