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After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Dick Cheney, then the Secretary of
Defense, set up a "shop," as they say, to think about American foreign
policy after the Cold War, at the grand strategic level. The project, whose
existence was kept quiet, included people who are now back in the game, at
a higher level: among them, Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of
Defense; Lewis Libby, Cheney's chief of staff; and Eric Edelman, a senior
foreign-policy adviser to Cheney-generally speaking, a cohesive group of
conservatives who regard themselves as bigger-thinking, tougher-minded, and
intellectually bolder than most other people in Washington. (Donald
Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense, shares these characteristics, and has
been closely associated with Cheney for more than thirty years.) Colin
Powell, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, mounted a
competing, and presumably more ideologically moderate, effort to reimagine
American foreign policy and defense. A date was set-May 21, 1990-on which
each team would brief Cheney for an hour; Cheney would then brief President
Bush, after which Bush would make a foreign-policy address unveiling the
new grand strategy.

Everybody worked for months on the "five-twenty-one brief," with a sense
that the shape of the post-Cold War world was at stake. When Wolfowitz and
Powell arrived at Cheney's office on May 21st, Wolfowitz went first, but
his briefing lasted far beyond the allotted hour, and Cheney (a hawk who,
perhaps, liked what he was hearing) did not call time on him. Powell didn't
get to present his alternate version of the future of the United States in
the world until a couple of weeks later. Cheney briefed President Bush,
using material mostly from Wolfowitz, and Bush prepared his major
foreign-policy address. But he delivered it on August 2, 1990, the day that
Iraq invaded Kuwait, so nobody noticed.

The team kept working. In 1992, the Times got its hands on a version of the
material, and published a front-page story saying that the Pentagon
envisioned a future in which the United States could, and should, prevent
any other nation or alliance from becoming a great power. A few weeks of
controversy ensued about the Bush Administration's hawks being
"unilateral"-controversy that Cheney's people put an end to with denials
and the counter-leak of an edited, softer version of the same material.

As it became apparent that Bush was going to lose to Clinton, the Cheney
team's efforts took on the quality of a parting shot. The report that the
senior official handed me at lunch had been issued only a few days before
Clinton took office. It is a somewhat bland, opaque document-a "scrubbed,"
meaning unclassified, version of something more candid-but it contained the
essential ideas of "shaping," rather than reacting to, the rest of the
world, and of preventing the rise of other superpowers. Its tone is one of
skepticism about diplomatic partnerships. A more forthright version of the
same ideas can be found in a short book titled "From Containment to Global
Leadership?," which Zalmay Khalilzad, who joined Cheney's team in 1991 and
is now special envoy to Afghanistan, published a couple of years into the
Clinton Administration, when he was out of government. It recommends that
the United States "preclude the rise of another global rival for the
indefinite future." Khalilzad writes, "It is a vital U.S. interest to
preclude such a development-i.e., to be willing to use force if necessary
for the purpose."

When George W. Bush was campaigning for President, he and the people around
him didn't seem to be proposing a great doctrinal shift, along the lines of
the policy of containment of the Soviet Union's sphere of influence which
the United States maintained during the Cold War. In his first major
foreign-policy speech, delivered in November of 1999, Bush declared that "a
President must be a clear-eyed realist," a formulation that seems to
connote an absence of world-remaking ambition. "Realism" is exactly the
foreign-policy doctrine that Cheney's Pentagon team rejected, partly
because it posits the impossibility of any one country's ever dominating
world affairs for any length of time.

One gets many reminders in Washington these days of how much the terrorist
attacks of September 11th have changed official foreign-policy thinking.
Any chief executive, of either party, would probably have done what Bush
has done so far-made war on the Taliban and Al Qaeda and enhanced domestic
security. It is only now, six months after the attacks, that we are truly
entering the realm of Presidential choice, and all indications are that
Bush is going to use September 11th as the occasion to launch a new,
aggressive American foreign policy that would represent a broad change in
direction rather than a specific war on terrorism. All his rhetoric,
especially in the two addresses he has given to joint sessions of Congress
since September 11th, and all the information about his state of mind which
his aides have leaked, indicate that he sees this as the nation's moment of
destiny-a perception that the people around him seem to be encouraging,
because it enhances Bush's stature and opens the way to more assertive
policymaking.

