The indiscreet Papadopoulos

There is something delightfully comic about the scene reported on by The New York Times in which the glamorous-looking George Papadopoulos, former foreign policy adviser to Donald Trump, whispers into the ear of the Honourable Alexander Downer, former Australian foreign minister with a nice taste in fishnet tights, during a drinking session in a posh London bar, that the Ruskies have thousands of emails linked to Hillary Clinton which would dish the dirt on Trump's rival for the presidency. Let me explain the fishnet tights quickly. Downer, in the 1990s, posed for charity in fishnet tights and high heels, and the photograph went round the world and back again, like a boomerang. Good for him I say. But here he is again, this time as Australia's High Commissioner in London, standing in a bar with Trump's Judas-in-the-making, in May 2016, and suddenly out comes Papadopoulos with the little gem about Ruskie mischief. Papadopoulos had picked up the info from an academic in London allegedly with links to Moscow. Papadopoulos is obviously the type who cannot keep a secret. Perhaps he had read about Downer wearing fishnet tights and thought he was a good guy to tell about the Ruskie secret. Downer is an Honourable by birth - his father was a baronet - and he is an all-round good chap. I played cricket against him once in Australia during a wonderful journalists' cricket tour in 1997. He turned up and batted rather well. Anyway, the point is, Papadopoulos and Downer probably made good drinking companions. But the indiscreet Papadopoulos probably never realised the risky game he was playing. Perhaps too many gin and tonics. Downer, being a loyal servant of the Australian government, reported the indiscretion to his superiors. They kept it to themselves for a couple of months until suddenly out of the blue, WikiLeaks starts publishing emails which put Hillary in a very very bad light. Such as the ones from the chairwoman of the US Democratic National Committee which showed an underhand plot to undermine the campaign of Hillary's then rival for the presidential canditure, Bernie Sanders. The leaked emails were courtesy of the Ruskies. Two and two were put together in Canberra, and the Australian government tipped off the FBI who began a secret secret investigation. Ony four words are needed to sum up the result of all this whispering and secrecy: Trump won, Hillary lost! So, in a nutshell, based on "facts" as we now know them, Hillary's chances of winning the election were spoiled - I'll say no more than that - by Moscow, WikiLeaks, Papadopoulos, Downey, Canberra and the FBI. Wow, that's quite a combination. It doesn't prove collusion between Moscow and the Trump campaign, but it's a wonderful story.

Trump's axis of evil

So far Trump's axis of evil consists of just two countries, North Korea and Iran. Unlike George W Bush, he hasn't actually labelled these two countries with any sort of headline name, but everyone knows they are highest on Trump's hate list. He will no doubt be delighted that Iran is currently having its own internal problems, with thousands of protestors out in the streets demanding an end to clerical rule. Iran's economy is not in good shape and they blame the men with long beards. The men in long beards' regime, however, blames the West, and the US in particular, for the state of the economy. To a certain extent this is right because the years of tough sanctions have had a big impact. But mismanagement, corruption and, of course, the drop in the price of oil have all played their part in makning Iran a poorer place. The young people of Iran - and there is a disproportionate number of them compared with the middle-aged and elderly - are fed up with the way things are going in their country and want a better lifestyle. They blame the austere clerics for their miserable lives. But, strangely, most of them support Iran's nuclear programme, even though this is at the heart of the longstanding confrontation between the Tehran regime and the international community. The 2015 nuclear deal under the Obama administration should by now be bringing significant benefits to the Iranian economy but it hasn't happened yet. Trump hates the nuclear deal and can't bear the thought of allowing Tehran to get billions of dollars back into the government's coffers which can then be spent on expanding the mischief-making of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard across the Middle East and elsewhere. The street protests are a reminder to the Tehran regime that there is an anger in the country which it either has to recognise or suppress. Based on past action, the regime is more likely to turn to suppression to stop the protests. That will lead to even more opposition in Washington to the nuclear deal. There is an interesting Catch 22 situation here for the Mullahs. Trump must now be looking ahead to his main hit/hate list for 2018 while he's playing golf in Florida, and just below North Korea will be Iran. There are dangers here, not as great as the North Korea nuclear scenario, but there is the potential for a mighty Washington/Tehran bust-up in the next 12 months.

Big names in 2018

Making predictions is a fool's business but after a whole year of Trump, looking into the crystal ball for 2018 is unavoidable. Who are going to be the big names next year and why? I'll pick four straightaway: Trump of course, Vladimir Putin, Xi Zinping and Kim Jong-un. Almost no one else matters, even though some other names are going to feature a lot throughout the year but with much less impact. I select the Pope (leading the way on climate change), Theresa May (Brexit boring Brexit), Bibi Netanyahu (facing corruption charges), Emmanuel Macron (trying to reform the whole of Europe), Angela Merkel (for surviving), and Nicolas Maduro (for being the most hateful so-called leader on the planet). But back to the Big Four. Next year is going to be the year of action one way or the other re North Korea. Kim Jong-un will fire one intercontinental ballistic missile too many and Trump will think to himself, "that's it". Trump is going to make a lot of noise in 2018, much more than in 2017. He is going to deal with Kim Jong-un with some form of military response - not total shock and awe but a bit of Trump shock and awe to make the North Korean leader sit up and the rest of the world take sides. Putin and Zinping will join together in opposing any military action. In fact Putin and Zinping are going to become pretty friendly, each lined up against Trump. This will really anger Trump and will play a part in his decision to tell Jim Mattis, the US Defence Secretary, to give him three options. I reckon this will happen around August time. No one else in the world will support Trump because they will be so scared of the consequences of moving against North Korea. But it's probably true to say that Trump is the only leader with the balls to order a strike against Kim Jong-un. I'm not saying that's the right thing to do, I'm as scared as everyone else at the prospect of a war, any type of war, on the Korean peninsula. But while previous US presidents have issued threats and ultimatums to Pyongyang, Trump may be the only one prepared to actually do what he is threatening to do. US military action against Kim's regime will not lead to total war. But it will bring about a massive restructuring of political alliances. Putin might come round to support Trump eventually but Xi Zinping will never forgive him. Never. And that will lead to a dangerous deterioration in relations between Washington and Beijing. Happy New Year.

