War hangs heavy over the world

The collapse of Iraq diplomacy appears to make inevitable a war that will define George Bush's presidency for history, remake America's relationships with old allies, and change forever a volatile area of the world - one way or another.

The last hope for peace is that Saddam Hussein will simply capitulate, something virtually no one in Washington really expects him to do. Absent that, the timetable for the beginning of combat becomes very short.

For officials used to the enveloping solidarity of the cold war, in which NATO members stood shoulder to shoulder against a threat all judged the same, it is surely a strange moment. For perhaps the first time in its history, the US is on the brink of a foreign war of which most of the world disapproves. Public opinion in America supports the war, but not overwhelmingly so. The Democratic political opposition has no unified position of its own.

To go to war in such circumstances is a fateful step. But the administration has long said it would take that step if necessary. In ending its attempts to win a second resolution in the UN Security Council, the White House proved it was not bluffing - if that was necessary. "It was our judgment that no further purpose would be served by pushing this resolution," said Secretary of State Colin Powell on Monday.

Thus the UN Security Council process has ended in something of a train wreck. France, Germany, and other opponents of war failed in their effort to rein in what they see as US belligerence. The US failed to gain the UN stamp of approval for its actions.

The Bush administration is already echoing with admonitions of "I told you so" from officials who thought going through the United Nations to deal with Iraq was a bad idea all along, many observers say.

At the same time, some countries that worried before that the US was tending to throw its weight around, disregard multilateral forms of action, and favor military might over other means of exercising power, feel confirmed in their fears.

Over the years "[the US] has developed a lot of diplomatic capital as it has tried to adhere to international law and reconcile its status as the world's major power with those limits," says Jeswald Salacuse, a foreign-affairs expert at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Somerville, Mass. "But if we reject the very international institution we helped to found to address the world's security issues, we risk losing that good will."

At the same time, the US may place even more faith in a path of independent action, especially if a war is fought and won quickly, Mr. Salacuse says. "People in the Bush administration will be encouraged to think even more that we should have acted earlier and on our own if necessary. They'll say it was a waste of time and prestige to play at the UN and lose the diplomatic game."

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