The US diplomatic corps may be highly professional, but at the highest levels it is just a way to give campaign donors a paid vacation.

The EU has, in many ways, become an elephant cemetery of sorts, at least as far as Spanish political parties are concerned. The losers of national political battles get sent to the EU Commision or the Parliament (Almunia, Borrell, Vidal Quadras, Mayor Oreja). The UK does the same, just look at Peter Mandelson.

So yes, not only is diplomat a fancy word for spy, but diplomacy is a dirty and corrupt. That doesn't mean that international institutions don't play a role, or don't play it well.

The current woes of the UN have a lot to do with the fact that the US does no longer control the international system that they set up after WWII (same with the WTO, for instance) and wants to dismantle it. The whole oild for food scandal (and the reversal of blame for the 1998 inspector crisis) are just for internal US consumption, to justify arrears or outright  undermining of the institution (a la Bolton) to the US public.

Which leads me back to the suggestion that the rest of the world should just increase their contributions by 28% to make the US's 22% unnecessary. After all, the UN already operated without US funds for several years in the 1980's.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman