Writing in Turkish newspaper Today’s Zaman, UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon warns that increasingly more countries seem to look ‘inward rather than toward a shared future.’

‘I see a danger of retreating from the progress we have made, particularly in the realm of economic development and fairness in sharing the fruits of global growth,’ he wrote.

He went on to explain what the United Nations had done to help especially the poor in recent years. Quite some of its plans, he argued, were successful but ‘it is dangerous to think that the UN can address today’s complex problems without the full backing of its member states. In Darfur, for example, we face a continuing challenge in meeting deployment deadlines. We lack critical assets and personnel. If not matched by resources, mandates are empty. And now all of our work — financing for development, social spending in rich nations and poor, the Millennium Development Goals, peacekeeping — is endangered by the global financial crisis.’

In other words, the United Nations has been successful but not as successful as it could have been, and if the financial crisis becomes worse – which is more than possible – it will have even greater difficulty doing what it is supposed to do.

‘The foundation of all the UN’s work is accountability. We need to change the UN’s culture. We must become faster, more flexible and more effective — more modern. We must replace our current system of contracts and conditions of service, which is dysfunctional and demoralizing,’ Ban wrote.

It is not for the first time that a leading United Nations officer criticizes his own organization, but it did not happen that often either that the secretary general is willing to admit that many problems are caused by the UN itself, rather than by external factors.

The UN must indeed modernize. Perhaps more than anything, though, the UN has to reassess its role in world affairs. Should it be a debating club, or should real, effective policies about controversial subjects be crafted there? Should it function as a charity, or as the main diplomatic tool for governments to resolve conflicts?

First its goals have to be clear and, above all, realistic. Then the UN can and should modernize.