What will Blair do if the hawks in Washington set their sights on Syria?

His problem is that while he agrees with their foreign policy goal, he does not agree with their route to it

Now it's not only the streets of Safwan which are filled with cheering Iraqis; it's the streets of Basra and soon it will be the squares and souqs of Baghdad. All this will have been achieved in the space of a few weeks – but it would be grotesque to gloat. A massive rebuilding project must now begin, and the last remnants of Saddam's tyranny still have to be swept away. Even more horribly, the Iraqi people will have to face up to the trauma of discovering what has happened to hundreds of thousands of their "disappeared" relatives.

We in Britain – and especially those in New Labour – must also figure out how to deal in the long term with the foreign policy of the Bush administration, and fast. Downing Street believes – laudably – that once the current war is over, a process of reconciliation on two fronts can begin. Europe can be reconciled by focusing on welcoming the new, more Atlanticist member states, and – the most optimistic of Blair's advisors believe – maybe even a euro referendum. The Arab world, too, can be reconciled by dealing with Israel/Palestine. Bush's decision to go to Northern Ireland and endorse the Good Friday Agreement as a model for dealing with the Middle East conflict is encouraging. It is a sign that he is at least occasionally prepared to repudiate the hawkish über-Zionists who are often influential over his government.

Yet more often, Bush sides with the neoconservatives in his administration. That is why he continues to spend billions on National Missile Defence, and sticks by his decisions not to back the International Criminal Court and the treaty banning biological weapons proliferation. How long can the liberal interventionism of Blair coincide with the neconservatism meets post-9/11 anxiety of George Bush? What if Blair's plans are scuppered by an announcement from Washington that, far from resting and reconciling, it is time to move on to Iran or Syria...?

What, in short, if Bush is a born-again neoconservative? To deal with that fear, we need to understand more fully what neoconservatism is. It is a distinctively new political philosophy which has emerged since the early 1970s, articulated mostly by Jewish former left-wingers such as Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz, who loathed (among other things) the American left's hostility towards Israel. Neoconservatism is not a wholly malevolent political phenomenon. The neocons still retain much from their left-wing origins: they offer an universalist, Enlightenment vision for remaking the world on a liberal democratic pattern. They have long been vehemently opposed to the US fostering undemocratic client states: Paul Wolfowitz, one of the leading neocons in the Administration, has opposed them articulately since the late 1970s.

Many of the neocons' critics damn them for their revolutionary optimism. John Gray, Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics, says that "They are convinced that democratic government can be made universal, and in pretty short order... Flushed with victory [in Iraq], the neoconservatives would be ready to embark on a project of reconfiguring global politics as far-reaching as any in the 20th century, exporting US-style democracy to the Middle East."

We can tell that these neocons really are different by looking at the rage they provoke from old-style right-wingers. Henry Kissinger views them with incomprehension (Pinochet-lovin' Henry was never a fan of building democracy). The "paleoconservatives" like the former Nixon-speechwriter Pat Buchanan believe that not a single American should die to free a bunch of dirty foreigners. The coterie who surrounded Bush Snr care solely about US business interests and especially the stability of the oil supply, and are happy to deal with autocrats who can guarantee it.

So there is plenty in neoconservatism that Blair – as a liberal interventionist whose defining foreign policy experience was in Kosovo – can support. But – and this is an immense but – there are aspects of the neocon agenda which will be very hard indeed for Blair to back, politically or morally. Firstly, their one-sided support for Israel, at the expense of the Palestinians, threatens Blair's approach to peace. Secondly, the neocons have no time for the international architecture constructed (largely by the US) at the end of the Second World War. They believe that international law is a fiction and the UN is a corrupt relic. They seek instead a Pax Americana, where the US retains such massive military superiority that its global hegemony is guaranteed.

Blair's problem is that although he clearly agrees with the neocons' foreign policy goal – a democratic Middle East – he does not agree with their route to it, which is to ignore the UN and do it with a "coalition of the willing". He is not a neocon: he believes in the power of global co-operation and internationalism through Kyoto, the ICC and often through the UN. He does not share their contempt for constraints on US power: he wants a world where the US does not rule through "hard power" – the threat that it could trash your country if you disagree – but where it exerts influence primarily through "soft power" – the ability to persuade countries to work together for mutually desirable goals.

So what should Blair do? It is tempting to say that he should continue to ride the neoconservative beast so long as it careers in a direction he finds agreeable: towards greater democracy and freedom. He could, all the while, try to steer it towards international institutions as far as possible. There are real dangers, though, for Blair if he tries to travel too far or too unprotestingly with the neocons.

Look at Iran, where control of the Iranian state is divided. On the one hand, there is a moderate Islamic government headed by the twice-elected Prime Minister, Mohammed Khatami, who is a decent, sensible democrat. On the other hand, there are the ultra-conservative, unelected mullahs – the heirs of the Ayatollah Khomeini – who seek to repress democracy and limit Khatami's control. The British approach – to engage with the democrats and try to strengthen their hand – is surely the right one, while the neocon approach – to attack the whole country – is not.

The neocons are excessively keen to resort to the blunt instrument of war; it was the right way in Iraq, where there was no possibility of internal reform, and the same will probably be the case in North Korea too – but it is not the best way to deal with the complex and more finely balanced situations in Iran or Syria, where internal reformers can be emboldened. Blair needs to be unafraid to say that, while he supports some US aims, he has a different approach to that of the current administration. The US Democrats are already hailing Blair as a role model; if they win the Presidential election, a Blairite view could prevail there too. The commitment Bush made yesterday to a Northern Ireland-style suggests that Blair may even have persuaded the President himself of his more reformist vision. If Americans want to hear people cheering all over the Arab world and not just in Basra, they must press ahead with reform of the Arab world – but this time with cash and diplomacy, not bombs and bullets.

j.hari@independent.co.uk