ARE IR RENORMALONS A GOOD PROBE FOR THE STRONG INTERACTION DOMAIN

We study the origin of non-analyticity in alpha(s) of a short-distance QCD observable to demonstrate that the infrared renormalons, the same -sign factorial growth of the perturbative expansion, is a universal p henomenon that originates entirely from the small coupling domain. In particular, both the position and the nature of the singularity of the Borel transform of the perturbative series prove to be independent of whether the running coupling alpha(k(2)) becomes singular at some fin ite scale (''Landau pole''), or stays finite down to k(2) = 0. We argu e that getting hold of the infrared renormalons per se can help next t o nothing in quantifying non-perturbative effects.