John Bruton has been kicking up a fuss over the last few days. First he took issue with the British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook. Bruton claimed Cook had stated that the vast refugee crisis in the Balkans was not predictable. He pointed out that he had attended a meeting in Berlin at which the Swedish opposition leader had predicted one million refugees would be on the move within two weeks of the start of bombing.
Cook's office responded by pointing out that the Foreign Secretary had, in fact, stated that it was the scale of the crisis that was unpredictable. They were right. Just because one politician made an accurate guess doesn't mean the numbers were predictable.
Then Mr Bruton got worked up about the number of refugees we should be accommodating. He wanted us to take 2,000 initially and more if necessary. Ministers have been working with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, have met their EU counterparts and have stated that Ireland will take as many as necessary.
And, most recently, John Bruton decided it was time for a ceasefire over the Orthodox Easter weekend. He wanted this time to be used to negotiate with Milosevic. The only problem with that is that there already are negotiations taking place. Various Russian officials have been visiting Belgrade searching for a peaceful solution.
There is a pattern to these outbursts. Each one has created column inches and minutes of air time. None has made the slightest difference to the situation in Kosovo but they have got John Bruton's name back in the papers.
Obviously, I've no objection to the leader of the Opposition getting a little publicity. The timing was a little curious - he'd been fairly quiet for a long time so his decision to speak up now was interesting. Until you remember the most important political effect of warfare. It tends to get public opinion moving and John wants to exploit that. Again, this is normal and will ultimately have little effect on the conduct of the conflict in the Balkans. Irish opinion matters little to the major players.
But American opinion does and already has dictated how this war will be fought. There can be little doubt that the decision to bomb but not to deploy ground troops was rooted in fears about the reaction of the American voters. Since Vietnam it has been held as a key tenet of American foreign policy that the people of the US don't want to see their boys and girls coming home in body bags.
This is held to be true when the US is playing its global policeman role and getting involved in places most Americans have never heard of. So we had a bombing campaign with lots of footage for the news programmes of enemy bases being destroyed while no Americans were being killed. And, of course, the military had to choose their targets to minimise the risk to innocent civilians.
And we had no reason to believe President Clinton's thinking would shift on this. Until this week. The New York Times and CBS carried out a poll which produced some very surprising results. Nine out of 10 people surveyed claimed to be following the conflict closely or very closely. This is a remarkably high figure for any foreign-policy subject, Americans not being hugely interested in what is going on outside their borders. They are also, the poll revealed, resigned to the conflict lasting for months or even years and are convinced ground troops will be deployed.
LESS than a third of those polled thought the current bombing campaign would actually stop ethnic cleansing. And the proportion of people against sending in the marines is as large as might be expected. Forty-eight per cent are against it, while 46 per cent are for sending them in.
The final, and most significant, result was that a majority of respondents would be in favour of deploying the soldiers for any one of several goals including preventing a wider European war, driving Milosevic from power and ending the ethnic cleansing. Granted, when asked their opinion of deployment if it meant a large number of casualties, the numbers in favour were lower.
But the fact that the American people are seriously beginning to consider the option means we may soon have a change in Clinton's policy. He will be aware that air strikes, while spectacular, will not win the conflict. He is now aware that, so long as he makes his reasoning clear, he may be able to send in the troops without getting slaughtered at the polls. Already we have seen that NATO has moved more troops out to the Balkans, but the 8,000 in question could hardly be described as an invasion force.
While the deployment of infantry may be widely praised in terms of its effect on ethnic cleansing, the fact that it only became a real possibility following a shift in opinion polls is worrying. Clinton has been banging on about the moral necessity of getting involved in Kosovo while he has taken military and political decisions based not on moral certitude but on public relations outcomes.
There is a point in all politics where the votes to be gained or lost must be put to one side and that is at the point at which lives are put in danger. One million Kosovans are at risk in refugee camps right now. Another 1.5 million are trapped in Kosovo at even higher risk than the refugees. Clinton needs to make a decision based on what is right rather than plumping for the expedient option.