I thought you headed out with a rip on the UN.

Well it is a huge topic, and involves a lot of apples-to-oranges adapters.

Like bringing a mass murderer into the United Nations at its founding, or the EU choosing to reject a free nation to please a communist slave state.

You should not blame the UN for this, since the UN was not created by the UN. To a large extent, the US created the UN, so if you don't like USSR being there, then much of the blame belongs here.

However... I think that the charter of the UN calls for all nations of the world to be members. That's not a bad idea, I think. The UN is supposed to be a forum for the earth to resolve its differences. It is not supposed to be a military alliance of the good states.

NATO at its base was founded as an organization of free nations opposed to communist ones. There was never any question of a totalitarian communist state joining, so its integrity held up fairly well.

NATO was a military alliance designed to keep USSR from taking over Europe. If one of the European members turned communist (many did, according to you, I thought), they would not be kicked out of NATO. It was a practical alliance, not an ideological one.

Military alliances are easy to keep together when there is a deadly threat to counter. Let's see if NATO still exists in 25 years.

As for the EU vs. Taiwan story, Jeez! We've continually kicked Taiwan around in an effort to keep China from throwing a hissy. Try to have Bush mention the Republic of Taiwan in his next SOUA, if you don't believe me.

And the comparison of EU to NATO and UN, again: that's just weird. It is not (for the most part) a military alliance, and it is not a forum to resolve worldwide disputes like the UN. It is more like the US government, if our states all had wildly different governments and cultures, and didn't like or trust each other very much. Trying to cobble together a coherent foreign policy with a group like that must drive people nuts. I would guess that their policies would tend towards the very very cautious. How else could you ever come close to consensus?