Steven Den Beste has a typically long and insightful post on France and Germany's behavior towards the US. Towards the end he quotes Mark Tran in The Guardian:
In the worst case scenario, France would present the US with the awful predicament of having to override the nearest thing there is to a world cabinet.
Honestly, I never thought of the UN Security Council as a "cabinet". A cabinet is a council of political advisors. Advisors are subordinates. Implicitly, then Mr. Tran must be saying that the United States is the de facto leader of the UN and the rest of the Security Council are only its advisors.
I'm American, and I'm in favor of the war, and even I find that claim hard to swallow.
Perhaps the idea of a cabinet is different on the far side of the Atlantic. This feeds into den Beste's argument that the underlying problem is misunderstanding.
I know of no other country in which there is a separation of powers as there is in the U.S. The democracies of Europe are parliamentary democracies on what I would call the British model. "The government" means the majority party in parliament, or the set of parties which form the governing coalition. The Prime Minister is the head of the majority party or of the main party in the coalition.
Some European countries (for example, Finland and the Czech Republic) have a separately-elected executive. In both of these, the position is called the Presidency. But typically this person has only ceremonial duties, similar to those required of the monarch of England or Norway.
On paper, the Prime Minister in a parliamentary system wields an enormous amount of power. In practice, though, these systems do not rapidly degenerate into dictatorships. There is a check on the PM's power -- it's his cabinet, and ultimately the rank-and-file MPs who make up the government.
Usually, to become Prime Minister, a party leader has to do significant horse-trading with other members of his party. This usually involves the assignment of "plum" ministerial portfolios (cabinet positions) to political enemies or at least rivals. Thus we find Joschka Fischer, a Green, in the cabinet of Germany's Social Democrat PM Gerhard Schroeder. And we see that Jean Chretien's most likely successor as PM of Canada is Chretien's longtime political rival Paul Martin, formerly minister of Finance.
You know when trouble is brewing in a parliamentary government when members of the cabinet are publicly disagreeing with the PM. Cabinet members have influence in their party; if a cabinet member leaves the government, his followers will be annoyed. Prime Ministers can face a party revolt, where the members can call a leadership vote and replace the PM -- or even call a vote of no confidence, causing the government to fall and requiring new elections to be held.
The US system is different. To summarize the US system for foreign readers: the executive branch of government, which includes the military, the federal police agencies and most regulatory agencies, is under the control of the President. The legislative branch of the government -- the Congress, composed of the House of Representatives and the Senate -- makes laws, and that's it.
In the US system, once the President is elected, his position is secure for four years. (Barring impeachment, of course; but that's hard to do.) There's still some horse-trading in the selection of cabinet members, and payoffs to loyal factions in the party. But a cabinet member's political relevance in the US is insignificant, really. A cabinet member who disagrees with administration policies too publicly and too often will be asked to resign; the government will continue without him. There's no embarrassment in the President overriding a cabinet member: the President is in charge, and the cabinet member is the advisor.
Which brings me back to the initial quote. Let's have it again:
In the worst case scenario, France would present the US with the awful predicament of having to override the nearest thing there is to a world cabinet.
Suppose it were true that the UN Security council functions as the cabinet to a world government. What would this mean?
From the US perspective, that's a non-predicament. (What's France's portfolio, anyway? Don't say primates capitulards.) France, UN cabinet minister for whatever, says no on invading Iraq; and the US (leading) overrides.
Of course, from the European perspective, it is indeed embarrassing. There is open disagreement in the world cabinet. France, a senior minister, may not oppose a "government" initiative -- perhaps the leader (the U.S.) will fall from power. Certainly, in this view, the U.S. would lose face.
In fact, the UN Security Council is nothing like a cabinet in either the European sense nor the American sense. The UN will never be a government because it doesn't have a leader, or a legislature, or an executive arm capable of fulfilling the main duties of a government (hint: does the UN have a credible monopoly on force?) So comparing the UNSC to a world cabinet is nonsensical.
But it does highlight a difference in the American and European perspectives on this situation. And it helps to explain why France thinks France is more important that we think France is.