Trump is a station

Of all the "achievements" Donald Trump has made since taking power on January 20, the one he might be secretly very pleased about is the announcement by Israel's transport minister that he wants to name a railway station in Jerusalem's Old City after the US president. It is surely the ambition of all leaders to be named after something. President Reagan has an airport in his name, in Washington, President Gerald Ford has a new class of aircraft carriers being built in his name, President George HW Bush's name is on the front gate of the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, then there's the Kennedy Centre in Washington, named after JFK. Trump has got himself a railway station - in Jerusalem. Well, it's only a suggestion at this stage but I can see Trump making a state visit to Jerusalem to open the new US embassy there, and then pop over to the railway station to look pleased with himself. Even Churchill didn't get a railway station named after him. But then Churchill is everywhere in the UK, most prominently in Parliament Square where a statue of his hunched figure glowers over the Houses of Parliament. There's also Churchill Square, Churchill Street, Churchill Crescent and Churchill Avenue. Perhaps when Trump has completed his first four-year term, some mayor down in the south will rename a side street Trump street. But for now, the president has to make do with Trump Tower in New York, Trump hotel in Washington and all the other buildings which he built or acquired before he entered the White House. But Trump Railway Station sounds pretty good, provide the Israeli transport minister gets his way.

Flynn to be thrown to the wolves

The Trump team is planning to get ugly with Mike Flynn. Well that was inevitable, no surprise there at all. According to a breaking story in The Washington Post, the White House is preparing the ground to cast Flynn into the wilderness by announcing to the world that whatever he is claiming in his chats with Robert Mueller, the special counsel, are lies lies lies. I could have predicted that, in fact I'm pretty sure I did predict that in some past blog. Flynn, retired lieutenant-general and former very short-lived national security adviser, has been talking to Mueller in return for pleading guilty to lying to the FBI in order to ensure a lighter sentence. So, according to the news, if Flynn so much as dares to accuse Trump or Trump accolytes of wrongdoing re Russia/Moscow/Putin/collusion, the White House will say his accusations are totally false and that he is only making such claims to save his skin. It's an easy argument. A lot of people might well think that Flynn would say anything to avoid a prison sentence. But Mueller is no fool. He was trained, was he not, to tell the difference between a liar and a truth-teller? If Flynn starts spinning a yarn about late-night meetings with Russians behind White House hedges, will Mueller think to himself, "Ah ha, now I've got him". Or will he think, "Come on Flynn, you've got to do better than that." Flynn is a trained military intelligence operative and it's unlikely he will risk the rest of his life by lying to Mueller. He lied to the FBI and look where that got him. So the chances are, if he has any evidence of deliberate collusion with the Russians to help Trump win the presidential election, he will spill the beans, or has already spilled the beans, to Mueller. Trump and his team know what Flynn knows. What they don't know is what Flynn has told Mueller. That's why they are now, apparently, coming up with Plan B, C and D, which is to rubbish Flynn as a sort of paranoid lying toad to try and put Mueller off his game. Mueller, on the other hand, now probably knows what Flynn knows but he is not absolutely certain in hs mind whether what Flynn has revealed is 100 per cent fact or just a series of impressions and recollections. For that reason, Mueller will have to corroborate everything Flynn has said. And to do that, he will have to persuade another big player to come forward and cooperate. He can't count on Jared Kushner, even though he probably knows more than most about the Russia Thing, because he is married to Trump's daughter. He's not going to throw that away. So my guess is Mueller now feels he has the beginnings of a conspiracy but not enough evidence to back it up unless he can find at least one more, and probably two or three more Trumpites or former Trumpites to provide corroboration. I doubt that is going to happen. So Mueller is heading for frustration, or to put it more bluntly, a brick wall.

Trump arms for Ukraine

I cannot believe that providing the Ukrainian government with anti-tank weapons is going to bring peace to this former Soviet Union satellite nation. The US has a very chequered history of throwing arms into a war zone, often with disastrous results. But Trump, in his wisdom, has decided that anti-tank weapons will change the balance of military power in Ukraine because it will help government forces to destroy the tanks and armoured vehicles driven by the "rebels" who are backed, supported, financed, trained and everything else by Moscow. Many of the rebels are in fact Russian Spetnaz special forces in disguise - and not very good disguise at that. So, logic says that to counter the Ruskies, advanced anti-tank weapons are needed, and Washington feels it's right for the US to be the provider. Well, of course, if Russia is involved it has to be America that sends arms to the other side. It's good old-fashioned Cold War thinking. It's surprising how much of that thinking is still around, both in Moscow and Washington. But Ukraine is not going to become a happy place if one superpower and another former superpower trying to reinstate itself to Cold War status are pitted against each other. More arms means more killing and more killing means a more divided and miserable country. That's not to say that Moscow should be allowed to get away with stirring it up in Ukraine but sending in arms cannot always be the answer, and I don't believe it is the answer for Ukraine. Unless, by some miracle, the "rebels" decide that it's now too risky to prosecute the war and stop fighting. If only! What will happen is that Moscow will send in weapons to counter the anti-tank weapons, or more Spetnaz will be secreted over the border to blow up the storage sites with the anti-tank munitions. War war and more war, and even worse relations between two countries - America and Russia - who really should by now be grown-up enough to stop playing such dangerous games and start cooperating to confront the real threats facing them and the world - such as North Korea. Look what happened to all those US arms given to the Mujahiddeen in Afghanistan to fight the Russian occupiers. Once the Russians had left, the Mujahideen metamorphosed into the Taliban and we all know who they started to fight - the US-backed Afghan government. The CIA had to scrabble around frantically to get their Stinger anti-aircraft missiles back from the Mujahideen before they could be fired at Afghan, US and other coalition helicopters and fighter jets. Amazingly, they largely succeeded. Some Stingers remained in Taliban hands but by then thy were a bit rusty and no longer viable. But here we are nearly in 2018, and we have the prospect of US/Russian confrontation in Ukraine, nuclear war with North Korea and yet moe climate change. Very depressing.

