A DAMNING ASSESSMENT of the United Nations — and from the New York Times!

Even ardent internationalists worry that the institution finds itself in a lose-lose situation — ridiculed as a puppet if American pressure forces a reluctant Security Council majority to support a war against Saddam Hussein, or reduced once more to a self-absorbed cipher if France, Russia and Germany lead the Security Council to thumb its nose at the world’s superpower. . . .

For James S. Sutterlin, a former United Nations executive and the author of “The United Nations and the Maintenance of International Security,” the question is not the institution’s relevance, but its competence.”The centrality of the Security Council was evident in its very failure,” in Rwanda and Bosnia, he said. “There was the very serious problem that the central organization responsible for security couldn’t do it.”

For American conservatives, the past three months have been galvanizing. “The notion that the U.N. is really a problem,” William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard, said this week, “was a fringe notion until about three months ago. Now serious people, who are not unilateralists, are much more open to alternatives to the U.N.”

Yes. The U.N. has made a lot of new enemies, and appalled a lot of its old friends. If its chief role is to serve as a forum for French efforts to feel important, then the U.N. will be no more important than France itself.