WASHINGTON: Their names are unknown to all but a handful of policy wonks in capitals around the world. But when future historians write the story behind the US-led invasion of Iraq, names like Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle are likely to feature prominently.

For years they have led the influential band of hawkish neoconservative intellectuals that have often dominated the Washington foreign policy. Their philosophy is simple: The world is a dangerous and hostile place filled with powerful and evil leaders who hate America. Only if the United States is ready to use its unparalleled power to project its values and protect its interests across the globe will the world be made safe.

The ideas first came to international prominence as the basis of American foreign policy in 1992 when then defence minister Dick Cheney asked Wolfowitz, then under secretary for policy in the Pentagon to prepare a long-term review of basic geopolitical strategy.

A draft of that “defence planning guidance” was leaked to the New York Times, which reported its basic aim was to establish conditions that would allow the US to continue its international hegemony unchallenged far into the future.

It advocated the adoption of an aggressive military posture, suggested that the US should discourage other nations “from challenging our leadership” and urged the government to take preemptive military action to prevent potential enemies developing weapons of mass destruction. It mentioned Iraq, Iran and North Korea by name.

With Washington trying to keep together its post Gulf War coalition, the hawks were told to shelve their plans. And when Bill Clinton took office in early 1993, they were banished to the aeries of conservative think tanks and academic posts.

But they kept their eyes on Saddam Hussein, most famously in 1998 when they authored a letter calling for regime change in Baghdad, with or without United Nations backing.

The return of Republicans to power after the controversial election of 2000 marked a new ascendancy for the neoconservatives. Wolfowitz became deputy secretary of defence, Richard Perle was named chairman of the influential Defence Policy Review Board. A host of other respected hawks occupied key positions in the bureaucracy.

But it was not until well after the terror attacks of September 11 that they really won the ear of the people that mattered — President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, who were isolationist by temperament and had voiced disdain at the “nation building” of previous administrations.

Now they were determined to put the US on the offensive. For Bush it was largely a gut reaction, but Cheney pursued it intellectually in an effort to gain a historical perspective and come up with a formula that would work. He met with authors like Bernard Lewis whose book “What Went Wrong” was a bestselling analysis of why Arab nations had failed to keep up with the West. Another favourite was Victor Hanson, a classicist whose tome “An Autumn of War” argued that war is the natural state of mankind and that great leaders confront evil and defeat it.

He quickly subscribed to Wolfowitz’s grand plan: to oust Saddam and his possible weapons of mass destruction and transform Iraq into a beacon of Middle East democracy based on its long downtrodden middle-class and its immense potential oil wealth.

Such grand imperial plans have failed countless times before. If that happens this time, Messrs Wolfowitz and Perle will go down in history as modern day Rasputins. But if their vision succeeds, their statues may replace those of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad’s city squares.—dpa