Trump would love to be Macron

Poor Trump. He thought, after winning the election, he would be followed everywhere by adoring crowds of fans. Afraid not! And as for the media, most of the big-time newspapers, such as The New York Times and Washington Post, spend most days attacking him. Oh to be Emmanuel Macron, he must think to himself. Macron, only just 40, and pretty popular after all his reforming policies, and good-looking, and with a wife who looks pretty damned good - better than his monosyllabic spouse - it really isn't fair. Now Macron has given a walk-around interview to a posh French television station in which the reporter involved spent the whole time fawning over the French leader like he was some sort of Renaissance King. Well, it's true Macron does seem to fancy himself as an Emperor-type, but any decent reporter would have quickly asked questions that might have burst Macron's egotistical bubble. But, no, the reporter, a goodlooking chap himself, just waffled on in his praise and adoration. Of course that probably made most viewers think, "Yuk" or "Beurk", the equivalent in French. But it just showed the reverence in which Macron is now held. I'm not sure anyone holds Trump in reverence. So he must be very jealous of his French counterpart. After nearly 12 months of Trumpism, especially his mountain of tweets, I don't think anything is going to change on that score, looking ahead to 2018.

Trump ill-served by his son-in-law

Steve Bannon has come out fighting. In an interview with Vanity Fair he has blamed Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, for everything that has gone wrong so far. I don't know if that is right or wrong, but it always struck me as odd that Trump put so much faith in his son-in-law. What had JK done in his career to merit sending him off as a special envoy to the Middle East and to cosy up to Saudi Arabia? Judging by the disaster over the Jerusalem decision, his presence in the region clearly failed to lay the ground for the Trump announcement. So perhaps Bannon is right, just because JK is the president's son-in-law it does not mean he is invested with some extraordinary powers or diplomatic skills. I'm sure he is a nice guy but he's no Kissinger. I suspect what will happen in 2018 is that Jared Kushner will slip into the background and Bannon, out of the White House but definitely IN favour, will be a force to reckon with, someone increasingly trusted by Trump. This will drive poor General John Kelly, Trump's chief of staff, mad and by the end of the year he will resign. James Mattis, too, a stalwart of the Trump administration and an eminently wise four star Marine, will also get frustrated by the Bannon influence and could present an ultimatum to the president. "If you keep with Bannon, I'm off to spend the rest of my days with my family." Mattis won't want to leave because he is an honourable man. He will want to finish the job properly. But if/when Bannon tells Trump to for God's sake bomb North Korea and get it over and done with, Mattis will despair and offer his resignation. It may not happen but 2018 is going to be Steve Bannon's year. Mark my words.

May in more trouble

While Trump is celebrating his tax triumph, his alleged "special relationship" colleague Theresa May is suffering yet another blow, with the enforced resignation of her most trusted deputy, Damian Green. Now that's not a name that makes everyone spring to attention around the world. Most people in the UK, let alone the rest of the world, have probably never heard of him. But being unofficially deputy prime minister, he was supposed tc have an influential and powerful role in the government. Not any more, having been found to have made a young woman "uncomfortable" (this is the word used by every male accused of sexual harassment in the current "Metoo" climate), and also mysteriously having loads of pornography on his parliamentary computer. I say "mysteriously" because while there seems little doubt his computer WAS stuffed with porn (not hard porn apparently whatever that is) - and we know this because two retired police detectives have kindly told the world - he claims it had nothing to do with him. Anyway, fact or fiction, he has lost his job and will now have time to spend more time with his family, as they say. In Washington, Trump has already lost about a dozen of his former trusted mates, including of course Mike Flynn and Steve Bannon, the former for criminal-type reasons (lying to the FBI) and the latter for, basically, being Steve Bannon. Both men are infinitely better known around the world than Damian Green whose obscurity will now sink into even greater obscurity. Flynn has escaped jail by doing a deal with stoney-faced Robert Mueller and will no dobt make a lot of money somewhere...perhaps in Moscow. Bannon will also make a lot of money and continue to stir up trouble on behalf of the Very Right Wing component of the Republican Party. Theresa May will slog on hoping to survive until the next election but without her trustee Damian by her side. There are some days when she must think to herself: "What the hell am I doing this job for?"

Trump has done it!

There is no doubt about it. Trump's tax victory is massive. That's not the same as saying every American is going to benefit, because they won't. But to push such a complex piece of legislation through both houses of Congress, albeit with Republican majorities, is an achievement on some scale. I don't suppose there is anyone outside Congress, Trump included, who has had time to read all the small print, and if they do they might react with horror, but Trump's promise to introduce the biggest tax changes for at least three decades has now been fulfilled. The slashing of corporation tax from 35 per cent to 21 per cent should give business the biggest pre-Christmas boost ever, and provided the big bosses channel the extra cash into more jobs and better pay for the masses, Trump will be viewed in a different light by a lot of Americans who until now have woken up most mornings scared of what the hell their president is up to. I think it's a bit early to be sure the tax changes will really benefit the middle earners. The Democrats hate it and claim it will only help the wealthy. But the Democrats have failed to do much about America's tax system when they have been in power, so there is a bit of sour grapes here possibly. For Trump, he will make the most of the ceremony when he signs the tax reforms into law. Then let's see how it gets implemented and whether anyone, even with an accountancy degree, can really understand it. Obamacare was a small print nightmare and even though it is still law, Trump is slowly chipping away at it until it will be a greater mess than it was in the first place. In a free market economy like the US, it is extraordinary that corporation tax has been so high for so long. It was always going to make sense to bring it down from 35 per cent. To do this in his first year in office will give Trump a political momentum that might just carry him through the next three years, unless Robert Mueller finds the silver bullet that will bring him down. The Democrats and half the country will be praying for his downfall. But I predict the Mueller inquiry will not lead to impeachment of the president, let alone a charge of criminal wrongdoing. Trump is going to survive.

Trump appointee: I know nothing!

