The New York Times today published an op-ed by Vladimir Putin, and it is an epic example of trolling, with the former KGB officer's lofty language about preserving peace and closing cheap shot about the notion of American exceptionalism. I don't fault the Times at all for publishing it, but anyone who believes the Russian president's words and sentiments are sincere has been taken for a ride.

The most galling part of the piece, though, is Putin's professed reverence for "the universal internaional organization -- the United Nations" and its role in maintaining global order:

"No one wants the United Nations to suffer the fate of the League of Nations, which collapsed because it lacked real leverage. This is possible if influential countries bypass the United Nations and take military action without Security Council authorization.

"The potential strike by the United States against Syria, despite strong opposition from many countries and major political and religious leaders, including the pope, will result in more innocent victims and escalation, potentially spreading the conflict far beyond Syria's borders. A strike would increase violence and unleash a new wave of terrorism. It could undermine multilateral efforts to resolve the Iranian nuclear problem and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and further destabilize the Middle East and North Africa. It could throw the entire system of international law and order out of balance. ...

"From the outset, Russia has advocated peaceful dialogue enabling Syrians to develop a compromise plan for their own future. We are not protecting the Syrian government, but international law. We need to use the United Nations Security Council and believe that preserving law and order in today’s complex and turbulent world is one of the few ways to keep international relations from sliding into chaos. The law is still the law, and we must follow it whether we like it or not. Under current international law, force is permitted only in self-defense or by the decision of the Security Council. Anything else is unacceptable under the United Nations Charter and would constitute an act of aggression."

Ahem.

The reason many American conservatives have long believed -- and now are joined, at least on the issue of Syria, by President Obama and others on the American left -- the U.N. is ineffective and irrelevant is precisely because of the way Putin and his counterparts in China and other authoritarian nations have manipulated the institution and its processes. Russia and China routinely use their vetoes to prevent the Security Council from taking even quasi-meaningful action on important matters. (For even more chutzpah, check out the part of Putin's op-ed in which he expresses concern that Israel could end up being attacked because of the Syrian crisis; the United States often has to resort to its own Security Council veto to prevent Israel haters at the U.N. from condemning Israel, or worse.)

The U.N. General Assembly, as a body in which each member state is an equal peer of all the others, is for all practical purposes a club of autocrats. That's what happens when the majority of countries in the world are either not democratic or only partly democratic. The Security Council, for the reasons I've already outlined, is little better. Rather than maintaining some kind of global order, the U.N. has devolved into an institution which promotes its own pet agenda without regard to the democratic processes of those member states that do have political freedom. There is a reason we hear from time to time proposals that the U.S. and other Western nations abandon the U.N. to create a genuine global club of democracies. (Not that I expect that to happen anytime soon.)

It is understandable, then, that Putin would defend the U.N.: It serves the interests of him and his fellow autocrats much more than those of the free world. But that's exactly why the U.N. is increasingly body that is irrelevant, and often antithetical, to creating the kind of world Americans favor.