But the UN has been successful in putting these issues on the table for international discussion, and in eliciting governments' pledges to change their own policies. Would the issues of poverty, environmental degradation, human rights, public health and disarmament be better addressed through bilateral mechanisms, or by countries on their own? No, they would not.

These problems involve the management of public goods and everyone benefits from a successful resolution. Unfortunately, few are willing to bear the cost of resolving the problems. Countries will not undertake the necessary reforms to mitigate global warming, curb population growth, implement legal frameworks that protect human rights or invest in universal vaccination programs to halt the spread of disease because the individual country would bear the cost of the reform without exclusively benefiting from the outcome.

The United Nations provides a way to resolve these collective action problems by bringing member nations together so they can voluntarily commit themselves to implementing a reform. This creates confidence that other governments will do the same and that there will be a distribution of the change's cost among those who will benefit. When multiple governments commit to combating a particular global problem, they hold each other accountable for their performance with diplomatic or economic pressure.

The UN's peacekeeping record is a point of contention in the the UN's efficacy as an institution. If peacekeeping forces are not supposed to use violence, how can they effectively keep the peace and credibly deter future violence within areas of civil conflict? But perhaps our own conceptions of peacekeeping must evolve before we evaluate a given operation's success.