The United Nations is our collective instrument for organizing a volatile and dangerous world on a more predictable and orderly basis than would be possible without the existence of the organization. As the year that saw war in Iraq draw to a close, the future and prestige of the U.N. is under scrutiny as never before. It is seen far too often as a bloated, high-cost, junket-loving irrelevance to the real needs and concerns of the nations of the world. Yet most people still look to the U.N. as our best hope for a shared future, especially if it could somehow be reformed to reflect today's needs and realities.

Speaking to the U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 23, Secretary General Kofi Annan noted that "we have come to a fork in the road . . . a moment no less decisive than 1945 itself, when the United Nations was founded." Accordingly, he announced his intention to form a panel of eminent persons to make recommendations on significant political and structural reforms to bring the U.N. into line with current threats and challenges to peace and security. The 16-member panel, announced subsequently, includes Sadako Ogata of Japan.

In most peoples' minds, talk of U.N. reform implies either the need to tackle the problem of a polemic, wasteful organization, staffed by self-serving, overpaid bureaucrats who provide little more than a talk-fest, or the need to make surgical reforms of a Security Council that is 1945 vintage in composition, opaque in its workings and obstructionist in its effect. The first need is caricature, the second exaggerated. But perceptions matter, and there is enough need for reform for harsh perceptions to persist and damage the organization.