As Washington was never in control in the first place, this provides an interesting insight into the control-freak mentality which runs the world's strongest military power. 

Had Americans learned from Vietnam, they would have known that bombing people doesn't usually make them inclined to obey you. As Julianne Smith, senior analyst at the European Security desk at the British American Security Information Council recently said: 

"Bombing is not a preventive tool, it is a consequence of not having any preventive tools. It's clear that the Nato bombings are not saving lives, instead they are contributing to the escalation of the conflict."

 Current US levels of self-delusion are truly dangerous. They are now escalating the bombing on the pretext that the other side was responsible for the escalation. Now Russia is sending a small fleet to the Adriatic - which, incidentally, is arguably less provocative a step than expanding Nato up to Russia's borders. But will the USA see this as someone else's escalation? And how will they respond to that?

 The self-delusions are escalating too. The bombing will be stepped up - but the USAF is down to 100 cruise missiles. The US action is still 'in pursuit of the aims of the international community' - but is now opposed by China, Russia, India and Indonesia, countries with almost half the world's population between them. And three of these four are nuclear powers. 

Jacqueline Cabasso, Executive Director of the Western States Legal Foundation, has pointed out the implications of recent US belligerence for arms control: that Russia has terminated its 'Millennium Bug' compliance programme with the US; that Ukraine is reportedly contemplating reversal of its non-nuclear status; and that the US bombing in Yugoslavia merely reinforces recent developments in the US military realm as a whole. 

The Senate recently voted to go forward with 'national missile defence', which threatens to abrogate the ABM treaty. The US is about to spend $60bn rebuilding its nuclear weapons research, development and production infrastructure. Its Secretary of Energy has announced that production of tritium - radioactive hydrogen used to boost the destructive power of nuclear weapons - is to be resumed. 

Unsurprisingly, the Russians have become resistant to ratifying the START II arms reduction treaty. As Cabasso puts it, 'We seem to be heading straight backwards into the Cold War.' 

All this happens when a defensive alliance, having lost the enemy which brought about its inception, goes on the offensive in order to restore peace. Robert Hayden, Director of the Center for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, who has been deeply involved in attempts to mediate the crisis in Kosovo, has said that "We have now shown that Nato is 'credible' for doing something incredibly irresponsible."

 The really frightening thing is that despite all his aggression, Uncle Sam seems convinced he's acting defensively. Uncle Sam is psychotic. 

Unfortunately US delf-delusion provides the mirror into which Messrs Blair, Cook and Robertson gaze. Mr Cook describes how Milosevic ought to respond, as though Milosevic were a rat attached to an electrode. Mr Blair greets the news of Greek and Italian pleas for an end to the bombing with an assertion that Nato is united. Mr Robertson assures us that Milosevic is "rattled, huddled in his bunker", but it isn't Milosevic's bunker where the atrocities are continuing. 

Mr Blair tells us that the air strikes are against the "killing machine", but he is contradicted by General Sir Michael Rose, former UN commander in Bosnia, who points out that air strikes don't actually hit the gangs of thugs carrying out the atrocities. 

Maybe Jacqueline Cabasso is wrong. Maybe we're not heading backwards into the Cold War; maybe August 1914 is our destination. Except that Uncle Sam and his devoted acolyte Tony Blair are behaving somewhat less rationally than the Kaiser.