SINCE PRESIDENT BUSH'S speech to the United Nations, support for enforcing the Security Council's resolutions on Iraq has been growing steadily. Many countries now are prepared to support a new resolution setting a deadline for Iraq to allow weapons inspectors into the country -- so many that Iraq yesterday sought to preempt any such action by informing Secretary General Kofi Annan that it would allow the inspectors in. Despite such tactical maneuvers, Saddam Hussein's campaign to preserve and expand his arsenal of weapons of mass destruction will surely continue; if it does, a number of countries, including Saudi Arabia, have suggested that they will support military action. That leaves one prominent country -- or, at least, its present leader -- in danger of isolation. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder continues to insist that there is no chance his government will support an attack against Iraq, even if that action is endorsed by the United Nations. German analysts say this stance may well allow Mr. Schroeder to eke out a win in his bid for reelection this Sunday. If so, it will be a costly victory: Mr. Schroeder will find himself at the head of a government whose international prestige and influence have vastly diminished.

Mr. Schroeder is hardly the first leader to exploit an international crisis for domestic political purposes; some Democrats in the United States are wondering why President Bush's offensive on Iraq coincides with the end of a midterm election campaign. But Mr. Bush at worst can be suspected of opportunistic timing; he has been moving toward a confrontation with Saddam Hussein since the beginning of his administration. Mr. Schroeder, in contrast, appears prepared to trample some of the most important principles of his government in order to pander to Germany's left-wing voters. Until recently the chancellor and his foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, have proudly boasted about their achievement in pushing Germany to play a substantial role in international security, dispatching troops to Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia and Afghanistan. After 9/11, Mr. Schroeder's government argued forcefully that the United States should build coalitions to fight terrorism with its closest allies -- rather than act unilaterally -- and promised to do its share. "The days when Germany could stand timidly on the sidelines, declining to participate in foreign military missions, are irrevocably over," Mr. Schroeder proclaimed.

Mr. Bush has now done what Germany has asked, eschewing unilateral action and laying his case against Saddam Hussein before the United Nations, based not on a narrow interpretation of U.S. security but on the world body's own resolutions. It is possible the Security Council will decline to respond; Germany is not the only country with serious doubts about whether military action against Iraq is justified or prudent. Mr. Schroeder himself has raised some good questions: whether an attack on Iraq would disrupt the larger war on terrorism, for example, and whether there is a coherent plan for a post-Saddam Hussein regime. But if the Bush administration supplies sufficient assurances, and Iraq fails to respond to another resolution, most of the Security Council and the NATO alliance will be positioned to support enforcement action. Only Mr. Schroeder has excluded his government, in advance, from joining such an international consensus.

"On the existential questions that decide German politics," Mr. Schroeder preached at one of his campaign rallies, "the decisions are made in Berlin -- in Berlin and nowhere else." If such rhetoric wins him reelection, Mr. Schroeder is likely to find that future démarches by his government about decisions made exclusively in Washington will have little credibility -- and that the enhanced role in international security he has sought for his country will crumble as Germany sits timidly on the sidelines, watching while its allies face up to a challenge that the chancellor cynically ducked.