One can only hope that the neo-con philosophy of a unilateralist, pre-emptive and benevolent empire is not the only vision that dominates the Bush foreign policy

As Saddam Hussein’s control over Iraq steadily crumbled in the face of formidable firepower by US and British forces, the world watched in horror and empathized with the Iraqi people, caught between a hyperpower and a Stalinist tyrant. The first priority for the world community is naturally to see this conflict reach an early closure so as to minimize the suffering on all sides. However, the implications of this war on the global order, on relations between the nations and peoples of the world, and on the institutions and policies put in place in the fifty-plus years since the end of World War II are enormous.

Former CIA Director James Woolsey, has called this the Fourth World War against “fascists” and Islamic extremists. We can only hope that this putative World War either never happens or does not end up lasting longer than either WWI or WWII, as Woolsey has predicted.

The war on Iraq has been viewed with mixed and oftentimes contradictory emotions by most Indians and Indian-Americans. On the one hand, the cruel and despotic regime of Saddam Hussein which has inflicted so much suffering on ordinary Iraqis for such a long time can hardly attract much sympathy from anyone in the free world. At the same time, the unilateral manner in which the US overrode and potentially destroyed the edifice of a global order that was anchored around the United Nations, NATO and other multinational institutions, has been seen as a tragedy by many who cannot accept that the end justified the means. Compounding these two conflicting viewpoints is the fact that India has long had excellent relations with the Iraqi nation, ranging from business to military ties.

Iraq has been one of the few secular nations in the Middle East, and the Iraqis have always supported India on Kashmir. Even with regard to the latest buzzphrase, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), which are suddenly verboten for mankind, India has been rightly skeptical about having one set of rules for superpowers, whether real or presumptive, while excluding others from ever joining the WMD club.

Indian-Americans face a particular dilemma in the current context. As US citizens and residents, they rightly support the members of the Armed Forces and the Marines, which count many Indian-Americans amongst their number, and who are simply following orders in fighting a war launched by the civilian leadership. Regardless of political loyalties, most NRIs can only hope and pray for an early end to the war with minimum suffering and loss of lives on all sides. In addition, regardless of disagreements over the justness of this war, the overwhelming feeling is that now that the war has begun, the US must win. But what is most worrisome is the aftermath, both from the perspective of terrorism at home as well as the prospects of the World War IV that Woolsey has talked about.

The official Indian reaction to the war has been mixed, ranging from outright support from some right-wing Hindu organizations who view this as part of a war against Islamist extremism, to extreme opposition from Indian Muslims and the leftists. Most mainstream parties and centrists seem to be conflicted like the rest of the world between revulsion for the Saddam Hussein regime of terror and concerns about US unilateralism. Underlying this ambivalence is the feeling that much as the Indians decry pre-emptive war, India views the Iraq War as providing a precedent for its own “right to launch a pre-emptive attack against Pakistan", as External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha put it in a recent public statement.

If there is something positive to be said about the Iraq War, it is the happiness expressed by those Iraqis that have survived Saddam’s murder squads and the US bombing. Iraqi exiles in Jordan crowded into cafes to watch the news from Baghdad.

Ahmed al-Haboubi, a former minister in the government toppled by Saddam’s Baath party in a 1968 military coup, said that celebrations should wait until a democratic government is elected to replace Saddam's regime. What worries al-Haboubi and many liberal-minded exiled Iraqis most is that all this would be in vain from their standpoint if Saddam’s regime is replaced by opportunists who establish a puppet regime which parrots the US party line on Israel

Arthur Schlesinger, a JFK confidant and Pulitzer Prize winner, summarized the views of many who are troubled by the manner in which the US launched this war on Iraq. He said in an interview published in Newsweek magazine that “I think we've made a fatal mis-turn in our foreign policy by abandoning the doctrine of containment-plus-deterrence (which won the Cold War peacefully), and adopting as the basis of our foreign policy preventive war. Preventive war, anticipatory self-defense, was the doctrine with which the Japanese justified Pearl Harbor."

