The face of global politics can change with remarkable rapidity, writes Garret Fitzgerald. Since I wrote about Iraq here three weeks ago, a dramatic shift in US policy has had the effect of turning the situation on its head.
So long as the US appeared to be pursuing an exclusively unilateral approach, little room was left for a climb-down by Saddam Hussein. The fact that well-justified US demands for re-admission of UN inspectors was combined with a unilateral US commitment to remove the Iraqi leader from office made it very difficult for him to concede the UN inspector issue.
Approaching the matter through the UN opened that door, which is, of course, precisely why US Administration hardliners opposed this multilateral approach. President Bush's decision to switch to the UN route may well reflect the success of astute diplomacy by Colin Powell, and possibly also Tony Blair, in persuading countries such as France and Russia and China to offer support for a Security Council Resolution if the US were to seek one. It may also have persuaded Saudi Arabia to agree to offer the use of bases on its territory for a move against Iraq if, but only if, such a move were to be authorised by the UN Security Council.
Faced with virtual isolation if the US persisted with unilateralism, but on the other hand with global support for the idea of a Security Council Resolution containing a time-limit for unconditional re-admission of UN inspectors, President Bush clearly felt he could not sustain the unilateral approach. But when Saddam Hussein accepted the inspectors so quickly, the US hardliners were clearly disconcerted. Given legitimate fears that, despite his unconditional acceptance of the inspectors, Saddam Hussein would find ways once again to foil their efforts, the decision to press for a new UN Resolution to reduce his room for wriggling out of his commitment is understandable. But the US has not helped its case for such a move by persisting simultaneously with its insistence on the removal from power of the Iraqi leader. Reactions by France, China and Russia, and, of course, the Arab world to this combination of propositions have been less than enthusiastic.
Nevertheless, at the time of writing there is still great uncertainty about the eventual outcome of the diplomatic battle now under way between the Permanent Members of the Security Council - a battle in which Ireland has a special interest, and perhaps even some role to play through its membership of that body.
When I wrote about this issue six months ago in this column, I suggested that there might be alternative explanations for the threatening US stance on Iraq. On the one hand, the administration might just be determined to wage war against Saddam Hussein. But on the other, a benign interpretation could be that US policy was based on a "strategy of menace", designed to achieve by threat of military action, rather than by actual action, the elimination of some of the dangers Iraq seemed to pose.
Despite President Bush's decision to opt for a multilateral approach through the UN - which he may now be regretting - it now seems evident that the former rather than the latter was the motivation behind US policy. It has to be said that when President Bush decided to pursue the multilateral route through the UN - a body which seems to enjoy a lot more support from US domestic opinion than we had been led to believe - he did so with great skill. His speech, into which, no doubt Colin Powell had a major input, was excellent both in content and in delivery. That made an important contribution to the outcome, for the evident impact of this address on world opinion must have been a factor in the Iraqi leader's rapid decision to re-admit the inspectors.
Which, of course, was not President Bush's intention. That is the great irony of this affair! Past experience suggests that the US may be right in believing that Saddam Hussein will try to delay or disrupt the inspection process by arguing about the personnel to be sent, or may once again try to play games with the inspectors after their arrival.
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WITH or without a new UN Security Council Resolution, prevarication of that kind would play into the hands of currently frustrated hardliners in the US administration, and would certainly lead to military action by the US with British support. However, the reaction to such action, both in the Middle East and worldwide, is likely to be greatly influenced by whether it has UN authorisation or not.
It may be that this will all end badly, with the US going ahead with military action almost alone, supported only by a very divided Britain. That would be a great pity, given last week's evidence of a new willingness on the part of the world community of states - Russia and China included - to co-operate in the cause of peace, and of the capacity of the UN to work effectively when it is headed by an able and dedicated leader, such as Kofi Annan. We should, of course, have no illusions about the global persistence of power politics, nor about the still inadequate commitment of many states to human rights. But the vulnerability of our world to self-destruction by atomic weapons, or more gradually through global ecological undiscipline, may have started to reduce the room for unilateralism - even, perhaps, eventually unilateralism on the part of the largest and most dominant power ever known, the post-Cold war US.
Of course, the world continues to be a rough place, with a lot of nasty people still round. Nevertheless, my own belief is that long after our lifetime, although perhaps within the present century, the example that Europe has given of a region governed by the rule of law rather than by states exercising their sovereignty arbitrarily against each other will spread worldwide. Europe may have started something that cannot be stopped: a contagion of peace. In this process Ireland has its role to play in and through the European Union and the United Nations, working together.
A positive vote in our forthcoming referendum will help to advance this process by opening the way to many recently democratised states, becoming an integral part of the zone of peace that our partners and ourselves have created in western Europe.