Such a Kantian world of perpetual peace would have been idyllic to live in. But since the world is divided into many segments, ranging from post-industrial to pre-industrial societies, the issue at stake is who can best promote global democracy. The UN, with its legitimacy and perceived impartiality, becomes an instant candidate. But since the seeds of democratic culture have to be nurtured by indigenous forces, the UN can only provide assistance in the building of democratic institutions. Dictation of democratic culture by exogenous forces/actors is generally faced with obstruction because the target countries perceive it as an attack on their sovereignty. Iran is a case in point.

Iranian theocracy based on the notion of velayet-e-faqih (principle of clerical supremacy) and reportedly rejected by a large number of Iranians (most Iranians are under the age of thirty) has not been dislodged from its preeminent position in governance though the unelected 12 member Guardian Council has prevented more than three thousand candidates from contesting the February general elections (a decision protested by more than one hundred pro-reform members of parliament) due in large part to public belief that the opposition movement is actually an American conspiracy against the sovereignty of Iran.

Besides, the Iraq war has demonstrated that the world is still reluctant to see neighbouring dictators toppled, since many rulers guilty of similar sins and living in glass houses are hesitant to cast stones upon the guilty. They take comfort in the security blanket provided in the facts that the Iraq war without UN sanction, not only violated the salience of the UN Charter, but also provisions of international law which as ratified treaties are also part of the "supreme law of the land" according to the US Constitution.

Critics of the Iraq war refuse to give the Anglo-US misadventure legitimacy because of the absence of plausible and imminent Iraqi threat to international peace and security (thus refusing to accept Bush doctrine of preemption) and further accuse President Bush of having decided on regime change in Iraq long before he became president. They cite the report by neo-con think tank Project for New American Century of September 2000 prepared by now Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other senior members of the Bush administration articulating plans for attacking Iraq to achieve regime change.

American muscularity has also been criticised on the ground of use of excessive force that is contrary to the principle of proportionality usually followed in just war. Maarti Ahari, former Finnish President observed that Iraq had already been bombed to a pre-industrial age during the First Gulf War and the subsequent bombardment must have resulted in considerable death and destruction. Iraq episode is generally recognised as a failure of the UN system in the face of American unipolarity. This was apparent by October 2002 when the US Congress authorised President Bush to go to war without getting prior approval of the UNSC. A senior US official bluntly said at that time that the US did not need the UN Security Council.

The UNSC resolution 1441 of November 2002 which found Iraq to be in "material breach" of the previous resolutions and warned Iraq once again of "serious consequences" did not explicitly authorise the use of force. American patience wore out soon enough and the US in February 2003 wanted the UNSC to pass a resolution authorising use of force, an attempt blocked by France, Russia, and China. Consequently, the UNSC was deadlocked on Iraq.

But Michael Glennon of the Fletcher School of Diplomacy pointed out that in reality the UNSC's fate had been sealed long before as a result of the shift in world power toward a configuration that was simply incompatible with the way the UN was meant to function. It was the rise in American unipolarity, observes Glennon, not the Iraq crisis along with cultural clashes and differing attitudes regarding the use of force, that gradually eroded the credibility of the UNSC.

The Iraq war also signalled the failure of the French, Russian, and Chinese efforts since the end of the Cold War to return the world to a more balanced system. The French in particular wanted a multipolar world in which Europe would act as a counterweight to American political and military power. Effectively, if the UNSC was paralysed by Cold War bipolarity, American unipolarity encouraged the US to bypass the Council.

Regardless of one's preference or lack of it relating to unquestionable American preeminence in the present global construct, realism dictates that international efforts be directed to induce the US to follow a strategy of partnership which is also advocated by Colin Powell. In a piece contributed to Foreign Affairs, Powell denied that US strategy was unilateralist by design, unbalanced in favour of military methods, and obsessed with terrorism and hence biased towards preemptive wars on a global scale.

