WASHINGTON -- With the departures last week of Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, it became clear that President Bush will enter his second term with a sharply different team. But what is different pales in comparison to what will remain the same: Donald Rumsfeld will continue as defense secretary, and as long as he stays the neoconservatives who dominated the first term will hold sway over foreign policy.

Whither the neocons was the great question of the Bush campaign. And it was, perhaps, the most important question of the entire 2004 election, because it would define Bush's doctrine of preemption. But it was not answered until last weekend, when Rumsfeld confirmed that he was keeping his job.

Bush presented his idea that the United States should destroy terrorist threats before they strike, but his fierce rhetoric never included a standard for judging such threats. Must a threat be immediate or merely potential? Would the country ever be justified in acting against nations simply to hasten the spread of democracy?

The odd particulars of the Iraq war conspired to muddy the turf: When Bush declared he would have attacked Iraq even knowing there were no weapons of mass destruction, voters seemed to appreciate his steadfastness. But he never explained why, except to say that he viewed Saddam Hussein as a threat. Some of his supporters thought he was merely putting the best face on the embarrassing failure to find WMD, but others clearly believed that he was reserving the option to use force against any perceived enemies, WMD or no WMD.

The more hawkish interpretation suits the neocons. Long before September 11, 2001, neoconservatives led by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Defense Undersecretary Douglas Feith advocated the overthrow of Hussein -- and their reasons had little to do with terrorism. During the Clinton years, the neocons believed that Iraq, with its tradition of secular leadership, could become a democratic state and then help spread democracy throughout the Mideast. Free Arab governments would seek better relations with Israel and the United States, reducing the threat of war.

The neocon vision extended well beyond Iraq, declaring that ''the need for a substantial American force presence in the [Persian] Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein," according to a 2000 report of the Project for the New American Century, a neoconservative think tank endorsed by Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, and Dick Cheney.

After September 11, Bush, too, seemed to endorse the neocon vision, but based his military interventions on the far narrower grounds of blocking direct threats to the United States. Under harsh election-year questioning, Bush insisted that he had invaded Iraq only because he had read the intelligence reports and ''I saw a threat." His position was like a homeowner who was told a tree was rotting and had to come down; if the tree turned out not to have been rotten, well, no one could quibble with a decision made based on the best evidence. But critics pointed out that Bush's neocon advisers already had a reason for wanting the tree down, and their eagerness surely affected the way they presented the evidence to Bush.

Throughout the campaign, Bush brooked no criticism of Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, or other neocons, and he refused to discuss any possible changes in a second term. Clearly, many traditional conservatives supported Bush while hoping that the neocons' miscalculations on Iraq -- starting with the notion that Americans would be greeted as liberators -- would lead to their exclusion from a second administration. Influential conservatives such as George Will, Robert Novak, and Patrick Buchanan argued for more realism and less neocon idealism in Bush's foreign policy.

But the news that Rumsfeld will remain puts that possibility to rest. If the 72-year-old Rumsfeld had quit, there was no neocon successor who could easily have been confirmed, even with 55 Republicans in the Senate: There are too many critics of the Iraq war among Democrats, moderate Republicans, and even Western conservatives skeptical of military entanglements.

Any non-neocon successor -- say, Senator John McCain of Arizona -- would have insisted on appointing his own deputies, meaning Wolfowitz, Feith, and dozens of like-minded ideologues would have departed. With Rumsfeld, the neocons will see their influence spread. Their leading antagonist, Colin Powell, is out, replaced by the less critical Condoleezza Rice. Stephen Hadley, who will succeed Rice as the president's national security adviser, is considered more sympathetic to neocons than Rice.

There remains the matter of an FBI investigation into whether defense officials shared secrets with Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi or with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. But even if the Justice Department brings indictments, the neocons will almost certainly remain the dominant force in foreign policy.

Last week, Bush took pains to emphasize the doctrine of preemption during a good-will tour of Canada. And a string of warnings about Iran's nuclear capabilities spurred calls for greater action.

Iraq is looking less like the past and more like the prologue.

Peter S. Canellos is the Globe's Washington bureau chief. National Perspective is his weekly analysis of events in the capital and beyond.

© 2004 the Boston Globe

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