WASHINGTON – President Bush’s nomination of Paul Wolfowitz to head the World Bank will likely leave the Pentagon devoid of the initial advocates and architects of the Iraq war.

The Pentagon’s often-reliable vote for tough action against state sponsors of terror in interagency meetings is in jeopardy as Mr. Wolfowitz leaves his position as deputy secretary of defense along with the no. 3 civilian at the Defense Department, Doug Feith, whose departure was announced this summer.

The names floated as possible replacements for Mr. Wolfowitz have built their reputations as managers willing to work closely with a bureaucracy often hostile to the president’s broad foreign policy vision. Among those said to be eyeing the job Mr. Wolfowitz is leaving are Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone, the secretary of the Navy, Gordon England, and the outgoing administrator for NASA, Sean O’Keefe.

“I am nervous about what this will mean for the inner councils of the Bush administration,” an American Enterprise Institute defense policy analyst, Thomas Donnelly, told The New York Sun yesterday. “I would also say that on the other side of the ledger, the president is the alpha neoconservative at this moment and we have no reason to doubt the president’s commitment to policies. That said, the number of lieutenants who generally share the values of the Bush doctrine has always been limited, and it is dwindling.”

Mr. Donnelly said he admired Mr. Wolfowitz, who was the principal author of the national security strategy and is said to have pushed for an invasion of Iraq in the first cabinet meeting following September 11, 2001. “People think of Paul as a cautious bureaucrat. But right after 9/11, he took a risk. And people criticized him heavily for it. It took some courage to do that.”

One administration official told the Sun that Mr. Wolfowitz initially did not want to leave the Pentagon, where he has played a key role in shaping Iraq policy and helped draft many of Mr. Bush’s foreign policy speeches during the presidential campaign. “This is starting to look like neoconservativism without neoconservatives,” this official said.

The president of the Center for Security Policy, Frank Gaffney, told the Sun yesterday that he believed the nomination of Mr. Wolfowitz was a sign that the president is seeking unconventional means to fight the war on terrorism. “I think the Wolfowitz selection for the World Bank, coming with the Bolton selection for the United Nations, and the nomination of Karen Hughes at the State Department, means that the president has put people in whom he has complete confidence in positions where they can wield nontraditional instruments of power in the war on terror,” he said.

At the Pentagon, Mr. Wolfowitz was an atypical deputy secretary, a position that entails a mastery of an arcane bureaucracy and is usually filled by quiet, uncontroversial managers. He has gone out of his way, for example, to meet with Iraqi Web loggers and human rights activists, who are usually feted by the State Department or the National Endowment for Democracy.

Mr. Wolfowitz provided Democrats last year with the sound bite they used to pummel the president for failing to send enough troops to Iraq. On February 27, he told the House Budget Committee that Army General Eric Shinseki’s estimate that several hundred thousand troops would be needed to secure postwar Iraq was “wildly off the mark.” A year later, even his ideological allies were calling on the Pentagon to send more soldiers to Iraq and numerous Pentagon reports identified the relatively small force in Iraq as a mistake in pre-war planning.

In this respect Mr. Wolfowitz has become a symbol of the Iraq war for the anti-war left and the most partisan Democrats. Yesterday, Senator Kerry, a Democrat from Massachusetts, called the president’s choice to head the World Bank “mystifying.” “After Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz’s repeated and serious miscalculations about the costs and risks America would face in Iraq, I don’t believe he is the right person to lead the World Bank,” the former Democratic presidential nominee said.

At the United Nations, an adviser to the secretary-general for world development, Jeffrey Sachs, took the unusual step of criticizing the choice. “This is a man without international development experience, without professional qualifications for this position,” the Columbia University professor said, later clarifying that he was not speaking for the United Nations in any capacity.

Since its founding, America has often been allowed to choose the president of the World Bank, while Europeans choose the head of its sister organization, the International Monetary Fund. However, yesterday reaction on the president’s nomination from European capitals was quite cool.

The Reuters news agency quoted the French foreign minister, Michel Barnier, as saying, “It’s a proposal. We shall examine it in context of the personality of the person you mention and perhaps in view of other candidates.”

“The enthusiasm in old Europe is not exactly overwhelming,” Reuters quoted German Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul as saying, a reference to Mr. Wolfowitz’s boss, Donald Rumsfeld’s remark in the lead up to the Iraq war in which he referred to France and Germany as “old Europe.”

President Bush yesterday said he had been pressing European leaders to support his nomination, arguing that Mr. Wolfowitz would make a “strong leader.” Mr. Wolfowitz, himself, yesterday said he knew he would have to work with nations that opposed the Iraq war he helped plan. “I understand that in this job I’ll be an international civil servant reporting to a multinational board, responsible for hearing all their views,” Mr. Wolfowitz said.

The president of the U.S. Committee on NATO, Bruce Jackson, yesterday predicted that European countries would ultimately support the nomination of his friend Mr. Wolfowitz, adding that it was normal for Europeans to “whine a little bit.” “They may differ with Paul about policy issues but they certainly all respect him,” he said. “Looking at the recent punditry in the last month or so, it looks like Paul has been right.”