[H]e is obsessed with the United Nations and our "alliances." In something like 40 minutes of his having the microphone in the debate, Sen. Kerry alluded to the U.N., alliances, allies, and summits fully 27 separate times, about one reference to every minute-and-a-third, always charging President Bush with ignoring them. This means something, and what it means first of all is that Sen. Kerry has confidence that the U.N. (nine mentions) is still a force for good in the world. But the U.N. was designed to protect the territorial integrity of established states, to protect Poland, so to speak, from Germany or Indonesia from the Netherlands. The most disastrous wars now being waged, however, are the near-genocides within established borders, like the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and at this very moment in the Sudan.

As the U.N. did nothing when Saddam Hussein was murdering Iraq's Kurds and Shiites in the hundreds of thousands, it has been less than passive in these cases, passing vaguely reproachful resolutions reluctantly and, in any case, without effect. (The first precedent for these refusals of responsibility was the U.N.'s siding with Nigeria against the Ibos of Biafra 45 years ago, and now you have Nigeria, a monument to brutality, corruption and religious violence, also the main power in the African Union, which is put forward as the apt gendarmerie for Darfur.) The U.N.'s very structure makes it hostage to the five permanent members of the Security Council and to their particular, often pecuniary, interests. (France holds one of these post-World War II "big power" seats only because de Gaulle persuaded Churchill and FDR to pretend that the French actually fought the Nazis. This is a seat that would more aptly be filled by India.) The very essence of the international system is very different from what it once was, and Sen. Kerry cannot or will not see it.

Mr. Kerry claimed in the debate that, had the U.S. gone back to the Security Council on Iraq yet again (and, presumably, again), our "allies" would have finally supported the war in Iraq. He is smoking weed. Our "allies," in this case Russia and France, were actually functional allies, really partners of the Baathist regime in Baghdad, and these two states had been mobilizing to have sanctions lifted from Saddam which they were about to succeed in doing. President Bush did not have the wit to point this out. It is true, nonetheless. And the U.N., somehow seen as a potential arbiter in Iraq, does not have the courage of well . . . those two young Italian pacifist women who were held hostage by political gangsters even though they were against the American presence. When U.N. headquarters was bombed, Kofi Annan immediately pulled his staff out and they haven't returned. He'll put them back when they are perfectly safe, which is to say when they are not needed.

There is a stifling formalism to Sen. Kerry's conception about how one does diplomacy. He likes summits (three mentions), as if they are not commonly mere stage sets for grandstanding. He also likes special envoys -- James Baker and Jimmy Carter in particular -- as if they were what was needed to restart negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, although he did not mention this hackneyed and failed fixative on Thursday night, failed not only in the Holy Land but in Ireland, too.

Sen. Kerry is allergic to force, as we all should be, at least somewhat. But there are times when force is necessary, even unilateral force or force deployed by a small cohort of nations. Sen. Kerry seemed to praise Bush père for the limits he put on the ambitions of the 1991 Gulf War, that it did not target Saddam. But Sen. Kerry -- it is important to recall -- voted even against that war although it was backed by a far larger coalition of countries, many Arab states included.

Multilateralism is not a panacea in and of itself. When you are dealing with global warming, multilateralism is apt, even indispensable. Unilateralism or a small band of countries is irrelevant. But would you really have wanted the clumsy and brutal Russian army, its officers veterans of the first Afghan war, in the Iraq war? Can you imagine a French battalion under the discipline of an American commander? The fact is that there are only a few countries equipped to wage precise modern warfare, and that's another reason why some countries refuse to go to televised wars: They don't want to be exposed as being militarily obsolete.

Still, Sen. Kerry promises that, if he is elected, he will be able to bring both more countries and the U.N. itself into Iraq. And what would be their motivation? To let American divisions out? This is a fantasy, like his fantasy that his found allies would also put up money for the enterprise they and he have railed against.