We are entering a dangerous topsy-turvy world where language is subverted in a way that would have abashed even George Orwell: danger is presented as security, violence as peace, and the poachers have become the gamekeepers.
Ireland, with its temporary seat on the United Nations Security Council, should be using its influence to debate world security and raise concern over what appears to be a new arms race. Unfortunately, as a conference organised by the peace group Afri will hear today, the evidence suggests this State is meekly going with the destructive flow of powerful interests.
First, let's go back 10 years. We were then promised a "new world order" in which democracy and the rule of international law would be cherished and protected. Western leaders galvanised the nations of the world to supposedly defend democracy and national sovereignty as the first instalment of their noble vision.
No matter that the Butcher of Baghdad was an erstwhile Western ally and Kuwait was, and still is, an oil-rich petty fiefdom. Western ideologues were cranking up a propaganda charm offensive, proclaiming a fresh start to international relations supposedly founded on noble values of mutual respect and co-operation - the realisation of the UN Charter, no less.
With the Cold War out of the way, so it was argued, the nations would now be free to act in unison to defend the foundations of democracy, even if it meant bombing miscreants back to the Stone Age.
Ten years on it is clear that the so-called new world order and its grandiose claims lie in ruins as sure as the cancer-eaten bodies of children in Iraq and former Yugoslavia. World security and the promise of a peace dividend have been shelved, although Western leaders still cynically use the language of human rights and democracy to justify their actions.
What is truly startling is how quickly the moral veil of the UN has been jettisoned. At the dawn of the new world order, enunciated by President George Bush snr, the moral authority of the UN was deemed to be a necessary illusion. Now the Western powers, primarily the US and the UK, are apparently emboldened enough to go it alone.
The UN-sanctioned Operation Desert Storm against Iraq was quickly followed by Operation Restore Hope in which the US unilaterally sent its troops and gunships into Somalia. Less than a decade later NATO would launch a war in Europe with the UN not even consulted.
Some observers did note that NATO bombing of the former Yugoslavia with radioactive depleted uranium shells was an illegal war, but by this stage President Clinton and Prime Minister Blair were past caring about such censure.
Ominously, the American dissident Noam Chomsky says the NATO action in former Yugoslavia signals a contempt for international law not seen since the 1930s.
He notes that the real agenda behind the cynical use of this gratuitous aggression, dressed up in the language of human rights and defence of democracy, is the stamping of authority in a world order designed to serve Western economic imperatives of so-called free markets.
In this way the new world order is not much different from the old. One difference, however, was that the Mutually Assured Destruction of the Cold War served to curb Western aggression. That check is no longer there, and the Western powers increasingly feel free to wield the doctrine of Might is Right.
It is somehow fitting that one of the architects of the new world order, George Bush, is now succeeded by his son. Even before taking office, Bush jnr signalled a more aggressive military policy, primarily in his backing of the National Missile Defence (Star Wars) programme. Concerns among Western allies, notably France and Germany, are brushed aside in a manner which confirms the adage of absolute power corrupting absolutely.
This together with his tougher diplomatic stance towards Russia is predictably leading to a deteriorating international climate, fuelling insecurity and a new phase of the arms race.
Russia was reported earlier this month to have reintroduced nuclear weapons into the Baltic region, after having removed them from eastern Europe when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.
Observers note that due to the dilapidated state of its conventional armed forces, Russia is now relying even more on its huge nuclear arsenal as a deterrent.
President Vladimir Putin is also making overtures to China for a new military alliance as a counterweight to the Star Wars initiative and the expansion of NATO in Europe.
The joining of the NATO-inspired Partnership for Peace (another example of Orwellian doublespeak) by Ireland only serves to reinforce this negative dynamic. It's all a far cry from what was heroically promised in the heady days of the new world order. Despite rhetoric to the contrary, we now have increasing insecurity in world relations and more money than ever being squandered on reloading the world's stockpile of weapons of mass destruction.
The post-Cold War continuation of the arms industry should not be surprising. It is the concomitant of Western world power relations. Today's use of arms and aggression is the continuation of last century's gunboat diplomacy when foreign markets were blown open for exploitation by Western capital. Of course, it is finessed with better PR these days.
The integration of the arms industry with the conventional economy is so deep that Western governments have become addicted to it. This is what President Dwight D. Eisenhower meant when he warned of the "military-industrial complex".
Joe Murray of Afri, organiser of today's conference in Kildare, "Securing Our Future?", fears that Ireland, the second-biggest exporter of computer software in the world behind the US, is becoming ever more complicit in the arms industry, and specifically that Irish software is being used in the development of so-called smart missile systems.
Figures from the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment highlight these concerns.
In 1996 the number of military export licences issued by the Department was 81. By last year the figure had risen to 420, an increase of 700 per cent.
Irish politicians, including the Nobel Peace Prize winner John Hume, have hailed Ireland's new-found wealth and investment from US firms as the "fruits of peace" after 30 years of conflict on this island.
But for many Irish citizens this country's growing complicity in world militarisation and aggression is a bitter if not deadly poisonous fruit.
Finian Cunningham is a journalist in Belfast