The final stages of negotiating the United Nations Security Council resolution on Iraq have not produced discernible shifts in the possible outcome of this week's voting.
It looks, at this writing, that the United States and Britain will not get the required nine votes in favour of their disarmament ultimatum to Iraq. Even if they do, France and Russia say they will veto a resolution authorising the use of force.
President George W. Bush and Mr Tony Blair appear determined to attack Iraq even without a majority or in contravention of a veto, despite the grave dangers involved for international legal and political legitimacy and Middle East security.
The next days and weeks therefore threaten the foundations of world order as few other events have done for many years. That order is precarious and imperfect. It has rested on balances of power, mutual trust, international legality, military alliance systems and threats of deterrence. Those balances have shifted with the winds of political change, but they have usually been retrieved or extended in such a way as to carry international legitimacy expressed through the United Nations system. They have withstood the revolutionary changes flowing from the end of the Cold War. And they have proved capable of withstanding new threats arising from the internationalisation of criminality, drug-trading and the migration of peoples.
Based on this experience, it should also be possible to find ways to deal with transnational terrorist movements such as those responsible for the attacks on New York and Washington on September 11th 2001. To do that convincingly, it is essential to preserve the methods and standards of inspection and proof established through the UN system. These have been applied intensively to Iraq since being reactivated last November.
The arms inspectors have reported definite and quickening, if still reluctant, progress in Iraqi co-operation since the military mobilisation on Iraq's borders. They have found no evidence to connect Iraq with the al-Qaeda organisation believed responsible for the September 11th attacks. They need some more time to complete their work and they have won the moral and political argument that they should have it.
In these circumstances, it is unconscionable and unacceptable that the US and Britain should proceed to attack Iraq without explicit UN approval or in contravention of a veto. This would be a reckless and dangerous act. It would substitute a new doctrine of pre-emptive regime change judged necessary by the world's most powerful state for the established UN systems based on collective security. It would endanger the balances and legalities underlying them. It would be politically perilous for the Middle East region and the rest of the world, whose representatives and peoples would have to live with the destabilising consequences and the need to repair and rebuild the damage done, both politically and economically.