After the wonderful question and answer fun and games in the Senate Judiciary Committee when Matthew Petersen, nominated to be a judge in the US district court of Columbia, confessed he had absolutely no experience of court proceedings, it is too tempting not to imagine similar Congressional hearings dealing with Trump nominations. This is pure fake news of course. Senate hearing for confirming Rex Tillerson as secretary of state: Question: "So, Mr Tillerson, have you ever been a diplomat?" Tillerson: "No, never." Question: "How do you think your career in oil will help you at the State Department?" Tillerson: "I have no idea. I told the president that. Oh except, me and Putin are old mates." Question: "Are you aware that Putin is being accused of colluding with the president in the election?" Tillerson: "How do you mean, colluding?" Question: "To get Trump elected." Tillerson: "Putin says that's rubbish." Question: "Do you believe it's rubbish?" Tillerson: "I have no view." Question: "What will you bring to State that other secretaries have failed to bring?" Tillerson: "A packed lunch box, my wife makes a superb cold pasta." Question: "Anything else?" Tillerson: "No, I find that fills me up nicely." Question: "I meant, anything else you will be bringing to your job as nominated secretary of state?" Tillerson: "I know nothing about State, so I'll probably ring Kissinger for advice." Question: "Do you know Kissinger?" Tillerson: "No." Question: "Moving on, what will you do about China?" Tillerson: "I've been to China many times." Question: "Yes, but what will you do about China?" Tillerson: "I will go back there." Question: "Do you think Xi Zinping is open for business?" Tillerson: "I've no idea but there's a fantastic shop selling American goods in Beijing's western quarter." Question: "Who would you least like to have as your deputy? " Tillerson: "John Bolton, the guy with that stupid moustache." Question: "You mean the distinguished former ambassador to the United Nations?" Tillerson: "I told Trump I wouldn't go near State if he appointed Bolton to be my deputy." Question: "Would you ever talk to North Korea?" Tillerson: "Not if I could avoid it, but isn't that what diplomacy is about, bore bore, not war war?" Question: "I think you mean jaw jaw, not war war." Tillerson looks confused. Question: "To sum up, can you think of any reason why we should confirm your appointment as secretary of state?" Tillerson: "If you don't, you'll get Bolton sitting here."

San Suu Kyi in the dock

Not since the atrocities of Rwanda in 1994 and the Bosnia war in the 1990s when human life was treated with total disdain have there been such terrible stories of terror, murder and rape. I'm talking about the killing rampages by the Burmese military against the Muslim Rohingya people. Most British national newspapers, including my own, The Times, have had reporters in Bangladesh talking to the Rohingya refugees cowering in makeshift camps on the border. Their stories are so appalling that I cannot believe the whole world is not outraged. When there were atrocities being committed against the Muslim ethnic Albanian community in Kosovo by President Milosevic's Serb troops, Nato stirred itself from complacency, largely, actually, as a result of Tony Blair's anger at what was being shown on television every day, and the 1999 Nato bombing campaign began, forcing Belgrade to retreat. The Nato mission was properly mandated by the UN to avoid a "humanitarian crisis". Well, there has already been a humanitarian crisis in Burma. The consequences of this crisis can be seen in the camps in Bangladesh. The women's accounts of what the soldiers did to them and to their children bring back memories of the worst massacre in modern times - the killings and rapes in Rwanda when up to a million people of the Tutsi tribe were slaughtered by the ruling Hutu government troops 23 years ago. The Rohingya women and their children and their husbands were treated by the Burmese forces as scum. The women were gang-raped, sometimes in front of their husbands. One man forced to watch his wife being raped screamed and screamed until a soldier sliced off his head, according to one report in The Times. Children were seized and thrown into a fire. The Pope went to Burma, now Myanmar, and called for reconciliation but did not accuse the government of genocide, even though he knew of the reports of killings and rapes. The UN has had no compunction about referring to the slaughter as genocide. There is no other word for it. If genocide is proven, then the woman who, until this year, was regarded around the world as a saint, could face charges. San Suu Kyi, who looks like a saint, behaved like a saint all those years she was under house arrest for opposing the Burma miitary junta, and as a saint became the de facto leader of the country with the approval of the junta, has not once condemned the junta for the rapes and killings. It is absolutely astonishing. How can she live with herself? It is perhaps the biggest fall from grace that the modern world has ever seen.

Trump/Mueller blow-up in the making

I predict that Donald Trump and Robert Mueller are approaching a mighty bust-up. The way things are going Trump is not the sort of person to sit idly by while his reputation is slowly torn to shreds. He has endured with growing impatience the indictment of some of his former closest aides and advisers, he has read with increasing fury the speculation and FBI-sourced hints of imminent action against the people he trusts, and he must be totally frustrated that every time he announces a new initiative it gets smothered by the RUSSIA COLLUSION!! stuff. I'm speculating of course that he's furious but I'm absolutely sure I'm right. Now, one of his many lawyers has claimed that the thousands of emails that were passed over to the Mueller team should never have been given to them because they had been written during the election campaign when they were "private" and not when Trump had taken over as president when all emails emanating from the White House are "government" property and therefore legally available to an investigator such as Mueller. Well, it's all a bit late for that brilliant piece of legal judgment, the deed is done. But it gives Trump and co some ammunition against Mueller. They are thinking to themselves, Mueller is basing his investigation on emails that were unlawfully obtained. They weren't of course because Trump's lawyers, being a bit slow in the brain department, just handed them over without thinking. So Mueller acquired them lawfully in that sense. He didn't steal them. BUT, they shouldn't have been handed over in the first place because etc etc. Now that opens up an interesting scenario. If Mueller got his indictments against Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, George Stephanopoulos and the others as a result of THOSE emails, do Trump's lawyers have the right to demand that the indictments be overturned? If this happened in a court case, and it was proved that evidence of wrongdoing had been acquired by an unlawful process, a judge would have to rule against the prosecution. So there is a little window of opportunity here for Trump's legal team. Mueller could be in trouble. As far as the anti-Trump voters are concerned, it won't make any difference, whether the emails should have been kept private or not. The emails said what they said and Mueller acted accordingly. But if this lawyer who has just woken up after a long sleep has got his facts right, Trump will be jumping up and down. This could be his great break. I can see tweets going back and forth until an almighty row erupts between the Trump team and the Mueller investigators. Trump will berate Mueller for behaving illegally and suddenly the former FBI director gets a summons to the Justice Department and he is fired as special counsel. That's my prediction for what it's worth.

