The final means of persuasion (bribery)

While France and Germany are throwing all sorts of monkey wrenches into the Bush administration's plans for war, the Sunday Herald reports that the US is breaking out its checkbook in order to persuade reluctant nations to sign on to war. "The US will be spending like a lottery winner in the coming weeks to try to secure the support, or at least the non interference, of key Arab states," the paper declares. Furthermore,

The US appears to expect no less than the UN should become a supine adjunct to the world's superpower, rubber-stamping its every foreign policy whim, while allowing it to opt out of inconvenient little treaties such as the International Criminal Court.

This is the new world order and it seems that the UN and its security council is powerless to stop it, mostly because ultimately the countries that make up the Security Council are, like the US, more concerned with their own self-interest than safeguarding the principles of international law.