Since the end of the Cold War, the UN Security Council has becomemore like a protection racket than a body of honest brokers advancing thecause of peace, writes Bill McSweeney.
As the world waits today for Hans Blix to deliver his report to the UN Security Council, we should not delude ourselves. The war is coming and nothing the Security Council may do will force President Bush to back down and order his troops to beat a sheepish retreat to their homeland without the head of Saddam.
The diplomatic roller-coaster of the past week raised the spirits of war opponents one day only for Bush to send them tumbling the next.
It ended with a public display of conscience on the part of France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg - with some late backing from China and Russia - which heartened Mr Bush's critics, but left his administration more convinced than ever that the pursuit of American interests must never be subordinated to the dithering of any international organisation.
If the war was just about Iraqi disarmament, as its advocates piously claim, then it could wait indefinitely until the inspectors find serious evidence to the contrary. But it now seems that the longer the inspectors are there, the more likely they are to expose the real motive: US control of the economy and politics of the Middle East.
In 1990, an impoverished Middle Eastern country learned a cruel lesson about the UN Security Council and the realities of contemporary international politics. It was made an offer it couldn't refuse, and it refused.
Forced to choose between voting for the US in favour of war against Iraq and its own perilous strategic situation, the Yemeni government uttered what turned out to be "the most expensive 'no' in history" as an American spokesperson rightly predicted at the time. The Yemeni economy has still not recovered from the savage punishment visited on it by a vengeful superpower. The lesson is one that no small or medium power is likely to forget.
The image of the Security Council presented to the public is that of a deliberative body debating and voting freely and democratically on the agenda of international security.
The reality is very different when no reasonable balance of power and wealth exists among its 15 members, and when the council is overwhelmingly dominated by one superstate. Since the end of the Cold War, the Security Council has become more like a protection racket than a body of honest brokers advancing the cause of peace; more like a show trial displaying the facade of justice than a congress of diplomats honestly focused on promoting peace.
When Saddam Hussein held a referendum on his leadership in Iraq six months ago, he was confirmed by a vote of 100 per cent. We laughed at the hypocrisy of it, because we knew that the poll was a front for coercion.
When Irish diplomats joined their colleagues in the council chamber last November to debate the US/UK draft resolution on Iraq, they were under no illusion that international peace was the topic of the agenda. Even a country as small and as US-friendly as Ireland was targeted by the US State Department to ensure that the United Nations "remained relevant".
As Secretary of State Mr Colin Powell put it diplomatically, "we must not shrink from our duties and responsibilities". For any slow learner in Iveagh House, it was enough to mention Intel, Microsoft, Dell, and what happened to Yemen in 1990, to decipher the code and press the point home.
They did not need to worry about Ireland in the US State Department. As the Washington Post recently reported, they knew the Irish vote was safe. We are small potatoes in this field, and we were already in the bag.
The other members of the Security Council, including France, experienced lobbying of the most intense kind in history, with US diplomats threatening, cajoling, bribing to win their support for the resolution. As in Saddam's referendum, there was 100 per cent support for the US when the votes were counted.
The case against the US position is primarily a moral one. For some years now - long preceding the attack on September 11th - a small group of religious and political fundamentalists, allied to oil executives like Vice-President Cheney, have been pressing for a radical reorientation of US policy in the Middle East, and have singled out Iraq as the main obstacle to the projection of US power in that region.
With an indifference to evidence that beggars belief, they have duped their own people - and now, it seems, the Irish government - into supporting a war on the basis of unsubstantiated assertions and sound-bites about imminent threats, humanitarian concern, and liberty. If the main resources of the Iraqis were bananas, does anyone think they would now be facing a war to liberate them?
The Minister, Mr Cowen, and his advisers know this, but they also know what they have been told by the men in grey suits who run the racket of the Security Council.
Had Ireland stepped out of line last November and voted with the conscience which our representatives like to display in easier times, the consequences would have been catastrophic for our economy. (Too bad about the Iraqis.)
But for us to do so now on the matter of facilities at Shannon is surely a different matter. True, our decision on co-operation will not swing the question of war one way or the other. But there must be some limit to the pliability of conscience in international affairs.
It should not be beyond the ingenuity of our political leaders at least to signal discomfort with the demands of the Bush administration and to place serious limits on our co-operation, rather than give the impression that, like the UK, we have totally surrendered our capacity for moral judgment to the caprice of Washington.
As Brian Cowen said earlier this month: "All countries who believe in an international order based on principles of justice and law have to stand up for the authority of the Security Council."
Indeed they do.
Dr Bill McSweeney teaches international politics at the Irish School of Ecumenics, Trinity College. He is also currently research fellow at the University of Castellon, Spain.