Visit Lobelog.com for the latest news analysis and commentary from Inter Press News Service’s Washington bureau chief Jim Lobe.

Does former UN Amb. John Bolton â€“ now with the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) â€” still speak for Dick Cheney?

The new British government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown must be scratching its collective head over that question given the truly unbelievably arrogant and threatening op-ed Bolton, a Cheney protege, published in Wednesdayâ€™s Financial Times.

The columnâ€™s title, â€œBritain Cannot Have Two Best Friends,â€ refers to what Bolton calls â€œa clear decision pointâ€ for Britain â€” to choose between the United States and the European Union or, as he refers to it, the â€œEuropean porridgeâ€ of which he so clearly disapproves. For Bolton, it is a zero-sum game, and, in his view, it is now up to Brown to make the choice. â€œ[W]hether the â€˜special relationshipâ€™ grows stronger or weaker lies entirely in British hands,â€ he states.

The catalyst for Boltonâ€™s outburst appears to have been Brownâ€™s statement during his visit with Bush last week that Britainâ€™s â€œsingle most important bilateral relationshipâ€ is with the U.S. The only U.S. ambassador to the UN never to have been confirmed by the U.S. Senate â€“ despite repeated attempts â€“ calls that characterization a â€œclever but meaningless dodge.

â€œDrop the word â€˜bilateralâ€™. What is Britainâ€™s most important â€˜relationshipâ€™? Does Mr. Brown regard the EU as a â€˜state under constructionâ€™, as some EU supporters proclaim, or not?

The answers to these questions are what Washington really needs to know. What London needs to know is that its answer will have consequences.â€[Emphasis added]

For example, Bolton goes on, Britainâ€™s absorption into the European porridge raises questions about whether it (as well as Sarkozyâ€™s France) should still be entitled to a permanent seat in the UN Security Council. â€œOf course the Security Council permanent seat is not the real issue â€“ it is the question of whether Britain still has sovereignty over its foreign policy or whether it has simply taken its assigned place in the EU food chain.â€

â€œConsider also the US-UK intelligence relationship. Fundamental to that relationship is that pooled intelligence is not shared with others without mutual consent. Tension immediately arises in EU circles, however, when Britain advocates policies based on intelligence [such as Saddamâ€™s uranium purchases from Niger, for example?] that other EU members do not have. How tempting it must already be to British diplomats to â€˜very privatelyâ€™ reveal what they know to European colleagues. How does Mr. Brown feel about sharing US intelligence with other Europeans?â€

â€œFinally there is Iranâ€™s nuclear weapons programme, which will prove in the long run more important for both countries than the current turmoil in Iraq. Here the US has followed the EU lead in a failed diplomatic effort to dissuade Iran from pursuing nuclear weapons. If Mr. Bush decides that the only way to stop Iran is to use military force, where will Mr Brown come down? Supporting the US or allowing Iran to goose-step towards nuclear weapons?â€[Emphasis added]

Boltonâ€™s coda displays the kind of diplomacy for which he became widely despised throughout the UN during his ruinous tenure there. â€œI will wait for answers to these and other questions before I draw conclusions about â€˜the special relationshipâ€™ under Mr. Brown,â€ he harrumphs. â€œBut not forever.â€ At least, he didnâ€™t use the royal â€œWe.â€

Still, one must positively wonder at the tone, content, and not least the intent of Boltonâ€™s utterly offensive bloviation. Is he trying to provoke Brown into proving his independence from Washington? Is he trying to drive the new prime minister closer to his former UN nemesis, Mark Malloch Brown, as part of some bizarre masochistic compulsion? Is he trying to create even more anti-American feeling in Britain and â€œEurabia,â€ as some of his Anglo-chauvinist friends refer to Western Europe these days? Is he trying to split the West? Does he actually work for bin Laden? (Is AEI an al-Qaeda sleeper cell?) And does Bolton still speak for Cheney?