On Thursday, Sept. 24, in a move that is historic for reasons extending beyond Obama, he’ll chair a summit-level of the UN Security Council. No American president has ever done this before. There are good reasons no American president has done this, which I will get into in a column I’ll link to on this site tomorrow. For the moment, let’s just note that the UN Security Council is not a White House cabinet meeting, in which Obama can lay out a plan with some expectation of being able to control and enforce it. This is the Security Council which, historically, ignored the Rwanda Genocide while it was taking place (Rwanda was a member of the Council at the time); was corrupted by Saddam Hussein during the 1996-2003 Oil-for-Food program; and has failed abysmally to stop either the North Korean or Iranian nuclear programs. This is the Security Council which among its 10 rotating members currently includes Vietnam and Libya (Qaddafi is expected to share the table with Obama at this meeting), and which always includes China and Russia.

For the topics of this historic Security Council meeting, Obama has picked nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament — but according to Ambassador Rice, there will be no country-specific discussion. That leaves a high probability of Obama taking America down the disarmament road, expecting that others will follow — a strategy entailing a high risk that he will turn around at some point and see that America’s enemies, instead of merrily following his lead, have outflanked him, and, armed to the teeth, have him — and his country — square in their sights.