The sequence of events that brought us to this denouement can be traced back to a position paper published in 1992 by Paul Wolfowitz, the then Under Secretary for Defense for policy, who helped draft an internal set of military guidelines, called a "Defense Planning Guidance". This draft argued for a new military and political strategy for the post-Cold War world, and postulating that the US should talk loudly, and carry a big stick, and use its military power to preempt the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Neo-conservatism soon emerged as the centerpiece of American policy when President Bush went looking for a new foreign policy paradigm for the Middle East.

During the Clinton years, the so-called neo-conservatives, or neo-cons, including Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Douglas Feith kept the faith. In January 1998, they sent a letter to President Clinton calling for military action to remove Saddam Hussein. This was three-and-a-half years before 9/11 gave an excuse for the neo-cons to take their long-held views to fruition.

At its core, the neo-con philosophy states that the number one objective of U.S. post-Cold War political and military strategy should be preventing the emergence of a rival superpower and to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival. If necessary, the US must be prepared to take unilateral action to establish the “benevolent hegemony” of the United States of America.

Wolfowitz is the uber-neocon, and is also a rare example of a bureaucrat who has been fictionalized in a novel, as he was in Saul Bellow’s novel “Ravelstein”. The Wolfowitz character in this novel is a former student of the book’s eponymous hero, who is modeled on Allan Bloom, a fellow professor of Wolfowitz at the University of Chicago. Professor Bloom and the conservative political philosopher Leo Strauss from Chicago are the father figures of the “neoconservative” movement.

Two days after 9/11, Wolfowitz made his move at a Pentagon briefing, signaling that the US will enlarge its campaign against terror to include Iraq. He stated that “it’s not just simply a matter of capturing people and holding them accountable, but … ending states who sponsor terrorism”. The then-moderate Colin Powell hastened to state that “we’re after ending terrorism … but I think ending terrorism is where I would like to leave it, and let Mr. Wolfowitz speak for himself.” Neo-conservatism soon emerged as the centerpiece of American policy when President Bush went looking for a new foreign policy paradigm for the Middle East.

“Wolfowitz of Arabia”, as he is caricatured by some, has positioned a group of his “true believers” to take up senior positions in the new US occupation government of Iraq. Amongst these people is Robert Reilly, a former head of the Voice of America, who is one of those known as “Wolfie’s” people. These true believers are thought to be particularly keen to create a newly democratic Iraq with a tilt toward Israel. This position was officially sanctioned when Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman remarked at a news conference recently that he would be delighted if “a new Iraqi government's first act was to recognize Israel”.

It was reported that when a Bush aide stepped into the Oval Office recently to tell the President that Secretary Rumsfeld had been warning Syria, he smiled and responded with one word – “Good.” Wolfowitz and Administration hawks are beginning to speak about a successful conclusion of the war in Iraq providing a possible springboard for change in Syria and elsewhere. Ex-CIA chief Woolsey told an audience at UCLA recently that the “fascist” government in Syria had to be replaced.

One can only hope that the neo-con philosophy of a unilateralist, pre-emptive and benevolent empire is not the only “vision thing” that dominates the foreign policy of the Bush 43 administration. It is pertinent to note that some of the criticisms leveled against domineering US policy clearly predate the Bush Administration. The term hyperpuissance, or “hyperpower”, was coined during the Clinton administration by Hubert Védrine, the French Foreign Minister at the time. And it was Madeline Albright, President Clinton’s Secretary of State, who was accused of “tastelessly bragging of the power and virtue of her country”.

While US foreign policy inevitably began to become unilateralist following the breakup of the Soviet Union, it is also clear that the hawkish neo-cons have put this tendency into overdrive. As Maureen Dowd put it best in the New York Times, “the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom should not mark the beginning of Operation Eternal War.” Besides, “there remains the unfinished business of Osama bin Laden,” Al Qaeda and a long list of terrorist organizations that continue to kill innocents in countries around the world including India.

Ram Kelkar is an alumnus of IIT Bombay with an MBA from the Wharton School. He is currently managing director at a securities firm