But the underlying reason for these unilateral breaches of the law is that the rest of the world allows them to happen. Hundreds of readers of last week's column sent letters to the British foreign secretary asking him to stand up to the US. Brian Eno organised a petition signed by celebrities as diverse as Robbie Williams, Damien Hirst, Salman Rushdie and Bianca Jagger, in the hope that, even if it won't listen to anyone else, our government might at least respond to Cool Brittania. But on Friday, the first member state to co-sponsor the US resolution to sack Mr Bustani was the United Kingdom.

It is not hard to see why other nations should seek to appease the United States. If the US can be persuaded to keep supporting global treaties, ministers argue, it will not retreat into dangerous isolationism. But once America sees that other nations will submit to its demands, it will continue to bend the treaties to suit itself until the entire framework of international law collapses. More dangerous by far than US isolationism is the unilateral demolition of the world's agreements, forcing every nation to live by its own rules.

Let Mr Bush walk out in a huff if he can't have his way, but let him be sure that if he does so, he can no longer expect to receive either moral authority or material support for anything he wishes to achieve abroad. For all the US government's talk of splendid isolation, that is the kind of loneliness his administration does not seem ready to accept.
23rd April 2002

Published in the Guardian April 23, 2002. http://www.guardian.co.uk
Reprinted with permission of the author. http://www.georgemonbiot.com/