Powell asserted that preemption applied only to undeterrable threats that came from non-state actors such as terrorist groups. He declared that the Bush administration's strategy was one of partnership that strongly affirmed the role of NATO and the UN. But the ground reality appears to be that the US, despite the daily occurrence of rebellion in Iraq against foreign occupation, remains reluctant to give the UN the central role in drawing up the future political architecture of Iraq and command of an international stabilisation and peace keeping force.

The Saudi proposal of stationing an international force drawn from Muslim countries has drawn flak because possible participants insist on troops being under UN rather than US command. So the preference for the UN over the US remains the outstanding global choice today because American muscularity has not united, rather has divided, the world into sharply distinct camps. The global preference mentioned earlier has found support in Anne-Marie Slaughter's (of Princeton University) observation that the UNSC remains the preferred destination for undertaking collective action, because legitimacy and the weight of preventive measures endorsed by the UN makes it easier to carry them out.

She, however, advocates that in the case of UNSC paralysis, the next step should be the regional organisation that is most likely to be affected by the emerging threat (e.g. African Union in the Darfur crisis case). Failing which, Slaughter argues, organisations like NATO that may have less direct connection with the emerging threat but have a better cohesive body and resources to encounter the threat should be considered. Only after these options have been exhausted, would Slaughter consider unilateral action or action by a coalition of the willing.

Given universal recognition of shifting threats from identifiable nation-states to shadowy non-state actors who may be endowed with WMD capability to be used for terrorist purposes, the need for reform of the UN system can hardly be overstated. It has been argued that in line with the pronouncement by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty of the principle of "the responsibility to protect" victims of massive violation of human rights, genocide, famine or anarchy, the international community, acting through the UN, should adopt a collective duty to prevent nations running without internal checks from acquiring or using weapons of mass destruction.

Equally, after the Cold War, as more and more states became willing to look with severity and with less tolerance at other states whose treatment of their own citizens did not measure up to a common minimum standard, the principle of humanitarian intervention denied by the UN Charter needed to be revised. The tragic events of 9/11 have added impetus to the western quest for democratic governance in countries still under authoritarian/oligarchic rule, where citizens attracted to the western political model acutely feel its absence in their own countries where autocratic rulers were tolerated in the past by the West because of strategic reasons (continued supply of oil and/or continuance of military bases) and by their own citizenry due to welfare state provisions made by the rulers.

But the gradual erosion of welfare facilities provided by the state has given rise to frustration among the people who now have neither the affluence nor the liberal system that they aspire to have. Such frustration may prove to be fertile ground for recruitment of al-Qaedist elements to the detriment of both the West and the rulers of these islands of autocracy. It is, therefore, not illogical if the western powers, having learnt the lethal lessons of 9/11 and other terrorist assaults on their soil, were to insist on reforms of the UN system to facilitate their pursuit of emerging threats.

But their insistence should be tinged with understanding of the existential differences between civilisations, and hence prudential policies should be followed. If Iraq experience is anything to go by, then the US should not be overly enthusiastic about the immediate success of its Greater Middle East Initiative. Rulers of many of these countries are used to being "elected" by the overwhelming majority of votes in choreographed elections and to staying in power for decades.

These rulers and the privileged class which have grown around them are unlikely to abdicate the power and privilege they have been enjoying for so long just because the Americans suddenly have had a change of heart to restore democracy in these foreign lands. Besides, there is no guarantee that the replacements chosen through a flawed system would be any better than the tyrants they replaced.

The main concern of the West today relates to the Islamic world, part of which refuses to embrace the libertarian values seen by many Islamists as repugnant to the fundamental teachings of Islam. In this context, one might not necessarily pick a quarrel with historian Bernard Lewis' observation that democracy is a parochial custom of the English-speaking people for the conduct of their public affairs that may or may not be suitable for others.

In the ultimate analysis, the democratisation of the UN and its institutions, as called for by Boutros Ghali in his Agenda for Democratisation, is a pressing need, and has to be taken into account by the major powers, not only to ensure a semblance of distributive justice in the allocation of global resources, but also to ensure that a conflict-ridden free world, housing different and seemingly competing civilisations, can live in peace and harmony.

Kazi Anwarul Masud is a former Secretary and Ambassador.