How bad could it get? America’s ugly election

Confrontation at sea

Your piece on the eastern

Mediterranean was very

interesting (“Battling over

boundaries”, August 22nd). But

you didn’t mention Britain,

apart from the briefest refer-

ence to British support for

Kurdish fighters. Britain has

traditionally played a historic

role in eastern Mediterranean

affairs, and has strategically

important Sovereign Base

Areas in Cyprus. Could one

have a more eloquent com-

mentary on Britain’s decline in

international relevance, pre-

sumably fuelled by Brexit? We

don’t even rate a mention.

sir david madden

Oxford

Turkey’s situation is particu-

larly tragic, as it actually has a

good case for getting Greece’s

exclusive economic zones

(

eez

) reduced. If only it

pursued legal channels in good

faith. Virtually all island

disputes that have been

brought to international

arbitration, from St Pierre and

Miquelon by Newfoundland,

to the Kerkennah Islands by

Libya, have resulted in smaller

eez

s for islands that are far

from a country’s mainland. 

Kastellorizo in particular,

would seem to have little claim

to an 

eez

. It is only a mile off

the coast of Turkey and nearly

100 miles east of Rhodes, with

only a few hundred residents,

and virtually no economy. The

tragedy though, is that no one

can take Turkey seriously

when it instead thunders about

its “blue homeland” and signs

agreements with Libya that

pretend Crete and Rhodes are

no different from Kastellorizo.

magnus westergren

New York

Raise a glass!

I was surprised that you did not

include the contribution of

John Snow in your perspective

on pandemics and economic

expansion (“Cleanliness is

next to growth”, August 1st).

Snow established that cholera

is a water-borne disease, laying

the groundwork for the science

of epidemiology. Like many

public-health professionals, I

made a pilgrimage to the site of

the Broad Street Pump in

London’s Soho, which Snow

identified as the source of a

cholera outbreak, and stopped

at the John Snow pub.

edward cosgrove

Needham Board of Health

Needham, Massachusetts