There are reasons why Americans want to ignore the rest of the world

Most are related to those who fled persecution in the old world. It leaves them disinclined to get mixed up in our troubles

Maybe it was the television reception in this hotel in the middle of nowheresville, Central America, but I thought I detected a look of desperate gratitude on the face of Kofi Annan earlier this week. When news came through of Saddam Hussein's mother-of-all-offers on weapons inspectors, the Secretary General of the United Nations quickly headed for the microphones.

Mr Annan's public announcement gave President Saddam's offer the sheen of something significant, and how the Secretary General must have hoped he was again pulling us back from the brink. Remember his flight to Baghdad in 1998 as allied armies were assembling around the Gulf? The Secretary General had two meetings with President Saddam (described wonderfully by William Shawcross in his book Deliver Us From Evil). Even then the Iraqi leader was being warned that negotiations were out of the question. Mr Annan had come to accept his unconditional agreement and nothing less. Saddam sort of caved in and war was averted. Kofi Annan was hailed as a saviour. But the so-called presidential sites remained immune from inspection and soon Saddam was back to his old tricks. The inspections regime collapsed in the face of Iraqi deceit and obduracy.

But that was a different America and the Clinton administration was happy to grab the way out offered by the Secretary General's mission. Now that things have changed so dramatically the public hopefulness of Kofi Annan this week seemed out of touch. Don't misunderstand me. Mr Annan is a good man who is desperate to avoid a war whose potential consequences he, better than most, can see clearly. But he and the organisation he represents have been nudged firmly into the background.

The latest declaration by Colin Powell, supposedly the leading dove in the Bush administration, that the US will find ways to thwart any inspection mission that goes ahead without a fresh resolution from the Security Council, tells you all you need to know about the new realities. This Iraqi conflict will be played out on America's terms and nobody else's. Which means that with or without a new security council resolution authorising force, we are going to have a war against Iraq, probably (as I have been saying for months now) beginning in December. And the game is about getting rid of Saddam. Period.

When President George Bush addressed the General Assembly of the UN he was not speaking as a supplicant but as the most powerful man in the world going through some required motions. The real message was not about America's desire to work with the international community for a restoration of the weapons-inspection regime, but a thinly veiled warning to the UN: act with us and grant a tough new resolution or be regarded as an irrelevance.

Have people forgotten how Mr Bush divided up the world in the wake of 11 September? You are either with him in the rapidly expanding war on terror, or you are no friend of America. For the hawks around Mr Bush, the UN speech was a gesture too far to an organisation they privately regard as a dangerous nuisance. The glad reception given by members of the Security Council to President Saddam's latest offer will only confirm the feelings of Dick Cheney, the Vice-President, and Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary for Defence, whose impatience for an attack on Iraq grows by the hour.

Of course all states will try to look after their national interests, but only the world's last superpower can make sure those interests are served most of the time. The events of 11 September have hardened American resolve and, after a brief season of unease, the politicians in Washington look like they are about to come out on Mr Bush's side. In all of this he has been far more concerned with events and opinions on Capitol Hill than he has with the arguments at UN headquarters in New York. Leaders like Vladimir Putin and Jacques Chirac get telephone calls. The House leaders and key Republicans get face time.

The lobbying effort in Washington has paid off and Mr Bush is about to be rewarded with a Congressional resolution that will allow him to do pretty much what he wants with Iraq. In an amazingly broad formulation, Mr Bush is mandated to take whatever action is necessary to protect US security and national interests and – this is the real master stroke – restore peace and stability in the Middle East. This amounts to one of history's great blank cheques. So, while we can expect continuing efforts by Colin Powell to drum up international support, Mr Bush has all the authorisation he feels he needs.

American wariness (to put it at its most polite and benign) about international institutions didn't begin with the UN or Iraq. Go back to the founding of the UN's unfortunate precursor, the League of Nations, in 1919 and you find the beginning of a familiar pattern. It was a US President, Woodrow Wilson, who fought to bring the League into being, yet it was US congressmen and senators who made sure his own country would not be among the founding members.

A refugee from the Nazis who became a US citizen framed the first laws to outlaw genocide, yet his own country waited decades to ratify the Genocide Convention. Today, both the legislative and executive branches oppose the US joining the International Criminal Court. This isn't an argument that separates hawks and doves, Republicans and Democrats. It is a deeply felt antipathy towards any kind of international entanglement that might restrain America from protecting its interests, or which might render Americans liable to judgment and sanction by foreigners.

We tend to put this down to unthinking isolationism. But that's a lazy analysis. If we are going to call Americans isolationist we need to look at why that might be the case. We forget that America is not so much a country as a continent filled with the descendants of many nations, tribes and faiths. Most are related to those who fled hunger or persecution in the old world (our world). The collective folk memory surely leaves them disinclined to get mixed up in our troubles.

Yet the evidence of the last century does not suggest an America blind to the world's suffering or eternally reluctant to engage. The US has donated large amounts in aid and financial assistance and intervened in two major wars in Europe. The complaint of many Europeans, and those who have felt the meddling hand of Uncle Sam in places like Latin America or lately the Middle East, is about the terms upon which America engages with us.

But we might as well recognise that, for the time being, foreign complaints will fall on the deafest of ears in Washington. A powerful sense now prevails of a country that intends to follow its instincts come what may. Right now those instincts are for war. What comes later, and whether the UN again has a serious role in mediating international conflicts ... I am at a loss to say.

The writer is a BBC Special Correspondent