With all eyes focused on the Hamilton-Baker report on Iraq and the confirmation hearings for the new secretary of defense, nobody will pay much attention to Tony Blair, who arrived in Washington yesterday for what could be one of his last visits as Britain’s prime minister.

Officially, Mr. Blair is there to encourage President Bush to revive the forlorn Middle East “road map.” Mr. Blair knows as well as Mr. Bush that as long as Hamas is determined to annihilate Israel — which is its entire raison d’être – there is little more that we can do for the Palestinians.

Back home, Mr. Blair has been subjected to scathing criticism for his supposedly obsequious behavior toward Mr. Bush. A State Department analyst, Kendall Myers, claimed recently that when the British offer advice, “we typically ignore them and take no notice.”

Well, if the advice is bad, then the president is right to ignore it. If Mr. Blair really does believe that whatever Israel does will halt the global jihad against the West, he is living in cloudcuckoo land. I suspect, however, that this latest Middle East initiative has been cooked up by the State Department and the Foreign Office, not by Downing Street and the White House.

Whatever the egregious Mr. Myers may say, when Mr. Blair expresses robust and sensible opinions, Mr. Bush takes heed of them. He may be the first president to address a British prime minister with the words: “Yo, Blair!” Intimacy, however, does not imply servility, and Mr. Blair is nobody’s poodle.

So what should the prime minister be saying to the president today?

“First, Mr. President: Don’t let yourself be persuaded by James Baker or any other ‘realists’ that you must cut a deal with the Iranians and Syrians at all costs. It was unwise of Robert Gates to tell the Armed Services Committee that the United States would only go to war against Iran as a last resort, and to hint that the administration was no longer strong enough to carry public opinion on this issue. The implication, that the Pentagon is no longer seriously preparing for a pre-emptive attack to stop Tehran acquiring nuclear weapons, will have delighted President Ahmadinejad and alarmed neighboring states, not to mention the Iranian opposition.

“Second: Don’t draw the wrong lessons from history. ‘Nixon goes to China’ is a slogan, not a strategy. You should read the relevant chapter in Jung Chang’s biography of Mao to discover just how self-deluding Nixon and Kissinger were about what they were up against. This was an oriental despot ready to sacrifice tens of millions of Chinese on the altar of his ideology and quite ready to contemplate losing hundreds of millions in a nuclear war. Ahmadinejad is less cynical than Mao but even more fanatical. ‘Bush goes to Tehran’ might play well on liberal networks, but it would also play into the hands of the ayatollahs.

“Third: Do make sure that in reaching out to our enemies you don’t abandon our friends. A good example is Lebanon, where Hezbollah is trying to topple the elected Siniora government while Syria is determined to intimidate those investigating its practice of assassinating Lebanese politicians, including the former prime minister, Rafik Hariri, and the industry minister, Pierre Gemayel. There is nothing ‘realistic’ about letting President Bashar al-Assad off the hook; nor is there any hope of peace in the Middle East if Lebanon is left at the mercy of Hezbollah.

“Fourth: Don’t succumb to the temptation to announce a timetable for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq. It is the prospect of such a withdrawal that is fueling the insurgency, by removing any incentive for Iraqis to support the present government. Only if Iraqis are persuaded that the U.S. is staying put — if necessary for as long as it has been in South Korea — will Iraqis throw in their lot with the West. If they fear that the Americans will leave the Iranians in control, they can expect to be treated as collaborators. Realpolitik dictates that the United States should speak softly in the Muslim world but carry a big stick — and be prepared to use it.

“Fifth: China is a political, not an economic threat. You should pay less attention to the corporate interests that warn against cheap imports from China and more attention to the churches and dissident networks that warn against the harshest crackdown since Tiananmen. The West has nothing to fear from a China that opens up its economy to genuinely free markets, but we have plenty to fear from the noxious cauldron of nationalism and socialism now bubbling in Beijing.

“Sixth: Don’t trust “allies” who get elected on an anti-American ticket. You are under pressure to re-engage with Europeans, but don’t be under any illusions about how far they will back the United States in a crisis. Chirac, as you know, is just Chavez without the oil. The new French socialist leader Ségolène Royal has just informed the British that, if elected, she will force them to choose between Europe and America. It will be interesting to see whether she can resist stirring up not only anti-Americanism but even anti-Semitism against her Atlanticist and pro-Israeli rival Nicolas Sarkozy. Poor Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, has about as much in common with Margaret Thatcher as her Italian counterpart Romano Prodi has with Julius Caesar. Me apart, your only reliable allies are the Kaczynski twins, Lech and Jaroslaw, in Poland; John Howard, still going strong in Australia after nearly 10 years; and a Japanese ruling class that has been thoroughly rattled by the sight of a nuclear-armed psychopath in Pyongyang.

“Seventh: Stick to your guns (not literally — you know how squeamish we Brits are about the right to bear arms). The set of principles known as the Bush Doctrine is still the only policy framework in the post-9/11 world that meets the case; the new ‘realism’ is just a footnote to your revolution in foreign policy.

“Eighth: Don’t let the Democrats get you down. The American people know that this war on terror was not of your making. They still need persuading that this war cannot be ended by negotiation, but only by more vigorous prosecution. It is part of the normal ebb and flow of politics that the peace party sometimes gets the upper hand over the war party. But there are Democrats as well as Republicans in both.

“Ninth: You have just lost two formidable fighters in Donald Rumsfeld and John Bolton, following Paul Wolfowitz and many others. Second term administrations always hemorrhage talent. But there is nothing to stop you hiring new blood. There are good people out there who would be proud to serve under you — even if they were kids when your father was in office.

“Tenth: I don’t know whether you can trust my successor, Gordon Brown. I certainly don’t. But you can trust the British people. Oh, and by the way, Mr. President: In the event of any backsliding after I leave office next year, remember — I shall be writing my memoirs, and we poodles can bite.”