"Iraq was not a war, Iraq was a battle," said John Pike, director of globalsecurity.org, an American defence policy research group.

He said now that Saddam was gone, Syria had been "elevated" up the axis of evil, with Iran also in the firing line - with Israel's support - due to its nuclear programme. North Korea and Libya were also in Washington's frame, he said.

But not all countries seen as hostile by the Bush administration would be attacked in the same way. The US would contribute more to help the Colombian government fight a guerrilla war against rebels, while the CIA - benefiting from a 50% risein its budget in the past two years - would target Cuba and Fidel Castro's regime more aggressively, Mr Pike suggested.

The Bush administration's doctrine of pre-emptive strikes, he said, was not simply posturing. It was an "operational policy", he warned.

"It draws on a coherent interpretation of the last 60 years of American contingency planning".

It was the traditional view of American hawks who had fought the doves' policy of containment and deterrence throughout the cold war, said Mr Pike.

He told the Guardian that he was less concerned about the fascination of American hawks with new nuclear weapons, including "mini-nukes", than about what he called "realistic war-fighting strategies".

The US was already a generation ahead of everybody else as far as conventional weapons systems were concerned. It would soon be a further generation ahead, "unbeatable on the conventional battlefield".

The present "unipolar" world - strongly approved by Tony Blair - was defined by what he called "American predisposition to unilateral military interventions".