The showdown between the United States and other members of the United Nations Security Council was the latest and strongest confirmation that the international solidarity forged after the terror attacks on Sept. 11 was probably superficial and temporary

The immediate issue at the United Nations was Washington's demand that American troops and all other United Nations peacekeeping forces be exempted from the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, which came into existence today under the shadow of intense hostility from the Bush administration. Unless either the United States or other Council members back down before midnight Wednesday, the United Nations police-training mission in Bosnia will be abruptly terminated. If the standoff continues, all other United Nations peacekeeping operations will be jeopardized as they come up for renewal, starting with the mission in Lebanon later this month. The immediate impact in Bosnia was likely to be largely organizational. Only 46 Americans serve in the police-training mission, and the entire operation was to be turned over to the European Union in six months. But the very notion of Americans threatening to pull forces out of Europe in a dispute, even if symbolic, carried troubling connotations on a Continent where the American presence had represented a shared commitment for decades. At the heart of the divergence was a fundamentally different vision of global organizations. The Europeans, accustomed by their history and geography to think in terms of multilateral arrangements, have always placed a greater premium on international organizations. In the United States, international organizations like the United Nations have always been viewed with suspicion, much of it affirmed by the anti-American and anti-Israeli votes of the cold war.