There is great wailing and concern that if the UN Security Council votes against military action against Iraq, and the United States and UK invade anyway, then that august body will become irrelevant. But, asks Walter Russell Mead, was it ever relevant to begin with?

Since 1945, the United States has sent troops into other countries with the prospect of combat more than 50 times; in the great majority, no Security Council approval was either asked or given. Past U.S. interventions without U.N. authorization include Vietnam; Haiti and Kosovo during the Clinton administration; Panama under the first President Bush; Grenada under President Reagan; and the ill-fated attack on Iran when Jimmy Carter was in the White House. In fact, from Harry Truman to the present, every U.S. president has intervened militarily abroad without the Security Council's blessing.

The United States may be a diplomatic cowboy, but we aren't riding the only horse on the range. Every permanent member of the U.N. Security Council has undertaken at least one war without the council's permission or endorsement. China attacked India in 1962 without a Security Council resolution, and again without a resolution attacked Vietnam in 1979. The Soviet Union intervened in Afghanistan, Czechoslovakia, East Germany and Hungary without going to the Security Council. Britain and France invaded Egypt in 1956 without informing, much less consulting with, the Security Council. More recently, both Britain and France have sent troops to Kosovo and various African destinations without council advice or consent.

The plain if slightly sad fact is that from the day the U.N. Security Council first met in 1946, no great power has ever stayed out of a war because the council voted against it, and no great military power ever got into a war because the Security Council ordered it to.

Is the prestige and importance of the UN Security Council is just an agreed-upon lie? If so, and if that lie no longer serves our purposes, we could very well be better off either overhauling it, or scrapping it altogether and starting over. The United States and the world would be better served by an international security accord made up of nations that truly prize freedom, and have the courage and principle to promote and defend that freedom.

Then put a sign outside the door fo the assembly hall: "You must be at least this free to go on this ride."