It did not, however, work internationally. Hence the collapse, in February and March 2003, of theadministration’s effort to get the UN to accept the American timetable, the American rationale for the warand the American willingness to fight the war without the backing of the United Nations. Some in theadministration, particularly (though not exclusively) among high-level Pentagon civilians, were relieved whenthe Security Council went into deadlock. They had regarded the president’s decision to go to the UN in thefirst place, a year ago, as a mistake. He had, in their view, fallen into what they called ‘the UN trap’,from which the obstreperous French provided us with a welcome escape. For those with that view, the war wasnot just a successful military operation that liberated Iraq-it was a political breakthrough that liberatedAmerican foreign policy from the encumbrance of multilateralism. Much of the world, of course, was anxious andeven appalled. There was a lot of worry that Iraq, as a sequel to Afghanistan, had created a precedent forfurther sequels elsewhere. As the US Third Infantry Division rolled past Basra on its way to capture Baghdadin late March, many watching the spectacle in real time on television feared that those armoured columnswould, in effect, just keep rolling-all the way to Tehran and Pyongyang, taking care of the entire axis ofevil in one giant Operation Global Freedom.