For diplomats, British career diplomats, it is remarkable. They are retired, and they can be amiably dismissed by Blair's supporters as Arabists - people who often had worked in embassies in Arab countries, but the overall picture is severe.
It is presented as a policy question but really it comes close to articulating a fault line between two imperialist blocs. Britain (and Europe) has little interest in maintaining Israel as a garrison state in the near and middle east. The USA has domestic political pressures plus regional strategic reasons for doing so. The USA has or had the military and economic power both to arm a garrision state, and to buy off its rivals. Now that the USA has overstretched itself, this is coming into question even within the USA's closest apparent ally, Britain in the most public way - even by elements that by class position would be closer to the British Conservative party. It is remarkable that there should be such a public challenge from within the Establishment to what is normally a given of Brtish foreign policy since the end of the Second World War: however much teeth may be ground in private, it is in Britain's geopolitical interests to be in strategic alliance with the USA. This letter is therefore an unprecedented public attack on Bush by implication. Chris Burford London
