The next feud between America’s freedom and democracy hawks and old United Nations diplomats will likely develop this week with the release of a much-anticipated report.

Ordered by Secretary-General Annan, it was prepared by a panel of 16 former world movers and shakers now in their 70s, who will undoubtedly be hailed at Turtle Bay as wise men, and derided elsewhere as has-beens.

Men who held previous posts like Russian foreign minister and Saddam champion Yevgeny Primakov, British U.N. envoy David Hannay, or current Arab League chief Amr Moussa, are not going to excite anyone looking for fresh insights into today’s state of world affairs.

The one American on the panel, Brent Scowcroft, will undoubtedly be described as a close friend of the Bush family, and Condoleezza Rice’s mentor to boot. But this is certainly not W’s father’s Oldsmobile and Ms. Rice has come a long way since her days with George H. W. Bush.

While the report itself will be officially introduced only later this week, enough details have already been leaked to learn of the staleness of its outlook on the top issue of the day, which was once defined by Ms. Rice as the situation where the only smoking gun might be a mushroom cloud.

From press reports and U.N. conversations, it seems that when it comes to the doctrine of pre-emption, the panel hewed very close to the old script of the current U.N. charter, which allows for two types of military action: either in response to an attack or, if an attack is imminent, only with a permission slip from the Security Council.

That type of global test became a major headache in 2003. And while America, Britain, most of Eastern Europe, Japan, and others believe that existing council resolutions that were already on the books – specifically the one known as 1441 – were enough to make action in Iraq legal, kibitzers led by old Europeans, with Mr. Annan and the rest of the world egging them on, insist it is not.

Mr. Annan hoped that by creating the panel he could take the U.N. from the current impasse, which led it to what he called a “fork in the road,” back into the kind of prominence promised when it was created in the aftermath of World War II. But if anything, applying the reported recommendations of these last-century men (and two women) is bound to increase the U.N.’s futility.

Currently, any action against a threat coming from a nuclear-emboldened terror champion has to get a nod from a Security Council composed of five veto-wielding nations that compete for international influence, and from most of the other 10, many of whom represent unseemly regimes. If that seems hard, just wait for the new and improved 25-member council.

There are several suggestions in the report on how the council could better reflect the face of the world than the current version, which is based on the balance of power in the 1950s and, since China was added in 1971, the nuclear powers during most of the second half of the 20th century.

Just imagine council debates when a new tier is added to the mix. Those semi permanent seats will be held by economic powerhouses such as Japan, Germany, Brazil, and perhaps India, along with some affirmative-action candidates from frustrated populous nations, like Egypt, which possess neither military nor economic prowess.

Mr. Scowcroft’s Bush administration was hailed in the early 1990s for weaving a successful coalition from such competing forces. It did so, however, at the price of allowing Saddam to remain in power, declare victory, and embolden Anti-Americanism across the region. It also used the easiest way to coax Arab states to America’s side: compromising Israel.

Mr. Scowcroft and company now offer a similar bargain, according to details of the new report that appeared in the Economist: Arabs have so far opposed a legal definition of terrorism at the U.N., cynically demanding a clause exempting acts of terror against Israel. To persuade Mr. Moussa to drop that opposition the report calls for more rigorous enforcement of the Geneva Conventions in areas under occupation.

To avoid an American veto, such recommendations will have to be approved by the Senate, which in the next session is bound to grow even more skeptical about new global tests, as well as the State Department, where Ms. Rice seems ready to force new ideas on holdovers from Mr. Scowcroft’s days.

Mr. Avni covers the United Nations for The New York Sun.