Putin is everywhere

Vladimir Putin is having a terrific time. The Russian economy is still pretty dubious, but, with Donald Trump in all kinds of trouble for a a number of reasons, Putin can prance around the globe claiming to be in charge. He popped over to Syria to see his mate, Bashar Assad, and neatly declared victory, presumably victory for the Russian air force and Spetnaz special forces. He has also been having talks in Cairo with President El-Sissi. Putin probably thinks he is a powerful player in the Middle East, and, to some extent, he is. Trump has just ruined any chance of the US playing an influential role in the region with his declaration of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, so Putin can step in and throw a bit of Russian diplomacy around. Assuming he's going to win the pesidential election next year, Putin is going to be the Kremlin boss for another seven years, so there's no reason why he should not play an increasingly significant role in the Middle East and elsewhere if he chooses to do so. The US State Department and its beleaguered secretary, Rex Tillerson, must be seething. They have lost whatever influence they had in the Middle East with the Jerusalem decision. The Palestinians are not going to trust the Trump administration however conciliatory they try to be over the next few months, so the door is open to Putin. He's had his "victory" in Syria and he probably has the taste for more diplomatic breakthroughs. The victory in Syria of course was all about saving Assad's regime, he doesn't really care about anything else. Russian involvement in defeating Isis was minimal. Back in Moscow, Putin held his annual press conference which lasted four hours and most of it was boring. But then suddenly he showed sympathy for Trump, saying that all the fuss about alleged Russian collusion in the US election which he says is rubbish, has prevented his successes from being properly noticed. Bizarre. I wonder what Robert Mueller will think of Putin's sympathy for Trump.

Danger of mixed messages

When talking about North Korea in public I would have thought that sending mixed (confusing) messages is not the brightest way of going about it. Rex Tillerson, the US Secretary of State, not a born diplomat but one who has had diplomacy thrust upon him, gave the clearest indication - nay, he made an actual statement - that the US was willing to talk to Kim Jong-un "without preconditions". In other words, never mind about your nuclear and ballistic missile programme, let's just have a nice chat. But this is absolutely NOT the US foreign policy position. It never has been. If it's now the new approach, then Kim might think to himself: "See, I've won the argument, I can agree to talk to the Americans but keep going with my nuclear tests and intercontinental ballistic missile programme. They're so desperate to talk to me now they know my country is a nuclear superpower, I've got them by the short and curlies." Or something like that. But Tillerson, not for the first time, was miss-speaking. Trump made it clear very quickly that he was never going to talk to the Little Rocket Man unless he stopped his nuclear and missile programme. And the ultimate goal is NOT to let Kim keep what he has got, but to force the North Korean supreme leader to get rid of all his nukes. So talking to him without pre-conditions is a waste of time. That was Trump's comment the last time Tillerson mentioned about talking to Kim. But Tillerson thought it was ok to bring the subject up again, seeming to hint that the US policy had dramatically changed. Since then, of course, there has been a lot of rowing back, ending up today with the classic often-used statement from the State Department press spokeswoman who tried to impress on everyone that State and the White House were "on the same page" when it came to Kim Jong-un. Ho ho ho! I assume Tillerson got a Trump rocket in a phone call from the Oval Office telling him to get on the same page or else. Well, we know what the "or else" means. Tillerson's days are seriously numbered already. He can't go on gaffing many more times. As I have said so often before, Kim is never going to give up his programmes until he is totally satsfied, and is confident the US intelligence community is satisfied, that he has a nuclear-tipped ICBM that can return from space and reenter the Earth's atmosphere unscathed and hit an American city. He can never be absolutely certain without actually trying it out, but in the nuclear weapons business, near-certainty will be enough to persuade Washington that the Little Rocket Man has become Atomic Man. So talk talk, even about the weather, will achieve nothing until that moment has been reached. Then, of course, it's all too late, unless Trump reverses his policy and goes for containment rather than prevention. I guess from now on Tillerson will have to stay on message. If he doesn't, then his political demise will be brought forward by several weeks.

One in the eye for Trump

Well at least there's some decency left in the US political world. The election of a Democrat in Alabama is extraordinary. In Alabama for heaven's sake!!! But having an extreme right wing former judge with 14th century views and an alleged record of sexual harassment of under-age women was just too much for the southern state. Mind you, it was pretty close. Roy Moore who sounds about as unpleasant as you can imagine, nearly beat Doug Jones, the Democrat. It's difficult this side of the Atlantic to appreciate how someone like Roy Moore could have the gall to put himself up for the Senate. But not only did he do so but he got Donald Trump, president of the tragically divided United States to back him and speechify for him. Now Trump admits that he knew Moore would lose because the odds were stacked against him. So why did he pull out all the stops to support him? I'll tell you why, it's because Steve Bannon, his beloved former chief White House strategist and now hush hush Chief Unofficial Political Adviser, said he should. In these circumstances there was nothing General John Kelly or anyone else in the White House could do because it's not in their remit to advise the president whom he should back in state elections. Trump was so desperate to hang on to the Republicans' two-vote majority in the Senate that he would probably have backed a Republican who believes that all homosexuals are criminals. Oh sorry, that's what he did do. Anyway, the defeat of Judge Moore - never mind if Doug Jones is any good or not - is good news for the future of the United States of America. There are enough sensible citizens around to keep the president and his mates in check.

Trump's history with women

Nikki Haley is definitely a superstar. She serves her boss well as ambassador to the United Nations, often being highly provocative in her comments about world matters. But when asked about the allegations of sexual harassment made against Trump by a number of women, she had no hesitation. Yes, she said, they had a right to be heard. She could easily have just said, "This is all old stuff and has been dealt with by the White House and dismissed as fake news." But, no, she was adamant that the president should be treated no differently from other powerful men. If there were specific allegations they should be dealt with properly. Good for her. Trump has said categorically that the allegations are totally false. This means, of course, that if Trump is telling the truth, then the three women who have come forward are lying about what happened many years ago. But, as Ms Haley said, they have the right to be heard. I doubt the president was very pleased to hear his UN ambassador and a former governor (South Carolina) at an historically young age, seeming to take the side of his accusers. Trump's record with women is not good. He has been accused of groping, unwelcome kissing and grossly objectionable derogatory language. It's true that this has all come out before, especially during the election campaign, and he was still voted into the White House despite the complaints from women. Trump's attitude, as expressed through his spokeswoman, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, is that this has all been dealt with before and rejected, so end of story. Well, Sarah HS, Nikki Haley doesn't agree. If there's a case against Trump, let it be heard is her argument. The trouble is, unless the accusers pursue Trump in the courts in a private prosecution, there are few options open to them, apart from continually giving interviews to the newspapers and TV stations. I doubt the Justice Department will come running to hear their case. They've got enough on their hands with the Russia collusion investigation. Special Counsel Robert Mueller has to report to the Justice Department and they appointed him in the first place. So, a handful of long-ago alleged incidents when Trump may or may not have acted disgracefully with women are unlikely to have a huge impact. But if more high-profile women like Nikki Haley stand up for them, then there could be a momentum for action. But Trump will probably get away with it especially if there were no witnessess to the alleged incidents. But, as president of the United States, he would be wise to watch his language when referring to the female sex and keep his hands down by his side in the company of women.

