NEW YORK – It’s not polite, as a general rule, to visit your hosts and criticize the way they do things. Unless, that is, you’re helping to pay the rent.

World leaders have spent the past week at the United Nations doing just that, convening at its grandiloquent headquarters to tell each other — and those who administer the planet's most prominent global institution — that the foundational pillars are cracked, outdated and not in good working order.

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Some version of this happens every year. It's part of the overall theater. Leaders point out the U.N.’s flaws and tell it to buckle down and get things done. Then, at the end of speeches, they congratulate themselves for doing important work and go home saying, effectively, “Good talk!” And the conversation pauses for a y

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