The skepticism about the United Nations being voiced today by many Americans, including members of Congress, is rooted in American history and a belief in individual liberty, Bolton says. These opinions "must be understood by policymakers in other countries," he says, to give them "realistic expectations" about the important but limited role the United Nations can play in international affairs in the foreseeable future. Bolton is the senior vice president of the American Enterprise Institute. During the Bush administration, he was assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs.

For many around the world, including close friends and allies of the United States, the skepticism of many Americans, especially members of Congress, about the United Nations is puzzling. In virtually every other nation, support for the United Nations at both the popular and policymaking levels is almost unquestioned, at least rhetorically. According to the conventional wisdom, assessed contributions are paid regularly and fully, many people aspire to work in U.N. agencies, and the United Nations is perceived as a higher and better institution than the nation-state.

The contrasting attitudes of American skeptics are unique to the United States, deep-rooted, and will not change any time in the near future. Skepticism about the United Nations is another aspect of what scholars have termed "American exceptionalism," the idea that the United States is, simply stated, different from other countries.

I completely agree, and I would like to explain here why that difference accounts for the opposition and hesitancy about the United Nations being voiced in Congress and among segments of the American public. I strongly believe that these opinions must be better understood by policy makers in other countries, who do themselves, and even the United Nations, a grave disservice by listening only to American supporters of the United Nations.

Failure to understand the opinions of American critics leads inevitably to the wrongheaded view that the problems facing the United Nations today are primarily monetary, caused by the fact that the United States and other countries are withholding part of their assessed contributions. In fact, the Clinton administration itself seems to assert that, if only Congress would appropriate enough money, reform would sweep the United Nations. But this facile "solution" does not take into account the fact that the U.N.'s real problem today is a crisis of legitimacy, not of money, and it was caused, in part, by grave doubts about the world organization within the United States.

First, the entire history of the United States, from the first colonists through the Revolution, and forward until today, has been infused with a distrust of government and a belief in individual liberty. The United States is a land of lower taxes, more private property, less government regulation and subsidy, greater freedom of speech and press, more toleration of diverse religious expression, and on and on. Although other individual countries may best the United States in one or another of these categories, in the aggregate, there is no real contest.

Because Americans generally are skeptical about their own government, can it be any surprise that many are less than enthusiastic about the United Nations, an organization that includes 184 other governments? Moreover, the principle business of the United Nations is governmental business, legitimately so in most cases, but it is certainly rare to find genuine capitalists walking the U.N. halls. This deep philosophical disjunction between the prevailing ethos of the United Nations and the fundamental American approach to governance is not something that will change in the foreseeable future.

Secondly, Americans well remember the abuse heaped upon them, their country, and their values at the United Nations during the period 1960-90. Although it was member governments heaping the abuse, not the United Nations as an organization, the image created is durable. One can say "the world has changed," as indeed it dramatically has since those days, but the hostility engendered over approximately three decades will not dissipate overnight.

Consider two examples. In 1975, the U.N. General Assembly adopted Resolution 3379, which branded "Zionism" as a form of "racism." For an overwhelming majority of Americans, this resolution represented such a fundamental repudiation of the U.N.'s basic principles that U.S. withdrawal became a viable alternative to being subject to endless, repetitive unthinking abuse. Indeed, it took 16 years until, after much effort, the Bush administration in 1991 was able to obtain repeal of the repulsive language of Resolution 3379 in 1991.

The other example is the concept of the "New International Economic Order" (supplemented by its close cousin, the "New World Information and Communication Order"). Although the New International Economic Order had many policy aspects, the one most widely understood in the United States was the notion that the developed world had an obligation to transfer resources to the Third World. Not only was the "obligation" itself rejected by the United States, on a broad bipartisan basis, but so too was the underlying economic theory that ascribed the problems of the less developed world to the capitalist system. While the New International Economic Order now lies buried, its memory lives in Washington.

Thirdly, even in more recent times, the United Nations has been associated with major policy failures that have made it an unattractive vehicle through which to conduct American foreign policy. In the area of peacekeeping, for instance, profoundly important American foreign policy priorities have run contrary to peacekeeping missions mandated by the Security Council. While these missions, such as Somalia, may have been supported at the time by the administration in power, they are now unlikely to be supported by congressional majorities in the near future.

In the case of Somalia, the Clinton administration wanted to test out its new United Nations policy initiative of "assertive multilateralism" -- an approach that was intended to distinguish the administration dramatically from the Bush administration's less forward-leaning policy. Accordingly, President Clinton endorsed the so-called "nation building" approach in Somalia, involving a large and intrusive U.N. presence, strongly and visibly supported by American military and high-level political participation.

However, when 18 American soldiers were killed in Mogadishu, President Clinton's policy of "assertive multilateralism" also died. Congress erupted in criticism, and the administration could not even adequately articulate what its Somalia policy was.

Even the fate of former Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali demonstrates the difficulties the United Nations faces in contemporary American politics. A fair outside observer would conclude that Boutros-Ghali was prepared to follow the American policy lead on "assertive multilateralism" in 1993. Subsequently, however, President Clinton turned away from that policy, and Boutros-Ghali was left, in effect, out on a limb.

When Boutros-Ghali was later subjected to criticism within the United States for his leadership of the United Nations, President Clinton promised to veto his re-election. The obvious fact that he was competing with Republican U.N. skeptics demonstrates compellingly where President Clinton thought the balance of congressional opinion was on that issue, and on the United Nations generally.

What, then, does the foregoing analysis mean for the United Nations, and for America's role within the organization? It means primarily that the rest of the world should have realistic expectations that the United Nations has a limited role to play in international affairs for the foreseeable future. While that role can be important, it must be seen in perspective. Thus, during the Persian Gulf crisis, the U.N. Security Council served as a critical element in developing the global coalition that opposed and reversed Saddam Hussein's unprovoked aggression against Kuwait. Not since the Korean War had the United Nations been so central to the handling of a major international crisis, and never before had American diplomacy been so focused on the United Nations. Unfortunately, however, many people drew the wrong lessons from the U.N.'s role in the Persian Gulf, thus contributing in part to the debacle in Somalia.

I believe that the United Nations can be a useful instrument in the conduct of American foreign policy. That is why, for example, even as a private citizen, I am willing to assist my former boss, former Secretary of State Jim Baker, in his capacity as the U.N. secretary general's recently appointed personal envoy to assess the situation in the Western Sahara. Secretary Baker and I met with Kofi Annan on April 2, and we will be travelling to the region, at the secretary general's request, to assess the situation there, and to make recommendations to him and the Security Council.

No one, however, should be under any illusions that American support for the United Nations as one of several options for implementing American foreign policy translates into unlimited support for the world organization. That is not true now, and it will not be true for a long time to come, if ever.