The International Institutions Most Worth Fixing

Its membership is obsolete, but no replacement carries comparable legal authority.

The rules still matter even as the dispute system and major powers ignore them.

Necessary in a crisis, still too closely associated with one economic worldview.

It has the scale for climate and development finance, but not yet the speed.

The next pandemic will need it, however badly the last one exposed its limits.

Nuclear verification looks dull until the alternative is guesswork.

The work matters. The funding model is permanently broken.

Selective reach weakens it, but abandoning accountability would be worse.

The continent needs a stronger union, not another outside power speaking for it.

Consensus keeps ASEAN together and keeps it from acting.

The right countries are there. Turning attendance into decisions is the problem.

Cross-border policing is indispensable and unusually vulnerable to political abuse.