Even the United States realises it needs the United Nations. The idea popular among neo-conservatives in Washington that the UN was useful only in so far as it did America's will has given way to a wiser understanding, whispered in President Bush's ear by both his new Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and his best friend Tony Blair, that not all problems in the world can be settled by American might and the authority of the UN has to be upheld even when it reaches disagreeable conclusions.

The most telling demonstration of this has been the UN-brokered ceasefire agreement between Israel and Lebanon (and Hezbollah, for which Lebanon is not formally responsible). Israel, with America's backing, wanted to silence Hezbollah's guns and rockets by force, partly for its own security, partly to humiliate Iran and Syria. It failed. Diplomacy centred on the Security Council - with France a key player - succeeded. A strong Lebanese military presence on the Lebanese border, with an even stronger UN force to back it up, will now apply Security Council resolution 1701, which calls for all militia forces to be disarmed for good. Iran emerges unhumiliated, the UN has been enhanced, and Israel (with America coupled to it) has been somewhat humbled. Those were not Washington's aims, but it has had to accept them.

It was not necessarily any moral conversion among George Bush's advisers that brought about this result, though it is an example of political theory not surviving contact with the real world. Until recently, especially with the appointment of arch-UN critic John Bolton as his representative there, Mr Bush had adopted the Republican right-wing view that the organisation was corrupt, bureaucratic, unduly liberal and an instrument in the hands of America's enemies. There remains a distrust of international agencies in Washington (except those it controls). But many dangerous disputes in the world are likely to be solved only by third-party intervention, and third parties that are single nations always have their own agendas. If there is one obvious conclusion to draw from the Iraq debacle, it is the limitations on the use of military power alone. This makes the UN, bringing to bear both guns and diplomacy, a necessity.

It has successes, not least in Lebanon but also in Congo, where the largest-ever UN force has maintained security for the first democratic elections for 40 years. The UN may even be entering a period of maturity. Some of the American criticisms, nevertheless, have merit. There is corruption, which almost touched the coat-tails of the Secretary General, Kofi Annan; there is a ponderous bureaucracy which at times prevents the UN acting decisively in an emergency, as in Rwanda and Bosnia; there is a habitual anti-American bias; and the structure reflects a world order that no longer exists. The permanent members of the Security Council are still the victorious allies after the Second World War, excluding such powerful countries as India, Germany, Japan and Brazil.

But there is a will to reform, and the beginnings of a consensus on how to do it. And the greatest fear, that reform would merely be an excuse to cripple the UN or to harness it to American interests, has for the moment receded.

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