Analyzing the United Nations is rather like being a nervous seismologist in California.
Geological experts are accustomed to tremors and small quakes along the San Andreas Fault, which bisects America’s most heavily populated state. But they are on alert for a much more powerful earthquake that could wreck some of the country’s most prosperous cities. Some say this will come soon.
U.N. experts are likewise hardened to the regular crises that shake the organization but do not upend it.