No doubt President-elect Barack Obama, who believes in multilateralism and who voted “present” numerous times in the Illinois legislature, will find U.N. abstentions attractive, even though abstaining will neither help him avoid hard choices nor advance U.S. interests.

Unfortunately, the Bush administration’s failure of leadership on Resolution 1860 has set the precedent. And so on this issue, as on so many others, the new president will, sadly, simply copy his predecessor.