When President Obama steps to the podium at the opening session of the 64th U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday he will be making his inaugural address on the world’s stage. This occasion will provide a singular opportunity for the president to move forward with his promise to restore America’s global standing, and he can do so by invoking a somewhat forgotten tool of U.S. foreign policy — international treaty law.

Since the middle of the last century, the pursuit of a commonly accepted, rules-based international system has been a defining objective of American foreign policy. This was particularly true in the period immediately after World War II, when the United States led the way in creating a regime of multilateral treaty-based institutions. Since then, however, U.S. support for the international rule of law, as expressed through the ratification of international treaties, has been uneven at best. In recent years, American willingness to support multilateral treaties has hit an all-time low.

To be sure, the Obama administration has taken a number of significant and concrete steps to renew America’s support for international law, including working with Congress to ensure the United States fulfills its U.N. Charter obligations to pay its assessed share of the organization’s expenses. The administration also has expressed support for U.S. ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. More recently, in late July, the administration signed the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

These are important steps in the right direction. Yet as long as the United States remains on the outside of widely supported treaty regimes by not ratifying them (many of which we played a lead role in drafting) America’s global influence will not be all it can be. In today’s ever-globalizing world, our reluctance to endorse multilateral agreements undercuts our ability to develop and participate in the coordinated global efforts that are increasingly necessary to effectively confront transnational challenges like climate change, human trafficking and nuclear proliferation. International treaty law provides the requisite framework for such collective action.

An international law-based system allows nations to be held to shared standards of conduct and facilitates efforts to mobilize the international community against those that break the rules. Failure by the United States to join multilateral treaty regimes reflecting fundamental American values, such as those protecting the rights of women and children, undermines our ability to successfully promote those values abroad. Our ability to speak out and hold other nations to their commitments is handicapped by our failure to assume those same obligations for ourselves.

In a speech last month at New York University, the U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations, Susan E. Rice, declared that America’s influence abroad is stronger when we lead by example. When President Obama takes the stage in the General Assembly Hall, he can make immeasurable progress toward his goal of reclaiming U.S. moral authority by strongly reaffirming America’s commitment to ratifying widely endorsed international treaties that we have already signed. By pledging to his fellow leaders that America will end its self-imposed exile from these important global agreements, the United States will strengthen the force of its example and its ability to promote core U.S. values and national interests.

When President Obama steps to the podium at the opening session of the 64th U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday he will be making his inaugural address on the world’s stage. This occasion will provide a singular opportunity for the president to move forward with his promise to restore America’s global standing, and he can do so by invoking a somewhat forgotten tool of U.S. foreign policy — international treaty law.

Since the middle of the last century, the pursuit of a commonly accepted, rules-based international system has been a defining objective of American foreign policy. This was particularly true in the period immediately after World War II, when the United States led the way in creating a regime of multilateral treaty-based institutions. Since then, however, U.S. support for the international rule of law, as expressed through the ratification of international treaties, has been uneven at best. In recent years, American willingness to support multilateral treaties has hit an all-time low.

To be sure, the Obama administration has taken a number of significant and concrete steps to renew America’s support for international law, including working with Congress to ensure the United States fulfills its U.N. Charter obligations to pay its assessed share of the organization’s expenses. The administration also has expressed support for U.S. ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. More recently, in late July, the administration signed the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

These are important steps in the right direction. Yet as long as the United States remains on the outside of widely supported treaty regimes by not ratifying them (many of which we played a lead role in drafting) America’s global influence will not be all it can be. In today’s ever-globalizing world, our reluctance to endorse multilateral agreements undercuts our ability to develop and participate in the coordinated global efforts that are increasingly necessary to effectively confront transnational challenges like climate change, human trafficking and nuclear proliferation. International treaty law provides the requisite framework for such collective action.

An international law-based system allows nations to be held to shared standards of conduct and facilitates efforts to mobilize the international community against those that break the rules. Failure by the United States to join multilateral treaty regimes reflecting fundamental American values, such as those protecting the rights of women and children, undermines our ability to successfully promote those values abroad. Our ability to speak out and hold other nations to their commitments is handicapped by our failure to assume those same obligations for ourselves.

In a speech last month at New York University, the U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations, Susan E. Rice, declared that America’s influence abroad is stronger when we lead by example. When President Obama takes the stage in the General Assembly Hall, he can make immeasurable progress toward his goal of reclaiming U.S. moral authority by strongly reaffirming America’s commitment to ratifying widely endorsed international treaties that we have already signed. By pledging to his fellow leaders that America will end its self-imposed exile from these important global agreements, the United States will strengthen the force of its example and its ability to promote core U.S. values and national interests.