This is not just the end of Saddam, but the creation of a new world order

Mr Blix came to talk about weapons, but he was addressing an audience preoccupied with the balance of power

Hans Blix came and said his piece. As ever it was a calm assessment. From the outset it was clear that this wasn't going to provide a manifesto for war. The Iraqis were co-operating. Not perfect, of course, but real co-operation all the same. Substantial disarmament was taking place. Sure, he said there hadn't been "immediate" disarmament as 1441 demanded. But if the US and Britain were looking for something dramatic to swing the wavering Security Council voters it wasn't there. Hans Blix spoke, almost forlornly, of what might be achieved in the future. "How long would it take to resolve the remaining disarmament tasks?" he asked. Not years. Not weeks. Months.

But Hans Blix knew and we knew that whatever he said it wouldn't stop the advance to war. Mohamed al-Baradei was even more positive. No conclusive evidence of a nuclear programme being re-started and Iraq was forthcoming in its co-operation. Worse than that, he said, intelligence documents on Iraq's attempts to import nuclear material were forgeries. You could almost hear Colin Powell grinding his teeth. In the UN council chamber we watched political theatre while several hundred miles down the interstate in Washington the real business of the hour was being finalised.

Because the inspections are now the least part of this affair. Any day now the UN teams will be pulling out of Baghdad, following the Russian diplomats who left two days ago. The inspections process is dead. Soon there will be air strikes and then a massive land invasion. The hawks in Washington are already saying "I told you so".

Mr Blair knew the real power brokers in the White House never believed in the process. But he persuaded them to take a risk. Get the Americans into the process and hope it delivers what the Americans want (ie a justification for removing Saddam from power with UN support). It hasn't worked out like that. Not least because inspections in a place like Iraq are bound to be slow and, initially at least, unlikely to produce smoking guns. And because Saddam Hussein has played a very typical and clever strategy of concession, divide and delay.

None of this would necessarily been fatal to the hopes of a UN resolution authorising war if there hadn't been a bedrock of anti-American feeling across the United Nations, and a fierce determination by the French and Germans to fight America all the way on the Security Council. Short of the most blatant defiance and obstruction, the French, Germans and Russians were going to resist a second resolution. Mr Blix came to talk about weapons but he was addressing an audience preoccupied with a much bigger game, nothing less than the balance of power in the 21st century. The Americans and their former allies – for how else could we now describe France and Germany – have understood this from the outset. So has Saddam Hussein.

Yet Washington and London are confident. This confidence is based largely on a conviction (based on reports from inside Iraq) that the regime will collapse swiftly. A quick win and cheering crowds and retrospective justification. That, at any rate, is the strategy now. Yet even as late as this week, I met journalists who persisted in believing that war might still be avoided. My response was to ask them whether they were listening to their hearts or heads. They simply didn't believe that Mr Blair will embark on a cause which they viscerally oppose or that he will fight with so much of the world opposed. They still hope that Mr Blair will change his mind and then restrain the White House. Forget it. Can America and Britain go to war with so much of the world opposed? Yes.

The American belief has always been that if Saddam Hussein stays in power he will sooner or later start to rebuild his arsenal. So, for "disarming Iraq", we should have always read "getting rid of Saddam Hussein". Two years ago when writing my preview for the year 2001, I said that America would ensure the downfall of Saddam Hussein in the coming 12 months. I was wrong on the timing, but I am as sure then as I am now that only the overthrow of the Iraqi President will satisfy the White House. The US is laying down the biggest of markers for the future world order. Any state that it believes holds weapons of mass destruction and might conceivably become unstable or co-operate with terrorists will be disarmed. By force if needs be.

So now the long wait is nearly over. The months of argument and obfuscation and diplomatic grandstanding are drawing to a close. The next seven days will see decided the fate of millions of Iraqis, and the terms on which the world will be run for the rest of my life and probably that of my child. Yet it doesn't feel like an epochal moment. Trapped in the rain and traffic yesterday, I scanned the faces of the people around me. Not like the ones I saw in those days after 11 September, or on the day of the big march against the war.

I was rushing home to watch Hans Blix on television; they were heading back from lunch to the office. The Iraq crisis brought a million-plus people on to the streets a few weeks ago but that energy and concern have become strangely muted. The anti-war movement has seemed quiet in this past tumultuous week. In fact since the Hyde Park rally its leaders have been notably low key.

Perhaps this is a function of the movement's size and scope. It includes everybody from the hard left to Tories, radical Islamists, liberals and human rights campaigners. Agreeing on anything as concrete as a plan of action is difficult within such a broad coalition. I suspect that when Tony Blair stuck to his guns after the rally and the Commons rebellion, a large mass of people resigned themselves to the inevitable. War was going to happen.

They had made their views known. If it was going to be done at least it would not be in their name. That is not to say that the rebellion among the people or in Parliament is over. Rather it will depend on how the war unfolds. If the war is swift with minimal civilian casualties, Mr Blair will be safe. But if civilian casualties are high and there is widespread destruction, there will be not only mass demonstrations but also probably Cabinet resignations and the campaign of civil disobedience threatened some weeks back. We are then into truly uncharted territory. A high civilian death count would bruise George Bush. It could destroy Tony Blair.

Mr Blair is convinced that the threat of the future lies – as a seminal American strategy document has put it – in the intersection of fundamentalism and technology. This is the real meaning of the Iraq war: the opening shot in a campaign for a world in which terrorism and any threat to the West is vanquished. It is a risky venture and a great deal more complex than Mr Bush has ever allowed. Yet I am not yet sure that the breach between the US and Europe is eternal, if only because of so many shared values and cultural ties. Like Mr Blair's own future, the future of that relationship will depend heavily on what happens when the bombs start to fall. Any day now.

The writer is a BBC Special Correspondent