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The article reports on the evacuation of international agencies from Iraq including the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross resulting from anti-American resistance attacks by the Iraqis. Most of the staff and officials of the United Nations refuse to be sacrificial lambs in helping the United States' government in stabilizing political conditions in Iraq.

Focuses on the management of the transition from the government of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to a post-Iraq War government. Iraq is about to join the growing list of countries and territories that have been placed under foreign supervision until deemed able to manage on their own. In other words, it will become another modern protectorate. Decolonisation was thought to have killed the system of international tutelage. Since the 1990s, temporary international administrations have been revived. Post-colonial sensitivities mean that single states are no longer appointed as carers, and that a permanent transitional system cannot be developed. Instead, the job is done by international bodies such as the United Nations or, as in Bosnia, by ad hoc international coalitions. This can create new problems. International organisations are also often saddled with more bureaucratic and political constraints than individual governments. This can severely hamper operations. The risk, however, is that powerful international carers become deaf to local voices. Bosnia highlights the problems that arise when the local population and their international tutors fail to agree about political and economic reconstruction.

Offers observations on the efforts of France to scuttle United States war plans in Iraq, and analyzes the consequences. The diplomatic endgame in the United Nations Security Council is not going smoothly. In fact, there seem to be only three ways for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to stay in power much beyond March, 2003: he can surrender his weapons of mass destruction in compliance with Resolution 1441, U.S. President George W. Bush may drop his threat to not use force in the case of non-compliance, or Bush waits to see whether the extra inspections France wants really can disarm Iraq peacefully. France sees no reason why they should support the new resolution from the U.S., Great Britain and Spain, which by stating the obvious--Iraq is in breach of 1441--is plainly intended to pave the way for war. But what if, now that he has picked this particular fight, French President Jacques Chirac proceeds to lose it? If it goes even half-way towards achieving Bush's vision of a democratic future for the Middle East, France will have absented itself from a history-changing intervention in a part of the world where it has long claimed a special influence.