The Bush administration’s continued unwillingness to enunciate a coherent picture of the strategy behind the war against al Qaeda — which explains the war in Iraq — could produce a dangerous domino effect. Lurking in the shadows is the not fully articulated perception that the Iraq war not only began in deception but that planning for the Iraq war was incompetent — a perception driven by the realization that the United States is engaged in a long-term occupation and guerrilla war in Iraq, and the belief that the United States neither expected nor was prepared for this. Ultimately, this perception could erode Bush’s support base, cost him the presidency and, most seriously, lead to defeat in the war against al Qaeda.

The crisis du jour in Washington is a revelation that President George W. Bush quoted from a forged letter about Iraq trying to buy uranium from Niger in his State of the Union address. Congress, as usual, is missing the point. Weapons of mass destruction were not the primary reason Bush went to war in Iraq, but he certainly thought they were there. Everyone thought they were there. The critical issue is: Where are Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapons today? What the CIA did with the Niger letter is of no real importance. What the CIA knows and doesn’t know about the current war in Iraq and whether guerrillas control chemical or biological weapons is the critical issue that everyone is avoiding.

The appointment of Gen. John Abizaid as head of U.S. Central Command opens a new phase in both the Iraq campaign and the war on al Qaeda. In order to wage follow-on operations against al Qaeda, an effective counterinsurgency operation must be launched against the Iraqi guerrillas. This is a politico-military imperative. Politically, the United States must demonstrate its effectiveness against the full spectrum of opponents. Militarily, the United States must show it can project forces from Iraq while the base of operations remains insecure. Directly suppressing an insurrection without indigenous support historically has been difficult, but Iraq has a built-in opposition to the guerrillas: the Shiites in the south. But their desire to dominate an Iraqi government — and their ties to Iran — runs counter to U.S. policy. This means Washington will have to make some difficult choices in Iraq, and in the end will give away some things it does not want to give away.

When we step back, the broader picture of the U.S.-al Qaeda war becomes clearer. It appears to us that both sides are gearing up for a summer offensive. Each, for its own reasons, is going to try to engage in operations in a series of theaters, including in the United States. This does not mean the offensives will be successful. It does mean we can expect complex action from both sides on a broad geographic scale. These need not be individual large-scale operations, but collectively they will constitute significant attempts to get an advantage in the war.

The United States is now clearly involved in a guerrilla war in the Sunni regions of Iraq. As a result, U.S. forces are engaging in counterinsurgency operations, which historically have proven most difficult and trying — for both American forces and American politics. Suppressing a guerrilla operation without alienating the indigenous population represents an extreme challenge to the United States that at this point does not appear avoidable — and the seriousness of which does not appear to be broadly understood.

The inability to discover weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has created a political crisis in the United States and Britain. Within the two governments, there are recriminations and brutal political infighting over responsibility. Stratfor warned in January that the unwillingness of the U.S. government to articulate its real, strategic reasons for the war — choosing instead to lean on WMD as the justification — would lead to a deep crisis at some point. That moment seems to be here.

The meeting of the G7 (now the G8) used to be the major diplomatic event of the year. For the past generation, the major G7 powers met to manage the world. The managers included countries like Japan and Canada — significant economic powers, but not military players. But the world has changed and the G8 meeting has lost its pivotal significance, precisely because many there are only economic powers. U.S. President George W. Bush’s decision to cut his attendance at the G8 meeting short by a day so that he could get on with his more important diplomacy in the Arab world is emblematic of how the world has changed.

As Stratfor predicted, al Qaeda has launched an offensive in the wake of the Iraq war. Thus far, it has fallen far short of the most extreme possibilities — a strike in the United States that is equivalent to or greater than the Sept. 11 attacks. Recent actions have reaffirmed that al Qaeda continues to operate, but have not yet established that the network retains its reach and striking power. We suspect that its striking power has been limited, but its reach still might be substantial. Further operations are likely: We see Latin America in particular and, to a lesser extent, Southeast Asia as ripe for attack.

The end of the campaign in Iraq has moved the United States into a new period, in which its ensuing strategy is not fully defined. The process of definition will entail a period of probing into a series of critical nations, in an attempt both to shape their behavior and evaluate the levels of their compliance. During this time — which will last many months — it will appear that the United States is engaged in a gratuitous irritation of countries in the region. In fact, Washington will be probing these states to shape and understand the dynamics within each country — and then will define its own strategy.

The United States announced this week that it would be redeploying forces from Saudi Arabia to the rest of the region. This announcement should not be viewed in isolation, but in the broader context of the redeployment of U.S. forces throughout the Eastern Hemisphere. The force structure and deployment of the Cold War era no longer has institutional or strategic coherence and will therefore evolve rapidly — not only in Saudi Arabia, but in Germany, South Korea and elsewhere.