He said the U.N. has had only two unqualified successes in that category— Germany and Japan after World War II.

“Imagine what would have happened if we had left,” LeMoyne said, comparing the 25-year commitment to those nations to the two or three years he said the U.N. has recently devoted to areas such as Kosovo and Rwanda. Often, he said, the “transition mechanism” that brings order to countries of chaos does not exist.

But the two other panel members objected, calling LeMoyne unnecessarily pessimistic.

Klein cited East Slavonia, for which he served as an SRSG, and his ongoing work in Bosnia-Herzegovina as successes.

Kouchner said the very existence of the U.N. as a force preventing human rights abuses within nations—rather than as one mediating conflict between nations, as originally intended—is itself “a great success.”

LeMoyne acknowledged these successes, but noted that Klein and Kouchner worked in “the Rolls-Royce of U.N. missions—white people are dying in Europe.”

But the panel ended on a hopeful note.

“Every great change in history has been impossible,” LeMoyne said. “All these things are not possible until they happen, until people give a damn.”