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Is the Bush Administration bent on wrecking the United Nations? This paper will essentially argue that the current US Administration has neither broken with the past tradition of American policy vis-à-vis the UN, nor been bent on dismantling the international organization itself. Rather, it is engaged in a long-standing American project that aims at using the UN to serve its national interests. If it does not – as has often been the case over the past few years – the Bush Administration, like many of its predecessors, is willing to revert to a well-tested alternative of declaring the UN irrelevant for the time being.