In ancient Rome, the statesman Cato the Elder was renowned for declaiming, at the end of every speech, that "Carthage must be destroyed", referring to Rome's long-standing enemy. It is perhaps appropriate, therefore, that one of the rightwing thinktanks in the US should be called the Cato Institute - except that the ultra-right of American politics sees enemies everywhere.

The thinking of these ideologues is alien to most of us. So extreme is one of their number, Paul Wolfowitz, that it is said that the description "hawk" does not do him justice ("What about velociraptor?" one of his former colleagues once remarked). Yet this world is cosily comfortable for its inhabitants. They speak to each other and for each other, and their websites are seamlessly linked.

If, for example, one accesses the website of the National Institute for Public Policy - largely responsible for the current posture whereby the US is ready to attack non-nuclear nations with nuclear weapons - better known organizations like the Heritage Foundation appear, together with an eclectic collection of bodies, from the Korean Central News Agency, the Government of Pakistan and the US Department of Defense's Missile Defense's Agency (for which the institute works).

Possibly the strangest pair of these factories of paranoia are the Center for Security Policy, and the Project for the New American Century. The former is run by the ultra-hawk Frank J Gaffney. He calls UN inspections in Iraq "harebrained" and is very well-connected in Washington.

Back in 1997 Gaffney was cosignatory of the principles of PNAC, along with Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and Lewis Libby (all senior officials to President Bush), together with Jeb Bush, brother of the president and famed for his dimpled chads. It was this organization that wrote to President Bush last Friday saying: "Should Iran and Syria refuse to comply with [our demands], the administration should consider appropriate measures of retaliation against these known state sponsors of terrorism." War without end.

What does the PNAC stand for? Four things: increased Defense's spending; challenging regimes "hostile to our interests and values"; the promotion of "political and economic freedom"; and America's need to keep the world "friendly to our security, our prosperity and our principles". In short, they wish to impose an imperialist Pax Americana on the world.

The links and ideas among the far right are well-embedded in the current administration. Those links are both personal and ideological, and heavily influence American government policy. They are closely tied in, too, with the Defense's industry, oil interests, hawkish Israel supporters and the fundamentalist Christian right.

Its current manifestation is the bellicose demand for a military solution to the problem of Saddam Hussein. Many around the world breathed a sigh of relief when President Bush went to the UN recently, unaware that the approach was merely a tactic. This administration and its leading lights have been consistently hostile to the UN; and they quickly made clear after Bush's address that, UN mandate or not, they will take out Saddam. This can hardly have comforted the British government, which switched under the pressure of public opinion to the inspections option, only to find it blocked by American determination to effect regime change.

The ramifications of this hardline American policy on the US relationship with the world are huge. First, no one can doubt in the short term America's ability to enforce its will on much of the globe. Indeed, its Defense's document Joint Vision 2020 explicitly states: "The label 'full spectrum dominance' implies that US forces are able to conduct prompt, sustained and synchronized operations with combinations of forces tailored to specific situations, and with access to and freedom to operate in all domains - space, sea, land, air and information." It clearly intends total military domination - including missile Defense's - to effect such a strategy.

The present administration also has the will to pursue such a course. It is both unilateral and isolationist, and will act in America's immediate national interest, regardless of international opinion and convention. Thus, the administration has unilaterally rejected Kyoto, the international criminal court, the ABM treaty, the Biological Weapons Convention, World Trade Organization provisions and many more - all in favor of narrow American interests. It openly despises any restraint on its autonomy.

For international organizations, this "might is right" approach is disastrous. What value is the UN when the world's only superpower treats it with open contempt? What of the EU, derided as "wimps"? What of the WTO, portrayed as a one-way street to American advantage? What of Nato, wherein national armies are seen as subordinate to American control and whim?

Here in the UK, we are in a substantially worse predicament. Successive governments have deluded themselves that we have a "special relationship" with the US - special only in so far as we tend to fall in with every crazed administration notion, and ask for nothing in return. We end up as America's handrag, with diminished credibility within Europe and facing increased hostility across the globe. Is this in the British national interest? I fear not.

A unipolar world is a dangerous place. It is like standing on one leg - one is far more liable to lose balance than when one is standing on two, or even four legs. Increasingly, it is clear that there needs to be an effective counterbalance to this over-powering American hegemony, best illustrated by the tragedy of Palestine. Here, the EU invested large amounts in the civilian infrastructure of the embryonic Palestinian Authority. Along came the Israeli government, using massive American military aid, and with tacit American approval, to destroy that peace-building capacity. Where is the sense, or the justice, in that? Is British and European opinion of no account?

The time has surely come for the UK government, along with its European partners, to have the courage, within the restraints of realpolitik, to reassess its foreign policy priorities in line with our national interests and these new realities. Do those interests lie with those with whom we do our trade? Do we have more to gain in a strengthened relationship with Europe? Are we to be Europe's heartland or America's frontline? As we approach a heightening of the debate on the euro, it would be appropriate to widen that debate to include a full consideration of our community of interest with our European partners in a world overshadowed by the rampant hawks in Washington. As recent events have shown, a truly independent common Defense's and security policy for the EU is long overdue.

Peter Kilfoyle is MP for Liverpool Walton and a former Defense's minister (1999-2000)

kilfoylep@parliament.uk

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002

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