The United Nations has an able executive department. Its system includes the International Court of Justice. With its peacekeeping forces and prerogative of laying down economic sanctions, it has the beginning of a capability to enforce decisions. The U.N. Charter is a solid foundation for a system of world governance, especially in light of its reasonable provisions for amendment.

What the United Nations lacks is a legislature. The General Assembly is a "town meeting of the world," nothing more. The global community must rely mostly on trying to establish new international law, a frustratingly tedious process resulting in agreements often reduced to a very low common denominator.

A fairly simple proposal could solve this problem by transforming the General Assembly into a genuine would legislature. It is called the binding triad system for global decision-making and would require amendments to only two articles of the U.N. Charter.

The first amendment would change the voting system in the General Assembly to a weighted arrangement based on three factors. One vote would be taken and that vote would be counted three different ways (using computers, this process is not cumbersome or difficult). First would be one nation, one vote; the second would be proportioned by population; and the third by contributions to the U.N. budget (closely related to GNP). To pass, a set majority, say two-thirds, would have to be attained in each of the three calculations.

The second amendment would make General Assembly decisions binding, and enforceable by peacekeeping forces and/or economic sanctions.

Topically, one can speculate on how this revolutionary new system would function in regard to the many questions affecting the sovereignty-autonomy-subjugation of various groups around the world: e.g., Lithuania, the Kurd community, Kashmir, Cyprus, Ireland, the West Bank and Gaza, Quebec, the Sudan, among many other places. The binding triad system would offer possibilities of approaching these problems on a practical problem-solving basis.

The bottom line, after making these two changes in the U.N. Charter, is that the planet would have a rational decision-making system to cope with all manner of global problems -- arms control and disarmament, the environment, regional conflicts, human rights, economic questions and social issues such as terrorism and drugs.