Inside government, the reason September 11th appears to have been "a
transformative moment," as the senior official I had lunch with put it, is
not so much that it revealed the existence of a threat of which officials
had previously been unaware as that it drastically reduced the American
public's usual resistance to American military involvement overseas, at
least for a while. The Clinton Administration, beginning with the "Black
Hawk Down" operation in Mogadishu, during its first year, operated on the
conviction that Americans were highly averse to casualties; the all-bombing
Kosovo operation, in Clinton's next-to-last year, was the ideal foreign
military adventure. Now that the United States has been attacked, the
options are much broader. The senior official approvingly mentioned a 1999
study of casualty aversion by the Triangle Institute for Security Studies,
which argued that the "mass public" is much less casualty-averse than the
military or the civilian élite believes; for example, the study showed that
the public would tolerate thirty thousand deaths in a military operation to
prevent Iraq from acquiring weapons of mass destruction. (The American
death total in the Vietnam War was about fifty-eight thousand.) September
11th presumably reduced casualty aversion even further.

Recently, I went to the White House to interview Condoleezza Rice. Rice's
Foreign Affairs article from 2000 begins with this declaration: "The United
States has found it exceedingly difficult to define its 'national interest'
in the absence of Soviet power." I asked her whether that is still the
case. "I think the difficulty has passed in defining a role," she said
immediately. "I think September 11th was one of those great earthquakes
that clarify and sharpen. Events are in much sharper relief." Like Bush,
she said that opposing terrorism and preventing the accumulation of weapons
of mass destruction "in the hands of irresponsible states" now define the
national interest. (The latter goal, by the way, is new-in Bush's speech to
Congress on September 20th, America's sole grand purpose was ending
terrorism.) We talked in her West Wing office; its tall windows face the
part of the White House grounds where television reporters do their
standups. In her bearing, Rice seemed less crisply military than she does
in public. She looked a little tired, but she was projecting a kind of
missionary calm, rather than belligerence.

In the Foreign Affairs article, Rice came across as a classic realist,
putting forth "the notions of power politics, great powers, and power
balances" as the proper central concerns of the United States. Now she

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Several people I spoke with predicted that most, or even all, of the
nations that loudly oppose an invasion of Iraq would privately cheer it on,
if they felt certain that this time the Americans were really going to
finish the job. One purpose of Vice-President Cheney's recent diplomatic
tour of the region was to offer assurances on that matter, while gamely
absorbing all the public criticism of an Iraq operation. In any event, the
Administration appears to be committed to acting forcefully in advance of
the world's approval. When I spoke to Condoleezza Rice, she said that the
United States should assemble "coalitions of the willing" to support its
actions, rather than feel it has to work within the existing infrastructure
of international treaties and organizations. An invasion of Iraq would test
that policy in more ways than one: the Administration would be betting that
it can continue to eliminate Al Qaeda cells in countries that publicly
opposed the Iraq operation.

When the Administration submitted its budget earlier this year, it asked
for a forty-eight-billion-dollar increase in defense spending for fiscal
2003, which begins in October, 2002. Much of that sum would go to improve
military pay and benefits, but ten billion dollars of it is designated as
an unspecified contingency fund for further operations in the war on
terrorism. That's probably at least the initial funding for an invasion of
Iraq.

This spring, the Administration will be talking to other countries about
the invasion, trying to secure basing and overflight privileges, while Bush
builds up a rhetorical case for it by giving speeches about the
unacceptability of developing weapons of mass destruction. A drama
involving weapons inspections in Iraq will play itself out over the spring
and summer, and will end with the United States declaring that the terms
that Saddam offers for the inspections, involving delays and restrictions,
are unacceptable. Then, probably in the late summer or early fall, the
enormous troop positioning, which will take months, will begin. The
Administration obviously feels confident that the United States can
effectively parry whatever aggressive actions Saddam takes during the troop
buildup, and hopes that its moves will destabilize Iraq enough to cause the
Republican Guard, the military key to the country, to turn against Saddam
and topple him on its own. But the chain of events leading inexorably to a
full-scale American invasion, if it hasn't already begun, evidently will
begin soon.

