Three major speeches yesterday to the United Nations by Mr Kofi Annan, Mr George Bush and Mr Jacques Chirac set out very different perspectives on the future of world politics and set the scene for intensive negotiations on a new UN mandate for governing Iraq.
They bear close scrutiny at a time when the world faces a fork in the road no less important than in 1945 when the UN was founded, as Mr Annan put it yesterday.
Mr Annan skilfully explained how hard threats to world security such as weapons of mass destruction and terrorism have assailed the least developed and developing worlds as much as its richest states. Softer threats such as the proliferation of small arms, extreme poverty and inequality, HIV/AIDS and climate change are similarly distributed. It is not necessary to choose between them, as is often assumed.
He went on to say that those (such as the Bush administration) who advocate departing from containment, deterrence and collective security to adopt a new doctrine of unilateral pre-emptive intervention are posing a "fundamental challenge" to the existing system which would set dangerous precedents for the lawless use of force. Mr Annan proposed an agenda for reforming the UN's institutions.
Mr Bush repeated his positions on terrorism, the need for pre-emptive action to head off potential threats and the potential that a democratic Iraq could transform the Middle East. But he praised the UN's role and appealed for help in patrolling and reconstructing Iraq, preparing for a new UN resolution and an initiative on weapons of mass destruction.
His speech was pitched as much at a domestic as an international audience, as criticism mounts at home about the rationale of the Iraq war.
President Chirac minced no words in condemning the US threat to multilateralism - "no one can act alone in the name of all and no one can accept the anarchy of a society without rules" and said the UN is facing the most severe crisis in its history. But he too indicated a readiness to repair relations on the basis of new agreements.
The UN fulfilled its indispensable role as a world forum in hosting these speeches yesterday. With imagination and commitment the perspectives they offered, and others to be delivered this week, can stimulate the reforms and renewal called for yesterday by Mr Annan. That must be on the basis of multilateralism and international law, adapted as necessary to new international circumstances.
It is not enough, as Mr Annan said, to denounce departures from long-established norms; new threats have to be faced up to through collective action. The UN's great failing is to substitute rhetoric for action. However, Mr Annan is well aware that this can only be overcome by working with the member-states. Those who value the UN's work must reinforce pressure on governments to reciprocate.