Tillerson is right: The UN 'needs a lot of reform'

As he testified on Capitol Hill, Wednesday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was asked whether the Trump administration supports the World Trade Organization.

Tillerson responded, 'Yes, but W.T.O. needs some reform.'

Then, Tillerson was asked whether the administration supports the United Nations. His response was superb.

'Yes, the U.N. needs a lot of reform.'

I say superb for a simple reason.

Namely, because unless the U.S. qualifies its support for the U.N. to that institution's reform, it will continue failing...

For a start, as I've explained, the U.N. is terribly dysfunctional. Originally designed to provide for global peace, today's U.N. is hamstrung by a bureaucracy that seeks consensus above all else.

It's a consensus with a heavy price tag. Over the last 25 years, from Bosnia to Rwanda to Syria, the U.N.'s impotence has allowed hundreds of thousands of innocent people to die. Those deaths haunt the U.N.'s pristine corridors.

Yet incompetence is far from the U.N.'s only issue.

The organization is also hugely wasteful...

Of course, if the U.N. doesn't want to reform, then that also okay.

In that case, European governments - those who regard themselves as the world's great peacemakers - can make up the difference."