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There is no such thing as the United Nations.

The United Nations is an indispensable but deeply flawed organization. It is valuable to the United States, and the United States is invaluable to it. We need to reform it.

The United Nations is the preeminent institution of multilateralism. It provides a forum where sovereign states can come together to share burdens, address common problems, and seize common opportunities. The U.N. helps establish the norms that many countries - including the United States - would like everyone to live by.

The United Nations is a mess, riddled with scandals. In fact, the U.N. itself is a scandal.

The United Nations has a lot of capacity on the ground.

The United Nations has become a largely irrelevant, if not positively destructive institution, and the just-released U.N. report on the atrocities in Darfur, Sudan, proves the point.

No one wants the United Nations to suffer the fate of the League of Nations, which collapsed because it lacked real leverage. This is possible if influential countries bypass the United Nations and take military action without Security Council authorization.

I have concluded that the U.N. can do a few things well.

There are many who criticise the United Nations. And those of us who know this institution well know that it is not immune from criticism. But those who argue against the United Nations advance no credible argument as to what should replace it. Whatever its imperfections, the United Nations represents a necessary democracy of states.

Now, the United Nations is an organization that I believe was founded with good intentions. As a matter of fact, a prominent Tennessean named Cordell Hull was very involved with it.