Simon Jenkins (Imperial echoes have led us to a ruinous decade of wars, 28 December) punctures some of the hubris of the UK's foreign policy. He is right to identify the "imperial echoes" that formed the bedrock of Tony Blair's liberal interventionism and that survive in the coalition government's foreign policy.
The doctrine is based on a residual colonial premise. People living under despotic regimes are still viewed as objects and targets in an, albeit newer, Anglo-Saxon moral and political order. It is time that this assumption was challenged and that those struggling to usurp despotism are seen as the subjects of their own history and liberation struggles. The UK can help do this by forging a foreign policy built on relations of solidarity around common values and more equitable practices in global governance and resource allocations.
But it will take too long for the UK, or more particularly England, to form such a clear, progressive view of itself and its role in the modern world for as long as its imperial history remains unconfronted. To do this intelligently and to be taken seriously, our colonial history needs to reach a new settled understanding in a truth and reconciliation process akin to those in post-apartheid South Africa and postwar Germany. We might find too that such an honest look at our recent history would warrant a greater humility in the UK's international relations but also support the creation of a more self-confident and clearer English multiracial identity and culture.
Henry Aibara
London
• Simon Jenkins would perhaps prefer that this was Sweden or Switzerland rather than Britain as it's always been. Those are countries that have made a national identity out of a refusal to have any entanglements outside their own borders. No matter what in the outside world, Hitler, Stalin and all, it was no business of theirs so long as no one attacked them. Not that this means that their citizens have less military involvement than in other countries, for they have traditionally had standing armies, with conscription, perpetually training for an invasion at any time, to a degree that strikes outsiders as paranoid. This is no pacific alternative – and would we really have a better world if everyone was like that?
Of course it's true that Britain is not in the same situation today as in the time of Palmerston, but do we want to go to such an opposite extreme? Jenkins spoils his good cases against the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions, and his perceptive remarks about a powerful lobby with an interest in military operations (Nato with its persistence on "giving itself a role", and currently latching on to missile defence in eastern Europe), by his blanket opposition to even least evils like the Libyan intervention, or defending the Falklands. Britain's future should be as part of a world community, and making its contribution as part of it, not in small-minded isolationism.
Roger Schafir
London
• Simon Jenkins writes: "Most citizens regard war as a car crash, a random irrational event…" Certain pertinent facts can be added. Our wars are started by politicians, not by citizens. Our wars are fought by citizens (predominantly the poorest and less well educated), not by politicians. The only two states on the planet who currently start gratuitous and unjust wars are the UK and the US. Our politicians only attack and invade countries much weaker than ourselves. The vast majority of the people we kill in our wars are innocent civilians.
The good news is, as Steven Pinker has brilliantly demonstrated in his new book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: The Decline of Violence in History and Its Causes, violence has been declining in the world's population over the past 3,000 years. If the warmongering politicians of the UK and the US can be prevented from having their rabid way, the world can look forward to a more peaceful future than ever before.
Jim McCluskey
Twickenham, Middlesex
• Simon Jenkins alluded to the role played by the arms industry in the last decade's lust for warfare but ignored some other important points. When the government and opposition have indistinguishable foreign policies, it is inevitable that war becomes the natural "outcome of a political process", and when those policies tend to hark back to imperialist days and suit the needs of the rightwing press, the views of the people are indoctrinated into acceptance. Again, this provides another excellent opportunity for the Labour party to show its true principles; on the other hand, so did the recent economic, banking and EU crises, so let's not hold our breath!
Bernie Evans
Liverpool