Whatever the Washington snipers wanted, the authorities were not about to award it and their eventual capture was inevitable. There was not the slightest chance that Vladimir Putin would, as the Chechen rebels insisted, declare that his war in the dissident republic was “over” in order to win the release of hostages. It was merely a matter of time before the terrorists were slaughtered and just a question of how many innocent individuals they would take down with them. And for all the anguish caused by the likes of Islamic Jihad through suicide bombings (such as the West Bank murders yesterday), the prospect of Israel determining that it should cease to exist is no higher now than it was a week ago.

Terrorists can steal lives but terrorism operates within strict limits. The IRA, for example, an organisation founded to drive the British from the island of Ireland by force, has been obliged to hold fire in return for the opportunity to adminster schools and hospitals — an experience which has since been suspended. This is not what Bobby Sands starved himself to death for. It is fashionable to argue that the terrorists “always win” but, in truth, most of the time they lose. That is because no number of recruits, size of arsenal, or source of funds can make up for the advantages held by those in command of a nation state.

The distinction is critical. A Hitler, Stalin or Pol Pot could doubtless have inflicted carnage as a lone assailant, a suicide bomber or the leader of a terrorist outfit. But those casualties would be as nought when compared with what they were capable of doing when placed in control of a country. Al-Qaeda was, 15 months ago, a unique threat because it had acquired a symbiotic relationship with the Taleban in Afghanistan. It had become a pseudo-state and thus in a position to operate on an ostentatious scale. I believe that Osama bin Laden is dead and will remain so convinced until I see him interviewed live on GMTV by John Leslie (an unlikely development), but even if he is still with us then, without the sponsorship of a state, he is virtually irrelevant.

In most places, therefore, despite spectacular acts of mass murder such as the Bali blast, the War on Terror is proceeding far better than it is fashionable to acknowledge. Those countries which might have contemplated providing the refuge and resources of a state to terrorist bodies have been obliged to abandon such ambitions. The dangerous exception is the Middle East because Yassir Arafat has a series of connections with various armed fanatics which are not dissimilar to those which existed between Mullah Omar and bin Laden.

The evidence that rogue governments can inflict so much more chaos than rogue gunmen or groups does not seem to be concentrating minds much at the United Nations. The Iraqi regime and its weapons programme are a far greater threat to global peace than any alliance of terrorist networks. It is ludicrous that some of those complaining that Russian troops used a disabling gas when storming the Moscow theatre on Saturday appear not to be disturbed about Saddam Hussein’s secret stocks of substantially more poisonous material. The notion that a struggle with Iraq represents some sort of “distraction” from the War on Terror is almost comical. It is like asserting that the search for a cure for cancer diverts energy from the search for perfect cosmetic surgery.

The United Nations has, as Colin Powell rightly observed, about a week to get its act together. George W. Bush offered to travel along the “UN route” in a speech to the General Assembly on September 12 and he must have been wondering ever since whether he should have had issued the invitation in the first place. The Security Council has proved incapable of framing even a modest resolution which asserts that Iraq has ignored all previous international demands for a decade and that something at some time has to be done about it.

The United States has tolerated this risible spectacle so far because the White House is absorbed by the mid-term elections on November 5, while much of the media and public have been obsessed with the sniper saga. British diplomats, desperately looking for a form of words that will be accepted at the Security Council, have been unwitting beneficiaries of the killing spree in Maryland and Virginia. But with arrests on that front made, and the election campaign about to come to a close, the Americans will either expect an appropriate UN resolution to be embraced imminently or will decide, correctly, to deal with the situation unilaterally.

It is has been widely claimed that Mr Putin will, after the horrors of Moscow, feel compelled to co-operate with the Americans over Saddam. This is to assume that the Russians are the real problem at the United Nations. They are not. Mr Putin has legitimate commercial and strategic interests in the region and is entitled to drive a hard bargain with Washington. That is what he is doing and it is not resented. The grotesque recent grandstanding by Jacques Chirac is an entirely different matter.

It is he who in the next few days will make or break a meaningful international stance against a menace far more awesome than snipers or Chechens. It is why, ironically, despite the bloodshed elsewhere, it is the President of France who is today the most serious obstacle to world order.

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