Bush follows the road map.

• Position: Comment - Radical foreign policy

Long before September 11, some of the most powerful men in the Bush Administration had been dreaming up schemes for world domination. Blueprints have been on the drawing boards for more than a decade now that describe the outlines of Bush's interventionist policy. Drawn up by hawks in the waning days of the first Bush Administration, and recirculated by William Kristol and other leaders of the neoconservative movement in the last several years, these blueprints are revealing for two basic reasons. First, they show that September 11 served as pretext for ripping up the old designs of U.S. policy. And second, they demonstrate that the Iraq War is no aberration but merely a test case of the new policy. More wars are on the way.

The original, profoundly influential sketch of George W. Bush's new, radical foreign policy was written back in 1992 by a Pentagon official working under Dick Cheney, then the Secretary of Defense. That official was Paul Wolfowitz, who was Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. Wolfowitz is now Donald Rumsfeld's Deputy Secretary of Defense.

Wolfowitz drew up a draft document called the Defense Policy Guidance, and it bears an eerie resemblance to the new National Security Strategy that Bush adopted last fall.

Wolfowitz stressed the need for "deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role." Eleven years later, Bush's new strategy says, "The President has no intention of allowing any foreign power to catch up with the huge lead the United States has opened."

Wolfowitz also asserted the importance of "preemptive military intervention." Ten years later, Bush's new strategy says, "We will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self-defense by acting preemptively."

Wolfowitz said the United States should use military power to protect "access to vital raw materials, primarily Persian Gulf oil." Bush's new doctrine is not that explicit about oil; it doesn't need to be. His war against Iraq speaks volumes.

Wolfowitz showed no interest in working through the United Nations. Instead, he advocated unilateral action when "collective action cannot be orchestrated." Bush himself crudely paraphrased this policy tenet in his March 6 press conference: "When it comes to our security, if we need to act, we will act, and we really don't need United Nations approval to do so," he said. "We really don't need anybody's permission."

So extreme was the Wolfowitz draft that when...