But there is another possibility. Iraq has been a millstone for the past year and a half, and he might well choose to declare victory and withdraw. Iraq's January election provides the perfect escape hatch. We have brought Iraq to the first democratic poll in its history and now we move out, he could announce, as he sets a timetable for a three-month withdrawal. Whatever mess follows, he would argue that it was no longer his responsibility. The US gave Iraq its freedom, and that means the freedom to make mistakes.

Kerry, by contrast, looks increasingly like the candidate with the long-term imperial agenda. It would not be as raw as the one pushed by Bush's neoconservative apostles of privatisation, but it would be imperial none the less, dressed in the classic garb of Democratic party multilateral interventionism.

In speech after speech Kerry has laid the ground work for expanding and prolonging the US presence in Iraq. It starts with macho bluster. "Extremists appear to be gaining confidence and have vowed to drive our troops from the country. We cannot - and will not - let that happen," he thundered in a radio address on April 17. Then comes the mission statement: "It would be unthinkable for us to retreat in disarray and leave behind a society deep in strife and dominated by radicals" (from the same broadcast). What happens if Iraqis elect radicals in January? Will they not be allowed to take power?

At Fulton in Missouri, the site of Churchill's Iron Curtain speech, Kerry laid out his vision for extra troops. "If our commanders believe they need more American troops, they should say so and they should get them ... But more and more American soldiers cannot be the only solution ... The coalition should organise an expanded international security forces, preferably with Nato, but clearly under US command," he said on April 30.

In a Washington Post article on Sunday, he attacked Bush for not having "a realistic plan to win the peace and bring our troops home". Did he produce one of his own? No, he made it clear the expanded foreign force would stay for years. "Our goal should be an alliance commitment to deploy a major portion of the peacekeeping force that will be needed in Iraq for a long time to come," he said.

Nato could be mobilised to help stabilise Iraq "and the region", he went on. Does he have his eye on Iran and Syria too? The price of inaction would be heavy, he warned at Fulton. Trying to frighten his allies, he raised the stakes higher than Bush has, saying: "For the Europeans, Iraq's failure could endanger the security of their oil supplies, further radicalise their large Muslim populations, threaten destabilising refugee flows, and seed a huge new source of terrorism."

The notion of Bush as an ideologue and Kerry as a realist is too simple. Each has elements of both, and it may well be that a second-term Bush would recognise the cost of his first term's mistakes. Flushed by victory, Kerry might be less clear-sighted.

One leading Democratic expert, Zbigniew Brzezinski, takes the line that the US should withdraw from Iraq by mid-2005. But most advisers now gathering round Kerry are missionaries who believe not so much in a war on terror as in a war on state failure. Failed states produce terrorism, they argue, so you have to go to the source.

The notion is more dangerous, since the number of target-countries for uninvited nation-building is bigger. The issue is not whether military intervention is unilateral, as with Bush, or multilateral, as with Kerry, but why neither sees that it nearly always makes things worse.

Posted by David Havelka