I thought it was a jab at liberals for holding contrary viewpoints. On the one hand the US must change "progressively" and on the other the UN must stay the same.
Perle I think we should begin with trying to restructure the United Nations. It is an institution set up in the aftermath of a great event and thoroughly dominated by the immediate memory of that event. It would be rare for an organization so constituted to function effectively 60 years later in an entirely different world without change. And yet there has been no change to the charter of the United Nations since it was founded. It is not a living constitution like the American constitution, interpreted to reflect the times.
This is no rhetorical point. Perle clearly believes in a situational Constitution and organizing the UN to be capable of violating national sovereignty. That would include ours.
There is nothing in the UN charter now that authorizes collective preemption. That has to change if the UN is going to be effective and relevant. That would solve the problem of the United States having to act alone.
Perle wants the UN to be "effective and relevant." No thank you. It's done enough damage.
The problem with the UN is not just structural, it is principle. Concentrating power in one entity without recourse for citizens virtually guarantees a lack of accountability to the people. Look at the way the US Constitution is being treated like expensive toilet paper. The Federal government ignored its ennumerated powers almost before the ink on the Constitution was dry. If even the US, comprised of superior structure to the UN and manned with a cultured and educated citizenry, proceeded to develop institutions that violated their accounability to and social contract with the people, how then could the UN, NO MATTER HOW IT WAS STRUCTURED, comprised of a majority of nations with no history of liberty and controlled by tyrants, EVER constitute itself to be accountable to the governed?
It can't be done, because with global government there can be no recourse. To make such an attempt is paradoxical. Unless nations have sovereignty, they cannot exercise or be held accountable to the will of their people. If the rules must be the same for all nations, then no nation is sovereign. All power would drift to centralized authority, and we all know how badly that works. It's global socialism.
Extranational authority is thus necessarily destructive to the liberty of citizens and accountability of government AT ALL LEVELS. To make such an attempt is therefore foolish and destructive. Crooks, thugs, and manipulators alike may want a system like that, but I don't. No matter how beneficent we as a nation are, and even if we had we the power to order the UN to meet our expectations, it would be akin to an attempt to impose liberty. The power to impose liberty is the power to destroy all respect for individual unalienable rights.