President Bush’s visit to the United Nations and the surrounding hoopla about Iraq obscure two questions that will shape the U.N.’s future and U.S. participation in it.

l Is the primary reason to embrace and support the world body in the long-term, not just now when help is needed in Iraq, because it is a vehicle to advance U.S. interests and values, or because it is good for the majority of nations?

Those criteria are not always compatible, and it is important to understand that in judging the U.N.’s value to the United States.

l Is there a middle ground that can bridge the U.S. instinct to protect itself by taking individual, offensive action, and the seemingly contradictory bent for caution and collective rule in much of the world?

If the United Nations cannot deal with terrorist-oriented, 21st-century security threats focused on Americans, it could become just a fancy debating society without much real value to the United States.

Answering these questions is more than an academic exercise. Even Secretary-General Kofi Annan recognizes that the United Nations must change or its influence will wane or even disintegrate, as did its predecessor, the League of Nations.

He probably has seen public opinion polls showing the United Nations getting a poor job rating from the American people, who, in the end, set U.S. policy. Remember, despite being behind in its payments, the United States remains by far the largest financial backer of the United Nations.

The United Nations may get better grades around the globe, but the Gallup Poll shows 60 percent of Americans think it is doing a poor job.

The Iraq issue marks the first time since the U.N. inception that some mainstream Americans are questioning the assumption that the United Nations should be the major arbitrator of international disputes and that the United States must accede to its views.

It is no coincidence that the League of Nations, formed after World War I, was never a serious player in international affairs. That was at least partly due to American wariness of anything that smacked of handing over national sovereignty to an international entity.

The league was ineffective in curbing nations pursuing their individual interests and, when push came to shove, actually standing up to the international bad guys.

It did not check Germany’s and Japan’s aggression, and, eventually, World War II was the result. After that war, the United States was the prime mover in the United Nations’ creation, hoping to prevent history from repeating itself.

In the six decades since, the United Nations rarely has opposed U.S. policy, and never an American military action. That changed last spring with the attack on Iraq.

Until then, some Americans probably almost naively considered it an instrument of the State Department. In fact, most times that the United Nations acted effectively, rather than just talking, was when it used U.S. muscle.

Bush’s U.N. speech offered a rhetorical olive branch to the majority of nations that opposed the U.S. attack on Iraq, and he asked for help in the postwar cleanup.

However, he did not apologize and made clear his views that U.S. interests demand a full-court press on terrorism, including pre-emptive action when required.

Annan acknowledged the doctrine of pre-emption was troubling to him and many U.N. members because it runs counter to the way the organization has done business.

Yet, he acknowledged the United Nations must deal with 21st-century reality or see its influence wane. “We have come to a fork in the road. This may be a moment no less decisive than 1945, itself, when the United Nations was founded,” he said.

Annan previously acknowledged the structure of his own organization, and its doctrine of collective action, need to be re-evaluated in the context of the 21st-century reality that terrorists, not nation-states, may be the larger threat to peace.

That was essentially what Bush told the General Assembly, although he put it more politely and did not make the obvious link to that necessity and the United Nations’ future.

What he didn’t say, but everyone there understands, is that the United States is giving the world body a chance to make itself relevant.

The United Nations could dismiss Bush’s speech as a request for a handout. But refusing to help will hurt it much more in the long run because the world body can’t be effective without strong U.S. participation.

It’s not that the United States should, or is going to, withdraw if the United Nations doesn’t change its ways.

But it would be foolish to think that the current U.S. skepticism is going away anytime soon, absent a serious change in the way the world body does business.

Or that the precedent of the League of Nations is far from many minds.

Peter A. Brown is an editorial page columnist for the Orlando Sentinel. His e-mail address is pbrown@orlandosentinel.com.