In an imperfect, messy world, winning a war is often the easy bit; it is winning the peace that is the difficult part.

As I write this, the American-led forces are on track to defeat Saddam Hussein's hopelessly outgunned forces, despite meeting stiffer resistance than they had bargained for. But what is dismaying Rumsfeld & Co is not the fight the Iraqis are putting up, but the fact that the local population is not meeting the invaders with garlands and greetings. On the contrary, the cohesiveness and courage of the defence, despite the decimation of the command and control system, has been a revelation.

Over the weeks building up to this brutal assault, there has been much speculation regarding American war aims. Being prone to swallow every conspiracy theory that races around the world on the Internet, many Muslims insist that the desire to control Iraq's rich oilfields is what motivates Bush and his big oil mafia.

Others see the hands of hard-core Zionists like Perle and Wolfowitz behind the war. And still others perceive an American ambition to dominate the Middle East. Regime change in Iraq is a given. But oddly, Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda do not figure on the list of priorities, and nobody really believes that Iraq's so-called weapons of mass destruction pose any real threat to anybody.

The truth is that there are elements of all these ambitions (and more) in the ever-expanding American war aims. It is this very confusion that may well undo American efforts to win the peace once the smoke clears and both sides count their dead. In an article called 'A Warning from Clausewitz', William S. Lind quotes from the German strategist's book 'On War': "The first, the supreme, the most far-reaching act of judgment that the statesman and commander have to make is to establish ... the kind of war on which they are embarking: neither mistaking it for, nor trying to turn it into, something that is alien to its nature. This is the first of all strategic questions and the most comprehensive."

Lind also quotes John Boyd as defining strategy as the art of connecting yourself to as many power centres as possible while cutting off your enemy from as many power centres as possible. By this definition, Saddam Hussein has run circles around Bush, cutting him off from traditional allies like Germany and France, as well as new friends like Russia. The distancing of these powers from the American war effort will make it that much harder to win the peace.

Let us be clear about the messiness of the post-war scenario. As the oppressed Iraqi Shia majority has been kept out of the power structure for decades, they are going to demand their share of the pie; but their empowerment will mean considerable Iranian influence in the new order, and having labelled Iran as one of the 'axis of evil' it is unlikely that the Americans will want this outcome.

The Kurds in the north will want constitutional autonomy bordering on independence, but clearly this is something the Turks will resist, given their own Kurdish problem. The hundreds of thousands of Baathists who have long fed at the trough of Saddam's largesse will be the targets of a vengeful population, provoking a possible civil war. Indeed, Iraq has the potential for a sectarian, ethnic and political civil war taking place simultaneously. To say that the American overlords are ill-equipped to deal with this situation is to understate the reality.

Another reality is the presence of American and British troops after they have imposed an administration on Iraq. Clearly, the new rulers will need large numbers of soldiers on the ground to maintain order among a sullen and defeated population, specially if they have inflicted significant civilian and military casualties. But given the unpopularity of this war with traditional allies, it is doubtful if the Americans will be able to twist enough arms to send troops. On the other hand, there will be growing political pressure at home to bring the boys back, particularly if there is sporadic armed resistance to the occupation from ungrateful Iraqis.

But it is beyond Iraq's borders that American problems will multiply. Although the proverbial 'Arab street' is ominously quiet as the Cruise missiles do their deadly work, growing collateral damage may yet ignite serious problems for traditionally pro-western Muslim regimes. In the American media, there has been much talk of regime change in countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt and some Gulf states. The risk, of course, is that the present lot of autocrats might be replaced with Islamic extremists. And this is precisely Washington's quandary: how to ensure a veneer of democracy without opening the floodgates to resurgent Islamic elements.

The costs of the war are another issue for an American government that has managed to squander the trillion dollar budget surplus it inherited from Clinton into a multi-billion dollar deficit. Bush has already asked Congress for an additional 75 billion dollars, and is likely to ask for more before the killing ends.

In all likelihood, revenues from future oil exports will go to defray the costs of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. An Iraqi minister recently complained that out of the 67 billion dollars of oil exported under the UN's 'Food for Oil' programme, his country had received accounts for only 21 billion dollars.

Imagine the transparency once Bush has his grubby hands in the Iraqi till. But if this money is to be largely expropriated by the Pentagon, there will be precious little for the reconstruction of Iraq, something the Americans say is dear to their tender hearts. Just as Afghanistan is discovering, there is a wide gap between promises and delivery.

In all this talk of 'shock and awe', there has been very little mention of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Indeed, the authors of 9/11 seem to have quietly receded into the background while war hysteria was being whipped up. I read with amusement and bewilderment that the majority of all Americans polled recently were convinced that Iraq was behind the attacks in New York and Washington. Considering that even after bending the truth, no western intelligence agency has managed to pin 9/11 on Saddam, this distortion is something the American media can be proud of.

But the real cost of this conflict cannot be measured in dollars and even blood: the West will soon realize that all Europeans and Americans will be at risk in much of the world. The gulf between the two civilizations is growing by the day. If the American and British public could hear the exultation at news of allied casualties, they would realize that war is not a one-way street.