As offers of assistance go, it was a bit like the Provos volunteering to help with community policing on the Shankill, writes Patrick Smyth.
Imagine the conversation in the Oval Office last month when Zoran Zivkovic, Serbia's Prime Minister, dropped in to shmooze:
George Bush: Real nice of you to call, Boran . . .
Colin Powell: Zoran, Mr President.
Zoran Zivkovic: As long as you don't call me Slobo . No, seriously, I just wanted to have a word about Serbia's rapprochement with the community of nations, and particularly all things American.
We badly want you to keep the aid flowing and we would also like to sign up to NATO's Partnership for Peace. And, as an earnest of good faith we'd like to offer you 1,000 of our finest battle-hardened troops for your operation in Iraq. We understand you're looking for reinforcements and, well, no strings, but our boys have some experience of occupation tactics . . .
GB: Gee, that's real nice of you, isn't it, Colin? When can they start?
CP: [coughs, splutters] Mr President, I don't want to appear ungrateful, but I think we should perhaps take some time out to look at how this will play. Some of Mr Zivkovic's officers are still wanted for relatively recent war crimes. Zoran's own democratic credentials may be impeccable, but perhaps a Muslim country might look somewhat askance at the idea given what fellow Muslims had to put up with in Kosovo. Perhaps a little longer in the sin bin would be appropriate.
According to the Washington Post the Bush Administration is, umm, considering the offer.
Meanwhile, another government anxious to ingratiate itself with Washington by sending troops to Iraq has been having its own problems. There has been a furore in Japan at the attempt by the Prime Minister, Junichiro Koizumi, to embroil his country in its biggest foreign military deployment since the second World War. Koizumi is breaking new ground by offering 1,000 combat troops. In the past Japan has had limited involvement in UN-mandated operations such as Cambodia, entirely as logistical or engineering support. With a recent poll in the Mainichi Shimbun showing that 39 per cent are opposed to the deployment and only 19 per cent in favour, Koizumi might be said to be showing Ahern-like courage in putting support for a strategic ally ahead of personal political advantage.
But Koizumi is getting cold feet. Deployment has now been put off until October, after he faces a re-election vote for the leadership of the Liberal Democratic Party. And as public nervousness about returning body bags mounts the cabinet secretary has insisted that Japan's forces would only be deployed "in a safe area free of conflict". Not exactly what its US allies had in mind.
With delays in troop rotations and call-ups of reserves causing problems at home, the US Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, has expressed the hope that he can call on up to 30,000 troops from 49 countries to help in Iraq.
But that old, post-9/11 "coalition of the willing" is no longer willing and somewhat depleted. Unless he can conjure up a UN resolution, potential major contributors such as Russia, Germany, France, Egypt, Pakistan and India will certainly not be helping out.
A "Polish-led" contingent of 12 countries is due to take control of part of the country shortly. The Poles will speak English to the Spaniards and Russian to the Ukrainians (and the Mongolians?) I don't wish them any harm, but the mind boggles.
Not surprisingly, the US will this week try to table a motion at the Security Council to get some form of authority for relief operations in Iraq and the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council. But that it should feel forced to do so reflects the deep contradictions inherent in the US position.
Leading US neoconservatives despise the UN. Commentator George Will insisted recently that a "core" principle of conservatism is "to preserve US sovereignty and freedom of action by marginalising the UN". But the truth is that, despite its extraordinary military superiority, the US is overstretched in policing Iraq. It needs its allies.
Ironically, as the New York Times columnist Michael Gordon has pointed out, the US was determined in Iraq precisely to learn the lesson of its experience in the Balkans. "The last thing the US wanted was a Kosovo-style campaign in which our military plans were modified in order to build a consensus with a US-led alliance," he argues.
And please note, Mr Zivkovic, "the US secured the backing of NATO nations by limiting the scope and intensity of its bombing campaign against Serbia . . . Rather the administration would call the shots and like -minded nations could join in . . . But the failure to build broad international backing for the effort also meant that there were relatively few allied forces to help shoulder the military and financial burden of enforcing the peace."
With friends like that, Mr Zivkovic . . .
Patrick Smyth is Opinion Editor of The Irish Times