The spiraling war in Syria might be the crisis that breaks the UN

From Mali to Syria, the U.N. is struggling to make or keep peace. But despite occasional bouts of diplomatic frustration, the Security Council trundles onward with these processes. Having watched the U.N. at close quarters since 2005, I often wonder if it could ever screw up badly enough to make the world take notice…

There are historical examples of major crises that have led to massive losses of confidence in the U.N. The failure of peacekeepers to save civilians in Somalia, Rwanda and the Balkans in the 1990s almost spelled the end of blue-helmet operations. The Iraq crisis in 2003 left U.N. officials and diplomats dazed and disoriented.

It took the institution some painful years to recover from both episodes. U.N. officials and friendly diplomats crafted reform programs to get multilateralism back on track. It is possible that the U.N. is now on the cusp of a jolting crisis in the Middle East that could create a decisive breakdown in New York.

Over the past week, the danger of the Syrian war morphing into an all-out Middle East conflict has spiked…

The U.N. can endure many crises, but a total meltdown in the Middle East would be the diplomatic equivalent of ‘the big one’ in California.