Trump's addiction to TV news

I suppose if you're allegedly the most powerful man on Earth and suffering from a mighty ego, it's hardly surprising that you want to watch yourself on television all day, if ony to reconfirm that you really are the most powerful man on the planet. But the image of Donald Trump sitting in an armchair checking CNN and Fox News all day to make sure he is getting his name spread around enough is pretty sad. Especially when you add the extra tidbit provided by The New York Times that the president drinks a dozen diet cokes every day. You do wonder whether he has got time to be president of the United States and do things like make BIG DECISIONS. Eight hours a day he watches the TV news. What's going on? It reminds me of another sad image. After the spectacularly dramatic announcement by President Obama in May 2011 that US Navy Seals had killed Osama bin Laden, there was a terrific press briefing at the Pentagon given by a senior CIA officer who played us all a video. It showed Bin Laden, wrapped in a brown blanket, holding a TV remote control and switching channels to find any mention of him or al-Qaeda on the news to boost his flagging ego. I assume Trump doesn't wear a blanket around his shoulders but the image is about the same. Poor Trump, he has so few people around he likes or who like him that TV news has become his daily motivator, mostly to make him angry. If the newspaper reports are accurate, Trump is also so fed up at being marshalled by General John Kelly, his four-star Marine Corps chief of staff, that he has found ways to have chats with what mates he has outside and inside the White House without telling Kelly. "Don't tell Kelly" is now Trump's favourite order! I expect all US presidents in the 24-hour news era became obsessed with TV news one way or the other, but Trump's addiction sounds like a problem. Shouting at the tele is something we all do at some point but not eight hours a day. I think Trump should get out more.

Brexit mirrors

It's impossible for anyone, however well immersed in Brexit terminology, to be absolutely certain whether the Theresa May Stage 1 deal announced with such trumpeting means what it says because there appear, on first reading, to be so many potential loopholes and double meanings and ambiguous wording that you need a mirror, microscope and telescope to emerge any the wiser. No wonder David Davis, the UK Brexit Secretary, admitted he hadn't read the 800-odd pages of Brexit briefings to help him in the negotiations. There's a lot of legal gobbledygook on almost every page. I have spoken to great experts on Brexit, fellow reporters who have written about almost nothing else for the last year, and they give very earnest explanations about this and that but I am no les confused as a result. Perhaps this is what all negotiated documents are like, whatever the subject matter, but the opening Brexit deal has surely got to be a fudge of momentous, historic proportions. How can there be no border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland after Brexit if the UK is to leave the EU single market? If there's no border, then Northern Ireland will effectively be part of the EU single market but as Northern Ireland is very much a part of the UK, it can't be IN the EU single market AND out of the single market. No idea how that will work. Arlene Foster, the pug-faced leader of Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) decided to change her mind when Theresa May rang her up in the early hours and promised there would never be a "hard border" between North and South or East and West, and that the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, formally ending the Protestant/Catholic war, would remain sacrosanct. I'm pretty sure that was always the case, except that Theresa this time probably had an unexpected coughing fit when she mentioned the phrase "regulatory divergence" which, in the first draft of the text, caused Ms Foster to explode in apoplexy. The new phrase is regulatory alignment, but even that is a tricky bit of language open to different intepretations. So in the phone chat in the early hours I assume Mrs May said to Ms Foster: "And of course, Arlene, can I call you Arlene, you do understand don't you that under the COUGH COUGH COUGH, sorry about that, there is no question about there being any sort of COUGH COUGH COUGH and that all I want is a strong and stable government which includes Northern Ireland without there being any COUGH COUGH COUGH across the Irish Sea? Have I made myself clear?" Ms Foster probably replied: "Oh for f...sake, Prime Minister, get yourself some Strepsils for that dreadful cough and yes ok whatever...but don't think I won't bring you down at the slightest mention of regulatory divergence in the future." But Theresa has had her moment of triumph bless her, and she deserves it after being up all night and then catching an early Easyjet to Brussels to stand next to the odious Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission who put his arm around her shoulder for the celebratory photograph. Yuck!! It didn't take long for Michael Gove, the Fish and Farming Secretary, to tell everyone that the whole deal could be scrapped just like that at the next election if the public didn't like it. Or did he mean "didn't understand a word of it"? And David Davis, Brexit Exit Haven't a Clue Secretary, also helpfully poined out that if the EU failed to give us a decent trade deal, the UK would refuse to pay them all that lovely exit lolly, currently valued at £39 BILLION. Hey ho, it could still all go wrong. I hope David Cameron, mastermind of all this chaos, is pleased with himself, wherever he is in his comfortable home as the first snowflakes fall.

