The U.N. Needs a Little Help From Its Friends : Overhaul the world organization, which is badly managed and tends to react rather than take action.

I remember, as a young college graduate driving through small towns in Texas 30 years ago, seeing billboards saying “Get the U.S. out of the U.N.” Then, the United Nations was worrisome to many Americans caught up in Cold War anxiety, a place where communists were members and even had veto power in the Security Council.

Today “the Commies” are gone, and so is the vitriolic hatred. Now the United Nations is threatened by indifference. Nearing its 50th birthday, the United Nations is somewhat flabby and out of shape. It needs an overhaul, and it needs a new generation to become excited about its possibilities.

In the United States, we have come to see the United Nations as a crisis manager, to be called on to swoop in when we can no longer watch international suffering on television without feeling that we are doing something about it. Or to pass a resolution supporting military action when the United States does not want to be criticized for going it alone.

That role is a far cry from the visionary dreams of the U.N. founders, who saw it as an instrument to support a world without war and to move countries and families out of poverty. The current movement for reform at the United Nations is coming most loudly from those who want it to thrive and adapt to the post-Cold War realities. That renewal movement recently picked up an important advocate.

Last month, President Clinton spoke to the General Assembly proposing a “year of renewal” at the United Nations. He talked of planning for the next 50 years, and suggested having a “civilian rapid-response force for humanitarian conflicts” and a “ready, efficient and capable” peacekeeping force. He seemed prepared for the United States to roll up its sleeves and participate in that much-needed U.N. overhaul.

Clinton’s commitment to U.N. renewal carries with it the possibility of revitalizing an organization too important to be allowed to shrivel into a debating society. The United Nations, in its current configuration, would fail a professional management scrutiny. There are overlapping responsibilities in different agencies. There is a struggle for turf protection and there has been a failure to include women in senior management. One of the biggest problems is that it has become too reactive. CNN’s cameras are setting the humanitarian agenda. There are people suffering horribly all over the globe, but too often the relief effort is directed to the area where the cameras have gone and others are ignored.

Among those who know the United Nations best and care most about its survival, there is motivated talk about changing the old ways. This month’s issue of Foreign Affairs magazine has several articles about ways to make the United Nations more efficient in peacekeeping and mediation. More effective U.N. humanitarian response is the subject of Ford Foundation studies, and political journals discuss ways to change the outdated Security Council membership to better reflect today’s world.

This is Clinton’s moment for leadership. As the world’s current reigning superpower, U.S. involvement is critical for U.N. change. The President should work on reforming the United Nations in the light of how history--not tomorrow’s headlines--will judge his tenure. If we were creating the United Nations today, how would we shape it? What would we have it do? Where would it get funding?

Most of us want to leave the world a better place. That was the motivation of the founding U.N. members, who adopted a charter that begins, “We the peoples of the United Nations are determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights and to promote social progress.”

The United Nations can be more effective in working toward those goals, but it needs help from its friends and leadership from the United States.