Blair knows, apparently more than any other European leader, more even than those who profess greater commitment to l'esprit communitaire, that Europe either as an autonomous pillar of NATO or outside it with its own EU defence force, will have to look after European security, within its own territories and outside them in geographical Europe and Africa.

Blair, setting aside personal preference and national transatlantic Anglophone sentiment, recognises that the United States is not to be trusted. The President cannot deliver ground troops for Kosovo and some of the unkinder amongst us believe that he engineered Congressional gridlock on the issue. There are domestic politics, and therefore domestic political funding, to take care of. Part of the settlement, apparent from the Boeing stock price rise, is the staging of regular bombing parties for the arms industry.

If Clinton, with his instinctive distaste for such dealings, cannot avoid this course of submission then how will it be with a Republican President whose global outlook coincides with the interests of the military-industrial complex?

Moreover, can any ally be seriously committed when it whimpers about a few Leeward Island banana growers and whines that its agriculture is in serious trouble because a Europe scared by the recent BSE panic is understandably cautious about hormones in imported beef? Not even Joseph Stalin in his wildest fit of pique would have started a trade war with Churchill.

Talking of which, Boris Yeltsin, combining pique with his last nip of low cunning, said that Russia should not be overlooked in any Kosovan settlement. Mr. Chernomyrdin, ostentatiously shuttling to improve his own Presidential chances, has - deliberately or not - been left out on a limb but it hardly matters. The United States has a firm grip on what is left of Bretton Woods and that includes the re-scheduling of Russian debt. It is now a simple matter of whether it is to Russia's advantage to default or maintain international respectability by honouring its debts. On the diplomatic front a handful of its soldiers here or there in Kosovo is a symbol without a meaning.

As for the Chinese, seeking membership of the World Trade Organisation and, as a rising star, requiring the global respectability ever less relevant to a declining Russia, China has enjoyed the exquisite pleasure of a major tantrum without any diplomatic comeback, followed, of course, by stealthy moves to return to the serious business of respectability. It knows and we know that nobody cares what it thinks about Kosovo any more than we thought another change of Government in Russia would seriously matter either way in the twists and knots of Balkan diplomacy. The only possible insult the Chinese might have suffered was being on the wrong end of an attack of Clintonian sincerity.

As NATO bombs went astray on China's Belgrade Embassy and later when Yeltsin sacked his Cabinet, there was a huge collective gasp from diplomats, politicians and journalists fearful of the terrible consequences of the dragon and the bear as if we were still in the depths of the Cold War; it looked like a self-interested attempt by diplomats to keep their jobs, politicians to stay in the limelight and journalists to raise viewing and reading figures but it wasn't serious analysis.

And that, by a not very circuitous route, brings us to the role of the United Nations and its Security Council which, presumably for its own self importance or amusement, spent a whole week debating the terms of a Resolution on the Embassy bombings that all sides would accept. I am sure that this was a matter of extreme concern to Milosevic and comfort to the Kosovars. America and Europe may be misguided, Russia and China powerful in their own spheres but marginal in the Balkans, but the UN is redundant here and everywhere else on the planet. Its highly acclaimed role in Milosevic's three previous unilateral declarations of war on Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia was nothing more than a sham which all sides needed to hide their own weaknesses.

Maybe the world needs the UN to be its sham broker, in which case a villa outside Geneva with a medium-sized board-room table and some medium-weight diplomats would fill the bill.

Sadly I have to admit that to this extent I agree with the Republican Party even if they are doing the right thing for the wrong reason.

There was a time, between 1955 and 1985, when it can be tentatively argued that the UN had a purpose in the world which matched its budget but not, of course, its pretensions. Hungary, Czechoslovakia, three Middle East Wars starting with Suez, Sino-Indian skirmishes, Vietnam and other South-East Asian conflicts all raged without going nuclear but even then the bulk of the credit must go to American and Soviet diplomats and their voluntary or suppressed allies.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall the only conflicts involving two or more states (a broader category than inter-state warfare that comprises many civil wars) requiring intervention from outside a region have been in Africa which, it can be reasonably argued, is part of the European remit except where that conflicts with America's commercial interests when, fascinatingly, African factions are proxies for disputes between NATO allies.

Global communications networks soon make fools of wolves in sheep's clothing and, even sooner because there is no fear involved, make fools of fools.

When the Balkan crisis has been gingerly slid onto the back burner there will be a long but inevitable NATO post mortem.

Mr. Blair, angry with himself for trusting Mr. Clinton against his better judgment, will take his humiliation as the collared hawk very badly and this will coincide with his drive for further EU integration; he will promise British entry into the Euro and the best troops in the region.

The French, out of irrational antipathy to American might, will agree.

Germany, having seen Yoschka Fischer splattered with red (serendipitous symbol) paint by the Greens, will happily comply.

There will be unpleasant financial consequences and the usual quota of Scandinavian purism and Mediterranean pusillanimity, but European defence self sufficiency is no longer a matter of choice.

• At the same time an isolationist Congress, behind with its dues, will allow the UN to wither;
• a resurgent Japan will assert itself;
• China will continue to place more emphasis on world trade than world war;
• and Africa will be left to Europe.

This leaves that messy fault line between the Slav and Arab worlds with its millennium of migratory complexities which has been beyond the means of the 'great powers' to solve individually, collectively or through global means.