With issuance of the 48 hour ultimatum to Saddam and Co., it appears the Bush administration could not stand any more diplomatic humiliation.

France, Russia, Germany, China, and Global Public Opinion all had the Bush whitehouse backed into a diplomatic corner over it's intentions in Iraq. Bush has repeatedly stated that if the UN security council could not find a way to back his plans, he and his allies would act alone, and that this would make the UN "irrelevant."

This assumption by Bush may turn out to be a huge mistake. China and Russia in particular are definitely no geopolitical global light-weights. As the war unfolds in Iraq, they may very well use the UN as a vehicle for amassing global opposition to US unilateral action. The US could conceivably face sanctions from the UN for violating the charter it agreed to.

Economically, the US may see a huge shift away from "dollar-based" economies, and towards the Euro, futher weakening the US economy. The stage where the fires for resistance to the US will most likely be stoked is the UN. Much of the world will keep it's eyes on the UN, even if the US media begins to marginilze it.

When attentions finally turn to North Korea, countries like India, South Africa, France and Germany, Iran, Pakistan, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, and perhaps the majority of countries in the world may line up in strong opposition to America. If they see that the Bush whitehouse is taking the same attitude it has now, they may use the apparatus of the UN to place a serious challenge to American global dominance. The longer that Bush plays the game without multilateralism, the more he power he'll feed to it to work directly against his interests. These events may even play out before the war with Iraq is over. The majority of powerful countries in the world obviously simply cannot afford to have a country as powerful as the US acting unilaterally. They'll be smart enough to see that Bush has already announced his weakness: The UN, and they will probaly use it to their advantage.