LONDON — The word "enduring" crops up a lot in connection with the U.S. adventure in Iraq. As soon as the U.S. Army occupied the country in 2003, it began work on 14 "enduring" (i.e. permanent) military bases to turn it into an American bastion at the head of the Gulf. And now U.S. President George W. Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki have signed an agreement to forge an "enduring" U.S.-Iraqi relationship once the United Nations mandate that currently authorizes the U.S. presence in the country expires at the end of next year.

The U.N. mandate that provides a legal justification for the current "multinational" force in Iraq was a desperate attempt to paper over the fact that the organization's most powerful member had launched an unprovoked invasion of another country. The Security Council could not defy or condemn the United States — Britain and the U.S. would both have vetoed such a move — so it chose to give it some diplomatic cover instead. But the next extension of the U.N. mandate, to the end of 2008, will be the last.

The "coalition" of other countries that contributed troops to the occupation of Iraq is melting away: the new Australian government is going to bring its troops home, the Japanese Parliament has ended the country's naval support for the Afghanistan mission (ground soldiers had already left Iraq), and Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown is searching for a tactful way to pull all the British troops out.