Lewis (Scooter) Libby, who was the principal drafter of Cheney's
future-of-the-world documents during the first Bush Administration, now
works in an office in the Old Executive Office Building, overlooking the
West Wing, where he has a second, smaller office. A packet of
public-relations material prompted by the recent paperback publication of
his 1996 novel, "The Apprentice," quotes the Times' calling him "Dick
Cheney's Dick Cheney," which seems like an apt description: he appears
absolutely sure of himself, and, whether by coincidence or as a result of
the influence of his boss, speaks in a tough, confidential, gravelly
rumble. Like Condoleezza Rice and Bush himself, he gives the impression of
having calmly accepted the idea that the project of war and reconstruction
which the Administration has now taken on may be a little exhausting for
those charged with carrying it out but is unquestionably right, the only
truly prudent course.

When I went to see Libby, not long ago, I asked him whether, before
September 11th, American policy toward terrorism should have been
different. He went to his desk and got out a large black loose-leaf binder,
filled with typewritten sheets interspersed with foldout maps of the Middle
East. He looked through it for a long minute, formulating his answer.

"Let us stack it up," he said at last. "Somalia, 1993; 1994, the discovery
of the Al Qaeda-related plot in the Philippines; 1993, the World Trade
Center, first bombing; 1993, the attempt to assassinate President Bush,
former President Bush, and the lack of response to that, the lack of a
serious response to that; 1995, the Riyadh bombing; 1996, the Khobar
bombing; 1998, the Kenyan embassy bombing and the Tanzanian embassy
bombing; 1999, the plot to launch millennium attacks; 2000, the bombing of
the Cole. Throughout this period, infractions on inspections by the Iraqis,
and eventually the withdrawal of the entire inspection regime; and the
failure to respond significantly to Iraqi incursions in the Kurdish areas.
No one would say these challenges posed easy problems, but if you take that
long list and you ask, 'Did we respond in a way which discouraged people
from supporting terrorist activities, or activities clearly against our
interests? Did we help to shape the environment in a way which discouraged
further aggressions against U.S. interests?,' many observers conclude no,
and ask whether it was then easier for someone like Osama bin Laden to rise
up and say credibly, 'The Americans don't have the stomach to defend
themselves. They won't take casualties to defend their interests. They are
morally weak.' "

Libby insisted that the American response to September 11th has not been
standard or foreordained. "Look at what the President has done in
Afghanistan," he said, "and look at his speech to the joint session of
Congress"-meaning the State of the Union Message, in January. "He made it
clear that it's an important area. He made it clear that we believe in
expanding the zone of democracy even in this difficult part of the world.
He made it clear that we stand by our friends and defend our interests. And
he had the courage to identify those states which present a problem, and to
begin to build consensus for action that would need to be taken if there is
not a change of behavior on their part. Take the Afghan case, for example.
There are many other courses that the President could have taken. He could
have waited for juridical proof before we responded. He could have engaged
in long negotiations with the Taliban. He could have failed to seek a new
relationship with Pakistan, based on its past nuclear tests, or been so
afraid of weakening Pakistan that we didn't seek its help. This list could
go on to twice or three times the length I've mentioned so far. But,
instead, the President saw an opportunity to refashion relations while
standing up for our interests. The problem is complex, and we don't know
yet how it will end, but we have opened new prospects for relations not
only with Afghanistan, as important as it was as a threat, but with the
states of Central Asia, Pakistan, Russia, and, as it may develop, with the
states of Southwest Asia more generally."

We moved on to Iraq, and the question of what makes Saddam Hussein
unacceptable, in the Administration's eyes. "The issue is not inspections,"
Libby said. "The issue is the Iraqis' promise not to have weapons of mass
destruction, their promise to recognize the boundaries of Kuwait, their
promise not to threaten other countries, and other promises that they made
in '91, and a number of U.N. resolutions, including all the other problems
I listed. Whether it was wise or not-and that is the subject of debate-Iraq
was given a second chance to abide by international norms. It failed to
take that chance then, and annually for the next ten years."

"What's your level of confidence," I asked him, "that the current regime
will, in fact, change its behavior in a way that you will be satisfied by?"

He ran his hand over his face and then gave me a direct gaze and spoke
slowly and deliberately. "There is no basis in Iraq's past behavior to have
confidence in good-faith efforts on their part to change their behavior."