PERSPECTIVE, from Walter Russell Mead:

The sad truth is, the Security Council doesn’t count for much when nations contemplate war. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, since 1945 there have been 26 international wars, with total deaths estimated at 3.5 million. Only three of those wars had Security Council authorization, including the recent conflict in Afghanistan; the largest, the 1950-53 Korean conflict, was only a U.N. operation because Josef Stalin was in a snit and had ordered his Soviet representative to boycott council meetings. . . .

The United States may be a diplomatic cowboy, but we aren’t riding the only horse on the range. Every permanent member of the U.N. Security Council has

undertaken at least one war without the council’s permission or endorsement. . . .

The plain if slightly sad fact is that from the day the U.N. Security Council first met in 1946, no great power has ever stayed out of a war because the council voted against it, and no great military power ever got into a war because the Security Council ordered it to.

Read the whole thing.