DOMINOES OR DISASTER? Among the tightly held tenets of the Bush administration is that establishing democracy in Iraq will cause a domino effect in the region, sweeping oil autocrats and Islamic fundamentalists away in the rush toward civilian rule and ballot power. It has become a favorite point of President George W. Bush’s — who predicted last month that a downturn in terrorism and a Palestinian state might result from war in Iraq.

As reported in the Los Angeles Times on Friday, however, even the US State Department isn’t sure of such a result. A classified report compiled by the State Department and leaked to the newspaper was titled bluntly: " Iraq, the Middle East and Change: No Dominoes. " One of the report’s predictions, according to the Times, is that " Electoral democracy, were it to emerge, could well be subject to exploitation by anti-American elements. "

Last week, the Bush administration gave the world a peek at its plans to democratize Iraq. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice argued that an " interim " authority composed of Iraqis would gradually assume governmental functions. Yet the possible composition of such a group was not laid out — and appears almost inevitably to involve substantial conflict not only between various groups inside Iraq (Shiite, Sunni, and Kurd), but also between those inside the country and those currently external to it: much-ballyhooed Iraqi opposition (see " After the War, " page 26).

If the possible circus of democracy in postwar Iraq isn’t bad enough, however, there is the more pressing question of getting bread to Iraqis during and after the conflict. At a symposium on post-invasion Iraq held last week at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Kenneth Bacon — former Clinton-administration official and president of Refugees International — sketched out a nightmare scenario that saw as many as 3.5 million refugees in post-invasion Iraq. He argued that the Bush administration’s preparations for post-conflict Iraq were sketchy at best — and also being kept from the public eye.

Yet even more worrisome to Bacon was the lack of funding and the unpreparedness of the United Nations and others to address the issue. He noted that the UN’s preparations were " far from complete " and " far from adequate, " and pointed out that only $37 million of the estimated $123 million in monies pledged to the UN by member countries to assist refugees in Iraq has been received thus far. The long lead time for the invasion, Bacon argued, made such a potential shortfall even more problematic. " There is no excuse for any program saying that it is not prepared for war in Iraq. "

Another factor in the post-conflict humanitarian situation is whether the UN and other non-governmental organizations will even be allowed to assist in rebuilding Iraq. As late as Sunday, President Bush was arguing for a UN role in rebuilding Iraq. Yet Monday’s Wall Street Journal reported that the administration is drawing up contracts that hand much of that work to private US companies. If that is indeed the case, the role of NGOs and international authorities will be severely circumscribed.

The latter approach squared closely with what Patrick Clawson — deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy — argued before the same audience that heard Bacon speak. Clawson argued that the Bush administration had thought deeply about post-conflict Iraq — and had largely settled on allowing Iraqis (and not NGOs) to take the lead in humanitarian assistance and reconstruction. " The Iraqis want to run this, " Clawson insisted. " They don’t want NGOs and humanitarian organizations to do it for them. "

What role experienced humanitarian organizations will play in rebuilding Iraq, then, also appears to be uncertain.

What to watch in post-conflict Iraq: Military or civilian rule; the role of the UN; inclusion or exclusion of NGOs.

X FACTORS. Piling uncertainty on uncertainty can be numbing — yet there are still more potential flashpoints that attend the US-led invasion of Iraq, throughout the region and the world. For instance, much has been made of Israel’s role in the invasion — particularly if Saddam manages to repeat his 1991 Scud-missile attacks on Israeli targets. In the Gulf War, Israel restrained its armed forces from retaliating — and possibly provoking a wider regional conflict.

This time, there have been no such blanket public assurances. Rather, there have been signals in the opposite direction. Israeli defense minister Shaul Mofaz told Time magazine as recently as Monday that Israel won’t resort to " automatic responses, " but that " this time it must be clear to everyone that might endanger us, especially the Iraqis, that Israel reserves the right to retaliate. "

The effect of an invasion on the immediate Middle East political situation is also uncertain. The leaders of Jordan and Egypt, in particular, have spoken clearly about the invasion's potential to roil the region — and their countries in particular — in street protests and other expressions of dissent.

And then there is the crisis that dare not speak its name: North Korea. On Sunday’s Meet the Press, Cheney downplayed the crisis on the Korean Peninsula — and urged a multilateral approach. Yet other nations in the region (including Russia and China) have refused to adopt multilateralism in this crisis — and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il has accelerated his nuclear program during the Iraq build-up. He doesn’t appear willing to put his attempts to manufacture nuclear weapons on hold as the Bush administration focuses on Saddam.

In essence, only one thing is certain about the invasion of Iraq: the moral certainty of those who have planned it. The White House has cast the invasion in terms of good and evil and trumpeted its moral clarity. The repercussions of that clarity, however, remain startlingly opaque — with the potential for great danger.

What to watch in the region and the world: Israel’s role in fighting; Middle East political unrest; North Korean muscle-flexing.

Richard Byrne can be reached at richardbyrne1@earthlink.net