W. Kendall Myers is an unusual sort of American civil servant. He combines being a senior analyst at the Bureau of Intelligence and Research of the US State Department based at Foggy Bottom, Washington, with a post as an adjunct professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in the US capital. Describing this unconventional situation to an audience of students in China in June , Dr Myers declared with pride: “I swim in academic water and walk on the high land of policy.”

He appears instead to have sunk in the quicksand that lies between the two. It is doubtful whether either the British or American governments will be impressed by the comments that Dr Myers made to a public audience in the US capital on Tuesday. In these remarks, Tony Blair was dismissed as a “Ramsay MacDonald” figure who had compromised the Labour Party through his relationship with George W. Bush much as that previous Prime Minister had betrayed his colleagues by entering into a coalition with the Conservatives in the 1930s. Mr Blair’s willingness to back the intervention in Iraq was compared unfavourably with the evasive fashion in which Harold Wilson avoided a military commitment in Vietnam. The legacy of all this, it was claimed, is that “there will be a more distant relationship” between Britain and America in the future.

Dr Myers’s undiplomatic presentation is extraordinary in three regards. The first is the cynicism with which he expects that a prime minister should conduct British foreign policy. He appears to be surprised that Mr Blair really seemed to believe in the justice of the war in Iraq and failed to demand, never mind secure, any precise “payback” or specific “reciprocity” before endorsing Saddam Hussein’s removal from power. He also chose to place no value whatso-ever on Mr Blair’s personal standing with elite and ordinary Americans alike as a result of having stuck with his principles on Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. This is a curiously narrow cost-benefit analysis.

The second aspect is what it reveals about the mindset of certain sections, at least, of the State Department. The content of this address was as harsh on Mr Bush as it was about Mr Blair and leaves the impression of a State Department that is aggrieved at its loss of influence in recent years (although it has been somewhat revived under Condoleezza Rice) and regards the White House and the Pentagon as institutional enemies. The implementation of American objectives abroad is hard enough without those working for the US Administration using this forum to muse that it might be better for Britain to end its efforts to be a bridge between Europe and the United States.

The final element, though, is how a man who prides himself on being a historian can conclude that the special relationship depends so much on the personal chemistry between political leaders. This has sometimes been intimate (Churchill- Roosevelt, Thatcher-Reagan, Blair-Clinton and Blair-Bush) but in other cases cooler (Eden- Eisenhower, Heath-Nixon, Major-Clinton). Yet the ties that bind this unique alliance are much stronger.

They are cultural as well as economic, emotional as well as strategic. The man who is the favourite to succeed Mr Bush — John McCain — is a committed Anglophile, much as Mr Blair’s near- certain replacement — Gordon Brown — is an Atlanticist to his core. The title of the seminar at which Dr Myers spoke was “How special is the US-UK relationship after Iraq?” The correct answer to the question remains “very special”.