Last March, two days before the opening air strikes on Saddam's bunker -- an imaginary target, as it turned out -- I wrote:

[President George W.] Bush's father foresaw a new world order rising from the wreckage of an Iraqi battlefield. He hardly could have imagined. The New New World Order will begin next week, or the week after that, or the week after that, with the United States atop a shattered, dysfunctional Middle Eastern country, and a shattered, leaderless international order.

Consider just the recent record. With effort, the U.S. has secured gestures from its former partners: a UN Security Council vote that has led to negligible additional international participation in the rebuilding or policing of Iraq, and an aid conference that won billions of dollars in pledges but not too much in actual money. When South Korea sends a few hundred troops, that's big news. Little else is forthcoming at this point. And with Iraq worse off today than most observers had expected a year ago -- with both a volatile and unmanageable political process and a nasty little guerilla war underway -- the inability of the U.S. to lead the world is that much more strongly felt.

In essence, America remains responsible for patching Iraq back together in some fashion, and will have to do so under fire, and on its own dime. As not a few pundits and wits have put it, "You broke it, you bought it." Even the return of the vaunted Mr. Fix-It, former Secretary of State James Baker, isn't likely to do that much good. Saddam or no Saddam, that's the outlook.

The situation has not stopped candidates for the Democratic Presidential nomination, including the front-runner, Howard Dean, from renewing their calls to internationalize the occupation and reconstruction. Perhaps this is good politics: when it fails to happen, they can point back to their own advice as a path not taken. But if a Democrat prevails in November 2004, it would also be helpful to have a clear-eyed appreciation of the situation.

Analyst

[Addendum, Dec. 17, 2003] UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has rejected the pleas of the Iraqi Governing Council to return UN staff to Iraq, preferring to keep Iraq-related operations at a safe distance in Nicosia, Cyprus, and Amman, Jordan.

[Addendum #2, Dec. 17, 2003] Big news! South Korea will send 3,000 troops to Iraq.