Kathryn, I’m not sure of your point about Tony Blair wanting to “talk” to the Iranians about the return of those British sailors, but I think I can guess…You will, however, remember that when 24 crew members of a US Navy plane were detained (let’s use the euphemism) by the Chinese dictatorship on Hainan a few years back, the US did just that.
The wimp then in the White House?
George W. Bush.
To repeat myself, dialogue, talks and negotiations are the necessary tools of any great nation that wishes to remain one. Refusing to engage in them as a matter of “principle” might play well in the pulpit, the think-tank, the opinion column, and the schoolyard, but it has no place in the foreign policy of a superpower.