The significance of what now seems to be the unstoppable move towards a US occupation of Iraq lies in the punishing blow it will deal the system of post-Cold war multilateral institutions. Consequently, the clash with Iraq has implications that reach beyond the issue of weapons of mass destruction.
The weapons inspections are a mere sideshow to the main event: the constitution of a new international political system anchored around the US.
What we are witnessing is a profound change to what may be termed the UN multilateral system. We are seeing the weakening of formal political equality for all states, violations of notions of collective security embodied in the UN charter, and above all, threats to widely accepted notions of international law through increasingly broad definitions of war and self-defence.
True, these principles were more often than not observed in the breach, but nonetheless they provided the founding motifs of the post-World War II system of global governance.
The point is that it is simply not possible to talk of international law when the institutional legitimacy on which that law depends has been battered. And the outcome seems irretrievable because whatever becomes of resolution 1441 calling for Iraq to disarm, the underlying reality is that the UN Security Council has only two options: accept the US position or accept the fact the US will act regardless.
In either case the UN is redundant. Then the real significance of the US-Iraq conflict is that it will rip the heart out of this system of international governance. No fig leaf will cover this gaping injury.