WASHINGTON -- With yesterday's landmark speech, Paul Martin tacitly acknowledged what Canada's foreign policy establishment has refused to accept for decades: that the United Nations is a failure, for which there is no solution.

The Prime Minister's proposed alternative is a new international body, the G-20 summit of world leaders, representative of North and South, developed and developing, rich and poor: a working group unfettered by the UN's bureaucracy and its anachronistic Security Council.

It is a bold, though perhaps unworkable plan. But however it is ultimately greeted by the world community, Mr. Martin's proposal at least recognizes and sets out to correct a fundamental flaw in Canadian foreign policy, one that has left us hostage to a dysfunctional world body whose interests are often irrelevant to Canada's...