Barack Obama's approval ratings may be sagging at home, but when he arrives at the United Nations this week for the annual General Assembly meeting in New York, the president will be on unmistakably friendly turf.

In just a few months, the new administration has helped the United Nations forget the jeremiads of Bush-era envoy John Bolton, who once mused that losing the top 10 floors of the 39-story U.N. headquarters on the East River "wouldn't make a bit of difference." The United States has joined a U.N. human rights panel that the Bush team shunned and has even praised the International Criminal Court, which President George W. Bush did his best to ignore.

The East River crowd may have reason to love America again, but it's not clear that Obama should expect much help from the United Nations, or from its powerful 15-member Security Council, in dealing with North Korea, Iran, Georgia, Burma or other hot spots. Throughout its history, the Security Council has been good at helping the big powers not step on one another's toes, but very bad at tackling tough problems such as the Middle East, weapons proliferation, weak states and humanitarian emergencies.

Obama, who on Sept. 24 will become the first American president to chair a meeting of the council, may soon learn that the best he can do at the United Nations is smile, shake hands - and learn to work around it.

Obama is not the first new commander in chief eager to employ the United Nations. The Clinton administration came to office determined to work through the organization whenever possible. Just a year later, the Clintonites were accusing the United Nations of flubbing the Somalia operation, clashing with close allies on the Security Council over Bosnia and sniping with then-Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

The recriminations reflected an uncomfortable truth: The Security Council is ineffective - often tragically so - as a mechanism for managing world security. Its mandate is to "maintain international peace and security," but its efforts usually produce lowest-common-denominator compromises between the major powers. Witness the shambolic peacekeeping mission in the Balkans during the early 1990s, the porous and mismanaged sanctions against Iraq, and the halting efforts to control North Korea's nuclear ambitions.

For many United Nations-watchers, these failures are reason enough to condemn the organization as worse than useless. And though critics usually hail from the political right, plenty of progressives despair as well. How can Sudan's regime be called to account for its bloody policies, for example, if its friends Russia and China, as two of the Security Council's five permanent members, must approve any U.N. actions?

This frustration, though understandable, misses the Security Council's most enduring value. As a great-power clubhouse, the council promotes a habit of consultation among leading nations. American diplomats dial up their Russian and Chinese counterparts more than they would otherwise, for instance, because they need each other's votes on a range of issues before the council.

The obfuscation and ambiguity that often make Security Council resolutions so ineffective in Darfur, Congo and Tehran can at least allow the great powers to give a show of marching in step. The council's often maddening sluggishness can also be a virtue. During the Cuban missile crisis, a series of scheduled Security Council meetings gave President Kennedy an additional argument for resisting immediate military action.

Today, the Obama administration should resist the temptation to frame each international crisis as a do-or-die test for the United Nations. In the months before the Iraq war, Bush and Britain's Tony Blair both cast Iraq as the organization's last chance to avoid the fate of the League of Nations, with Bush warning that the United Nations was about to "fade into history." This hyperbole did little to advance their cause, and it weakened public regard for an institution that both leaders needed again in short order.

Despite the new administration's professed affection for the United Nations - and its reluctance to do anything that may smack of Bush-like unilateralism - over time Obama may end up emulating his successor and going it alone. The Chinese resist humanitarian interventions on sovereignty grounds; the council members differ sharply over nuclear proliferation; and the Russians may clash again with Georgia or Ukraine, paralyzing the council.

When Obama enters the council chamber, he'll be sending a valuable signal that America recognizes the body's lasting importance. But he should keep one eye on the exits.

David Bosco is an assistant professor of international politics at American University and the author of "Five to Rule Them All: The UN Security Council and the Making of the Modern World." This column first appeared in The Washington Post.

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