Stefan Halper

About the author: Stefan Halper, a former White House and State Department official, is a nationally syndicated columnist and an analyst for the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington, D.C.

The United Nations currently receives billions of dollars each year from its member states and conducts development, aid, and peacekeeping projects all over the world without stringent oversight of either its projects or its accounts. Consequently, abuses range from incompetence to corruption to outright theft. If it is to remain in existence, the United Nations must be reformed to ensure that it is held financially and politically accountable for its actions.

The United Nations is under increasing attack by critics in the United States and other countries. At the heart of the organization's mounting problems is an almost total...