In May 2007, Zimbabwe was elected to chair the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development. It was a novel choice, as "sustainable" wasn't exactly the first word most people would use to describe the course President Robert Mugabe has charted for his southern African nation.

Radical economic policies imposed by the revolutionary-turned-strongman had systematically destroyed Zimbabwe, plunging a once relatively prosperous country of some 12 million people into destitution. Farm productivity had fallen three-quarters for some crops; the U.N. World Food Program found that 3.3 million people were at risk of hunger, and nearly as many had fled to find work and refuge elsewhere. There was also the inconvenient fact that Mugabe's environment and tourism minister, Francis Nheme, who would represent Zimbabwe on the commission, was banned from traveling to the European Union on account of EU sanctions. But the Zimbabweans had firm African support, so there was little that other U.N. members could do but look on in horror.

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The U.N.'s relationship with autocracy has always been fraught, but the organization has only grown more schizophrenic toward repressive rulers like Mugabe since the fall of the Berlin Wall, becoming more openly pro-democracy even as it has remained at times astonishingly accommodating of dictators. It's true that the U.N.'s commendable corps of experts has provided important technical assistance for elections in dozens of developing countries taking halting steps toward democracy in recent years. And occasional furors do erupt over the more egregious cases of U.N. dictator-coddling, as when Libya -- and other less notorious but repressive countries such as Angola, Mauritania, and Qatar -- joined the Human Rights Council, or when UNESCO decided to name a scientific prize after Equatorial Guinea's kleptocratic leader. But most of the U.N. system remains a safe haven, offering an imprimatur of legitimacy that dictators often can't find elsewhere.

It's a safe haven that has existed from the U.N.'s earliest days. In his 1946 address to the General Assembly's first session, U.S. President Harry Truman spoke eloquently of the four freedoms -- freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear -- enshrined in the U.N. Charter. But democracy was never on the list. Forged in the aftermath of World War II and counting the Soviet Union among its founding members, the organization's primary aim was to resolve conflicts, not meddle in countries' internal affairs. And though Truman spoke of the need for justice for all in his address, he was also quite clear that judgments were not to be made about the relative advantages of one sort of government. "To permit the United Nations to be broken into irreconcilable parts by different political philosophies," he said, "would bring disaster."

The U.N. also welcomed decolonization in the developing world -- any country that won independence from its former masters was automatically considered sovereign and invited to join. In this, it was remarkably successful. The wave of decolonization that swept through Asia and Africa in the 1950s and 1960s was the largest transfer of power in human history and a surprisingly peaceful one, all things considered -- the European colonizers, particularly Britain and France, were simply exhausted after World War II, and the United States was happy to have its new tool of international statecraft supervise the dismantling of Old World empires.

But for the new countries, U.N. membership came with surprisingly few strings attached. Whether the fledgling nation actually ruled its own territory, could defend itself, or had a government supported by the people it governed had no bearing on its legitimacy in the organization's eyes. And per Truman's early caution, no questions were asked when the nominal democracies in many Asian and African countries at the dawn of independence broke down. As the developing world increasingly came under the rule of military juntas, one-party systems, and other forms of authoritarianism, the U.N. accordingly became a place dictators were welcomed and outrageous abuses were ignored. No matter how loathed by their people, ghastly rulers like Uganda's Idi Amin could make use of the U.N. platform and continue to participate in U.N. activities even as they oversaw massive violations of human rights.

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