Those who imagine that his administration is going to stop with Baghdad delude themselves. His addresses during this conflict have been full of the rhetoric of moral justification. Only yesterday, while in Northern Ireland for talks with Tony Blair on what happens next in Iraq, he again peppered his press conference with talk about fighting terrorism in Iraq, fighting a regime that has plans to develop weapons of mass destruction, fighting a cruel dictatorship. Someone who genuinely believes in that (and all the evidence indicates that both he and Tony Blair do) is not going to stop with Saddam Hussein.

If Iraq is merely a trial run for Bush’s new concept in international relations — the so-called pre-emptive strike, intended to achieve the changes he wants — then next on the list could well be either North Korea or Iran, more likely the former. Both figure along with Iraq in the American president’s “axis of evil,” and both have nuclear plans. But while Iran was accused by US officials in the past week of having nuclear ambitions that were as dangerous as Iraq’s, it is North Korea that has been openly aggressive in recent weeks — to the extent of actually threatening to unleash a nuclear conflagration in the Korean peninsula. But long before it turns its attention to Pyongyang, there is reason to believe that Washington intends to stay put with the Middle East and “deal” with one of Iraq’s neighbors.

There is a serious fear that Damascus is next on Washington’s list. That suspicion has been fueled by a wave of warnings from various members of the Bush administration since the war started. Just over a week ago, Secretary of State Colin Powell warned the Syrians to stop supporting what he called terrorism. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has since accused them of sending military equipment to the Iraqis. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz has been even more pointed. There has to be “change in Syria” after the Iraq war, he said.

That is ominous. Washington obviously cannot accuse Syria of developing weapons of mass destruction, but the two other “justifications” for war against Iraq — that it supports terrorism and is tyrannical — are clearly being carefully manufactured. Powell now says that there are no plans to invade either Syria or Iran, but there are reliable reports that Syria was on the agenda as a candidate for regime change at yesterday’s Bush-Blair talks in Northern Ireland. So watch out for increasingly aggressive language from Washington, and London too, over the next few weeks demanding Damascus change or face the consequences.

This assumption by the US — that it has a right to change the government or regime in another country it considers a threat or disapproves of — demonstrates a frightening use of brute power. Washington has become not so much a superpower as a hyper-power, setting itself up above the rest of us. That is why the principle was repudiated by most of the world; it places the entire world in crisis — something we now see beginning to happen.