Congress in budget logjam

It really is beyond a joke that the two political parties in US Congress cannot make a sensible deal to maintain government spending. It has been like this for years, a total logjam over how the country's money should be spent. It all started in the Obama years and it's still continuing today under Trump. Neither president could persuade Congress to do its job and authorise expenditure like grown-ups. A total government shutdown was avoided this week with an agreement to keep spending levels going for a further two weeks. But then what? Congress is brilliant at brinkmanship, coming up with a last-minute temporary plan to avoid shutdown, but 14 days go by very quickly. It's just a fudge, something which all politicians are good at. But where is the leadership in Congress to sort this out once and for all, and where is the president who has such charismatic authority that politicians, Republican and Democrat, bow to his wishes? Obama couldn't do it and he is a pretty charismatic guy. Trump is just too divisive! So in less than two weeks, the government will once again be facing shutdown, with employees being sent home, contracts suspended and major programmes put into limbo, all days before Christmas. The omens for a longlasting deal are not looking good. The Republicans want to increase defence spending to meet Trump's promise to rebuild America's armed forces, but the Democrats want similar increases for social programmes. They also want to ensure the survival of the Obamacare health programme which Trump hates, and to safeguard the rights of the so-called Dreamers, the 700,000 immigrants without proper documentation who came to the US with their parents when they were just children. There seems little room for compromise on these huge issues, yet compromise is the only thing that will end this disastrous way of running a country's finances. All government departments suffer, perhaps particularly the Pentagon. The Defence Department can only function properly if it knows what the budget will be over the next five years, so that decisions can be made about ordering new ships, new missiles, new aircraft etc. All these mighty weapons prgrammes take years to come to fruition, and investment decisions have to be made a decade in advance. The Pentagon's planning parameters are governed by the Budget Control Act which Obama signed into law in 2011. Attemptng to slash America's huge deficit, the law effectively cut defence spending by nearly $1 trillion over ten years. The act was supposed to be a wake-up call to both Republicans and Democrats to come up with a grand new spending plan under which all programmes, social and defence, could be maintained without increasing the country's deficit of around $1.5 trillion. But since then there has been a total gridlock which passed from Obama to Trump. Military chiefs are beside themselves with frustration and anger and bewilderment. Their political bosses are incapable of resolving the differences in Congress, so they have to go from day to day, trying to work out what money there is to spend and how best to spend it. This is America, still the nation with the biggest economy in the world but one stuck in a political mess which appears to be unresolvable. Imagine a flight of Harrier jumpjets: these amazing aircraft can literally come to a halt in midair. The sensation, when the pilots put on the breaks, is like flying into a cloud of treacle. That's exactly what has been happening with the US government spending programme. It's stuck in treacle!

Britain's image abroad

I fear that Britain's image around the world is now pretty poor: a prime minister struggling to maintain authority, Brexit negotiations in the hands of a minister who has admitted he hasn't read the 800-page briefing paper on Brexit, a chancellor apparently at war with the new young inexperienced defence secretary, all the finest homes in London owned by billionaires who leave them empty, a cricket team that seems incapable of beating the Australians, and a very very uncertain future for all of us. We can't even make a stand when we don't aprove of something. So Trump's declaration of Jerusalem as Israel's capital was not welcomed by Theresa May yesterday, but today, Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, was hardly even critical. He just said it was "unhelpful". Well I suppose he has to be diplomatic, but couldn't he have toughened up his language a bit? Theresa said she would be ringing Trump to pass on her disapproval but it sounds like she is already preparing for a nice chat with Donald. There was a time when the British prime minister could and would ring the president of the United States and say: "Oy, I do NOT approve!" Margaret Thatcher did that frequently with Ronald Reagan. When US Marines invaded the Commonwealth Caribbean island of Grenada - head of state, Queen Elizabeth II - to oust the Marxist leader, he neglected to inform Thatcher beforehand. She was furious and told him so. It didn't destroy the special relationship. It enhanced it, because real relationships that work are not based on pussy-footing and tiptoeing around but are forged between two people who respect each other and treat each other as equals. Maggie and Ronnie really liked each other but when something went wrong they hammered it out like grown-ups. I doubt Trump cares what Theresa thinks and, sure as hell, I doubt he cares a monkeys about what Boris thinks. This is how Brtain is these days in the eyes of the rest of the world. Very very sad!

Trump high-fiving

I think Trump is on a high, or to put it more succinctly, I think Trump thinks he's on a high. After months of knockbacks with almost everything he tried, he got the Senate to pass his huge tax reform (eh, billionaires' tax gift), the Supreme Court voted in favour of keeping his travel ban on six Muslim-majority nations while all the court cases are being resolved, employment is rising, the Stock Market looks like a ballistic missile, up up and away into the stratosphere, and he played golf with Tiger Woods. So an increasingly confident president - ignoring for one moment the Mueller problem - thinks to himself, "right, while I'm riding high, let's do the Jerusalem thing". So the massively leaked announcement about the US recognising Jerusalem as Israel's capital, and the US embassy moving there from Tel Aviv, is duly brought off the campaign shelf. Never mind the phone calls from Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Britain, France etc warning Trump to reconsider. The Israeli lobby of course are delighted, but I can't think of anyone else in the universe who will welcome this move. But Trump is feeling bullish, for him it was one key campaign promise he always intended to keep and now was as good a moment as any to splash it all over the place and to leak it in order to prepare the world for the expected retaliation. Over the last few weeks, Trump will have read many articles about how China and, in particular, Xi Zinping, the Chinese leader, are eating into America's greatness, making smarter moves, and pushing the US president down the list of Important People. Now Putin has intimated he wants to stay president of Russia until 2024, matching Trump's presidency if he wins a second term. So, Trump had to try and put himself back at the head of the game, but as a consequence, stirring up trouble throughout the Middle East and upsetting many of America's closest allies. He won't see it that way of course. He will see it as a bold move that should have been made years ago. Only he, Donald Trump, is brave enough to sweep away any hopes among the Palestinians that in some future peace deal they will be given a new capital for their nation state - East Jerusalem. Did Trump listen to all the arguments from his advisers - is Rex Tillerson still considered a valuable adviser? - or did he just say: "This is what I promised in the campaign, the whole country voted for me, so this is what I will do. Full stop."

What did Trump know?

