Why Do the United Nations Annoy the United States?

The United States has, to a large extent, inspired the creation of the United Nations and the idea that an 'international community' could have a legitimacy superior to that of the states which compose it. However, in recent years, the United Nations have been the target of caustic criticism by the United States. Their mutual relationship has changed from the hope, following the first Persian Gulf War, that the UN might finally perform the role envisaged by its founders, to the bitter quarrels of the late 1990s. However, since September 11, Americans think that the legitimacy of any international action comes from the participation to a system of democratic values rather than from the reproduction of the very imperfect world reality represented by the UN. The question now is whether the traumatized United States will maintain this idealistic vision of the international community, or whether it will move back to the realism that characterized most of its policy from 1945 to the 1990s. Adapted from the source document.