By one vote, Japan managed to get a majority of the International Whaling Commission to say the organisation's mission should be changed from protecting whales to regulating the manner and frequency with which they'll be killed. It will take 70% of the commission's members to actually overturn the ban on commercial whaling, so this vote is really symbolic.

But it suggests that Japan will get its way, and sooner rather than later.

In a week when authorities dramatically foiled a plot to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago, North Korea decided it was going to test its first proper ICBM before selling the plans to Iran and the rest of the planet focused on the World Cup, this might not seem like big news.

But in some ways this whale of a tale actually tells us something about the way those other big international stories play out . . . not to mention will probably mean the return of "save the whales" as a slogan on bumper stickers.

Irish observers are, of course, no strangers to brown envelopes on a local level, with payments to politicians . . . which they may or may not recall when it comes time to face the tribunal . . . being followed by rezoning decisions favouring the chaps who ponied up the cash. The great myth we tell ourselves about the world is that somehow international politics is different, that there is a set of rules and higher principles to which members of the international community are supposed to adhere.

In fact, what Japan is accused of doing this week is a difference of scale, not kind, from the sort of carryon that merits reenactments on Vincent Browne's radio show. Instead of rezoning a patch of land in Carrickmines or Lucan, Japan wants to rezone the world's oceans. And, for reasons that I must admit escape me, they're so keen to hack apart whale carcasses on the beach that they're willing to pay over the odds, and risk the opprobrium of liberal minded Sunday newspaper readers, to get what they want.

It must also be admitted that this is not at its core different from the way any other rich country operates to get what it wants. The United States wanted Israel and Egypt to stop going to war, so those two countries were for many years the recipients of US foreign aid.

The US wants Iran to give up its nuclear programme, it offers some incentives. Ditto North Korea.

The main difference in the behaviour of Japan is how crass the pay-offs actually were. Tiny Pacific and Caribbean islands suddenly turn up and want to do their bit on the world stage, and just happen to vote with Japan. A delegate from the Solomon Islands defied her government's public instructions and voted with Japan.

She replaced another Solomons delegate who was sacked for doing exactly the same thing at the last IWC meeting. Why is St Kitts a member of the IWC at all?

For that matter, why is Ireland? [You'll be pleased, no doubt, to know that Ireland voted against the Japanese proposal. ] But the real question is, why do the views of Togo or St Kitts or Nauru or Tuvalu (all IWC members) have the same weight as countries with 300 times their population and some plausible interest in whaling?

The answer is that most of our international institutions are based on the fiction that every state in the system is equal. The problem is no one seems to have a better idea of how to paper over the anarchy of reality.

In the meantime, see if you can dig out those 'save the whales' posters in your attic.