The United Nations served as a diplomatic alternative to open war with threats like the Soviet Union, operating on the principle that an enemy at least nominally engaged at the conference table will think twice before tyrannizing its neighbors. The Cold War, if you check your calendar, ended thirteen years ago. Whatever qualified success the U.N. brought then is inapplicable now. Our destiny doesn't lie in officious, international bodies that allow unelected representatives to administer policy to sovereign democracies - let alone representatives from dictatorships. Sudan and Syria, both repressive, brutal despotisms and at the epicenter of global terrorism, have been on the United Nations Committee for Human Rights. In May of 2001, the United States was briefly thrown off the committee. Libya currently chairs it. What more needs to be said?

Well, nothing does - the United Nations' last rites were given in March of 2003 when it couldn't enforce its thirteen-times-violated weapons resolutions against Ba'athist Iraq. Automatic inclusion, regardless of convictions, is poison for any alliance with noble intentions. That's why the Bush administration has begun to redefine the concept of international cooperation:

The media have barely noticed, but the Bush Administration has embarked on a burst of "multilateral" cooperation. It's called the Proliferation Security Initiative, and in only a few months of existence it has already had more success than the United Nations in controlling weapons of mass destruction.

Just ask Moammar Ghadafi. As the Journal reported last week, the Libyan strongman finally agreed to open his country's weapons sites to arms inspectors only after the U.S. and its PSI allies halted the illegal shipment of uranium-enrichment equipment headed for Libya's nuclear-arms program.

...The PSI offers a better way than traditional arms control to enforce global norms in the age of proliferating WMD. The PSI allies--11 and growing--have agreed to interdict shipments of WMD, delivery systems and related materials at sea, in the air and on land. The original 11 (see nearby box) have since been joined by Canada, Denmark, Norway, Singapore and Turkey, which are all offering military support. Meanwhile, more than 50 nations have signed on to PSI's principles and may be called on should their help be needed.

But don't mistake PSI for a multilateral institution in the conventional sense. There's no headquarters, no secretary-general, no talkfests--and, perhaps most important of all, no French or Russian veto. "PSI is an activity, not an organization," a senior Administration official tells us. It's an action-oriented group that "needs to be agile and move fast."

As PSI grows, the U.S. official contemplates "dozens of other countries participating" in dozens of different ways. Call it mix-and-match multilateralism. Countries participate or not, depending on the need at hand and on their own capabilities. The one common thread is U.S. leadership.

"[A]n activity, not an organization." That's an important distinction from the bureaucratic monolith on the East River, where countries are absorbed into a collective, rather than valued for their unique abilities and sovereign autonomy to better employ those national talents. Thus in the United Nations, intentions are what matter; in the Proliferation Security Initiative, intentions exist solely to bring results. And if no results are necessary, no global institutions are, either. The leadership of powerful, benevolent democracies is trusted - rather than despised, as in the United Nations - and considering the already sterling record for PSI, wisely so.