Even before Chirac appeared on French television to leave no doubt that he will personally veto any resolution directly leading to war, the British government was looking far more anxious at the UN than the American delegation.
Blair has failed to sack a minister who three times yesterday referred to him as reckless, and has emphasised that he is totally focussed on getting "the second resolution". But while Angola says it is looking for some amendments to produce a consensus, Pakistan has made it clear it must abstain. The Russian hardened their position to mean a veto, and the French president delivered the coup de grace.
Meanwhile the US adminstration has appeared increasingly distant from the search for a second resolution, which the hawks belittle as the 18th resolution. Unprecedentedly Annan has issued a partisan warning effectively appealing to the willing allies to withdraw the resolution, on the ground that if it fails any military action could be unlawful.
So the contradictions between the US and the UK have widened. The strategic goal of taming US unilateralism (I thought Mandelson's article was in fact significant of Blair's thinking) now becomes almost unbridgeable in the face of the lurch to a multipolar world.
British commentators at the UN repeat the suggestion that Blair's crisis is not the UN's crisis. There is pressure to drop the search for a further resolution, despite Bush's bravado last week. This will leave Blair stranded.
But this is also a crisis of imperialism and global governance. The net result either way will be the acceleration of the global imposition of a liberal imperialism. But until the Bush administration falls, it will go its own way, with increasingly open challenges to its domination.
Blair has never looked more vulnerable. This is because we are looking at an even more turbulent international situation, which may involve the fall of the US as a hyperpower, unless the economic dynamics go as favourably as they hope the war will. Much more probably, they will turn into a vicious circle, and the fight will be on as to who bears the burden, in a world in which the US has lost its best apologist.
Chris Burford London
