LARAMIE - A panel of University of Wyoming political scientists cautioned Wednesday that the U.S.-led war in Iraq threatens to damage the world political order, but former Sen. Alan K. Simpson said the order "was not exactly stable before" and might be strengthened by the coalition assault on Saddam Hussein's power.

Jean Garrison, an assistant professor of political science who writes about American foreign policy, said the preemptive war against Iraq carries "a potential of undermining an institution (the United Nations) which has been really important to the conduct of our foreign policy."

Political science professor Steve Ropp, a specialist in world politics, said that "member states of the international community are being asked by the United States to approve and ratify a new world order … that essentially is based on the idea that we can act alone and preemptively."

"It is a pretty shaky international community … that is being pretty badly damaged," said Ropp, and "I am not so sure we can restore the preexisting community."

Xin Xu, a UW graduate student in political science who recently earned her bachelor's degree in law from Nankai University in the People's Republic of China, said that China "is afraid the United Nations is going to turn into what the League of Nations was" in its powerless days before World War II.

The Bush administration's war policy, Xin said, "has ruined the trust between the United States and its allies" and if continued "will stiffen anti-American sentiment in Arab countries."

"Unilateral action is against the international community's interest," she said, arguing that no nation should be able to say, "If we feel threatened, then we can attack first."

"This will definitely ruin the trust between the United States and other countries," said the student.

Simpson, who apologized for arriving an hour late for the forum because of a misunderstanding about the time, said the international order "was not exactly stable before. We had enemies before. We will always have enemies."

"If after liberating Iraq the coalition finds clear evidence of chemical, germ or other weapons of mass destruction and mass graves, as I believe we will, the rest of the world might realize it was rather vital to the world order," he said.

"The issue is not whether he (Saddam) would use it on us but whether he could be the conduit for others to use such a cruel cocktail of death and destruction on us," the former Wyoming Republican U.S. senator said.

If the conquerors find nothing, he said, "the world would know that an evil dictator has been removed from the world stage."

"This is going to be a tough, miserable war," said Simpson. At the end, he said, "The U.N. will be relevant. The world needs a U.N. I think it will be different, but it will be there."

"Maybe in the next world crisis," he added, "they will become more relevant. But if they clattered into irrelevance this time or in times to come, blame it on the United Nations and not the United States of America."

Garrison said the terrorist attacks on America 18 months ago "led to a huge outpouring of sympathy, which I think was unprecedented, on the part of the international community."

Now, however, she said, "We can see already growing anti-Americanism in the Arab world," and the Middle East is "in the long-term potentially destabilized," and "proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is likely to continue and increase."

Ropp, said he believes a new international framework is needed, in which both developing nations and such countries as Germany and Japan - which were defeated enemies of the United States when the U.N. was founded - would be given a larger role.

In response to an audience question about dealing with potential "rogue powers," Garrison said, "My fear is that we have got people thinking the United States is the rogue power."

"There is a potential for states that already mistrust us to work together" against the United States, she said.

Responding to another question about U.S. political changes in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, Garrison said the attacks had "brought a harder line into domestic politics."

"It has shifted people's thinking," she said, noting that some liberal internationalists were supporting the administration's policy. She said she wondered "what New York will do" in spite of the city's heavily Democratic tradition. Voting patterns could change, she suggested, among "people who lived through that jarring event."