BEIRUT: The US administration’s drive for war against Iraq is a “complete break” from the international system Washington has fostered and depended for the last 70 years, according to a visiting American specialist on the region.

“The liberal vision of self-determined states operating through multilateral institutions... has been attacked and systematically destroyed by the administration of President George W. Bush in its unilateral campaign of military action against Baghdad”, says Clement Henry, a professor of political science at the University of Texas at Austin.

During a talk organized by the International Chamber of Commerce here, Henry suggested that the administration’s war plans are “politically irrational” given divided US domestic support, overwhelming international opposition and the long-standing liberal internationalist vision of American foreign policy.

Henry said the White House’s calls for war couldn’t be explained by oil and pro-Israeli lobbying.

Both of these factors, he said, are real, but they have also been constants that don’t explain the administration’s disregard and disdain for international institutions, which American hands have been designing since at least the end of World War II.

An invasion and occupation of Iraq will increase US control over the Gulf country’s oil resources and serve Israeli interests, but the most vocal proponents inside the Beltway have larger ambitions, he said, namely securing US superiority in the traditionally geo-strategic Middle East.

He also discounted Washington’s repeated assertions that Iraq threatens US security saying that US foreign policy and its action have come under the influence of the neo-conservatives in and on the edges of the administration who want to see a projection of US military power across the globe.