UN shirking responsibility?

Should hostile dictators be afraid of the UN?  Does the UN's past failures to address autocracies enable future dictators?  Are UN sanctions truly "sanctions" or are they easily bypassed by a determined ruler?

These questions must be addressed when discussing detecting and stopping cheating on a world scale.  For example, the UN attempted numerous times to send in "inspectors" before the Iraq war.  Sometimes they were allowed with restrictions, sometimes they were forbidden.  Was this effort by Saddam an attempt to prove that he, as a dictator, could overpower the world's security council?  

Although there are many points that are beyond the scope of this quick blog entry, I would argue that the UN's failure to take decisive action, and carry through with it, may have forced the US's hand in the Iraq war.  The UN effectively shirked their responsibility to hold governments accountable to the norms established by the people of the world.  The UN's unwillingness to effectively punish "cheating" created a state where the "norms" of society were at risk.  Had the US not intervened, those norms may have been lost to society.

It is somewhat troubling that the US plays the policeman of the world, but it is somewhat comforting to know that we will stand for the norms of our society and not let them be destroyed by a few that are after their own prosperity at the cost of all.