It will all come down to the big question: what did Donald Trump know when he first dealt with James Comey about the Russia collusion affair? The argument has been endessly debated in the Washington papers. But I don't think anyone has really focused on whether Trump himself ordered Mike Flynn, his former national security adviser, to lie to the FBI. A brief recap: in his weekend Tweeting, Trump said Flynn had had to be sacked because he had lied to Mike Pence, the Vice-President, AND (my capitals) to the FBI over the question of whether he raised the issue of sanctions against Moscow when he went to see the then Russian ambassador to Washington, Sergey Kislyak. Trump's explanation until now had always been that Flynn had to go because he lied to Mike Pence, as a result of which the vice-president went on TV and denied that Flynn had talked about sanctions in his chat with Ambassador Kislyak. So.....Trump is now saying that he knew Flynn had lied to the FBI about the contents of his meeting with the Russian. All the US papers are suggesting that if he knew Flynn had lied to the FBI why did he ask Comey, then the FBI director, to be lenient to his national security adviser and stop investigating him? And is that a prima facie case of obstruction of justice by the president? I think that argument is dubious, especially as the president disputes Comey's accusation that he told him to stop investigating the Russia collusion allegations. Much more interesting is this: did Trump himself order Flynn to cover up the fact that he raised sanctions with Kislyak when he was questioned by the FBI? Or to put it another way: did the president order Flynn to lie to the FBI? Now that, in my view, would be far more dangerous for Trump than whether his seemingly casual request to Comey to be nice to Flynn is tantamount to an obstruction of justice. There are even some lawyers in Washington who are saying that the president has the constitutional right to obstruct justice if he believes the FBI are going down the wrong path. Well, that's lawyer talk but it does demonstrate there are ambiguities here. But for a president to instruct a senior official to lie to the FBI!!! That's a different legal ball game altogether. We don't know if that happened. But if it did, then Flynn, now cooperating with Robert Mueller's investigation, is likely to mention it - or may have already mentioned it - to save his bacon. Mueller, being a thoroughbred investigator, will want more corroboration. But if Flynn WAS told to lie, then the likelihood is that other members of the Trump administration were either involved or knew about it. The finger has already been pointed at Jared Kushner, the son-in-law and adviser to Trump. Or is it possible that Flynn just acted on his own and, unauthorised, told Kislyak that Trump, when president, would get all those nasty sanctions lifted in return for a cosy relationship with Vladimir Putin? I find it difficult to believe that Flynn would even raise the issue unless someone had told him to do so. And that would have given Flynn confidence when he lied to the FBI!!

DT attacks the FBI

It's neither presidential, nor judicial, nor sensible for the president of the United States to attack the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Donald Trump did it when James Comey was FBI director - then sacked him - and now he has done it again in a series of devastating Tweets, basically calling the FBI a failed organisation. If anything is going to make Robert Mueller hunt even further for evidence of White House malpractice over the Russia Affair, that Trump blast is surely IT. The FBI's reputation is now at stake, especially after the gift presented to the president when Mueller announced he had had to remove one of his top agents from the investigation when it emerged he had tweeted negatively about Trump during the election campaign. Ho ho, I bet a lot of people did, inside and outside the FBI. The CIA must be swimming with angry emails in the archives after Trump's denunciation of the US intelligence community during the campaign. Nothing surprises us anymore about Trump, but surely his latest Tweets against the FBI are out of order. He remains so bitter about Comey - even though the sacked FBI director indirectly helped him win the presidency when he announced a new email investigation into Hillary only ten days before the vote - that he clearly believes the FBI is out to get him. After his latest Tweets, he might just be right. In the history of the FBI there have been many tussles betweeen the White House and the law enforcement agency, but nothing as crudely inflammatory as this. Of course, the biggest tussle of all was when J Edgar Hoover was the director, but that was because it was known that he had huge files on all top people, including the president of the day, and could thus blackmail them if required. The fact that he remained director for 48 years, establishing a power base none of his successor has ever managed to emulate is the clearest evidence that no president ever dared to stand up to him, let alone fire him. Even Trump would have hesitated. Hoover would have made it his sacred duty to uncover Trump's tax history. We don't know what, if anything, the current FBI knows about Trump's tax liabilities over the years, and that may still be the president's undoing if his tax history were to be leaked. Meanwhile, Mueller and his team will weather the Tweet storm and pursue clues that could eventually lead to Trump being prosecuted for obstruction of justice or worse. No wonder Trump gets so angry every time the acronym, FBI, is mentioned in his company. But he would be wise to keep his thoughts to himself. Tweeting against the FBI does him no good and provides Mueller with more ammunition. If there is direct evidence of collusion with Moscow that implicates Trump, no amount of "I'm innocent" tweeting will help his cause. If it turns out there was no collusion involving Trump himself, then he should keep quiet until Mueller informs the world that Trump is innocent ok! Right now most of us don't know who to believe.

Mueller's trail is getting White House hot

If I was president of the United States and my former national security adviser and confidant was arrested and charged with lying to the FBI, I would begin to feel distinctly hot under the collar, as we say in Blighty. The venerable Chuck Todd, former NBC White House correspondent and now moderator (presenter) of NBC's Meet the Press programme, said yesterday that the tentacles of the Russia collusion investigation now only had to go two more steps to reach the president himself, via Jared Kushner, son-in-law, and Donald Trump Junior. Kushner has already been fingered because it has been widely reported that Mike Flynn, the Trumpite who lied to the FBI, had been specifically authorised by Kushner to contact the Russians during the presidential election campaign. If so, Kushner must now also be heading for a federal charge, unless he can show that the auhorised contact with the Russians was purely about trying to improve relations with Moscow and had nothing to do with getting dirt on Hillary Clinton to wreck her chances of beating Trump to the White House. The possibility that Robert Mueller and his inquiry team will be knocking on the door of the Oval Office is becoming more likely by the day. Trump of course has dismissed all the speculation, sending his press office to reassure the media that Flynn was acting on his own and had no authority from the president or anyone else to go and chat up the Russians. This, I'm afraid, is simply beyond belief. Why would Flynn, such a close associate of Trump before and after he became president, decide off his own bat to ring up the Russian ambassador in Washington and offer the carrot of an end to the tough sanctions against the Russian government? Would he not first ask the Big Man himself if he thought this was a good idea? Mueller must surely be thinking along these lines. So the trail has suddenly become explosively hot hot hot. Could this really all end up with impeachment of the president? I never thought it likely, but the longer the investigation continues and the more key people Mueller manages to persuade to cooperate with him, the greater the threat facing the president. Flynn is revealing everything he knows. George Papadopoulos, former Trump foreign policy adviser, is revealing everything he knows. What about Kushner? Will he come clean, I mean totally clean, to save his skin or will he always remain loyal to his father-in-law? In other words, take the blame on his shoulders to protect Trump from Mueller's clutches? A prima facie case of collusion with Moscow to bring down Hillary Clinton still seems far-fetched, in which case Trump will survive but with huge questions over his head for the rest of his presidency. Much will now depend on what Kushner tells Mueller.

Lunch with Trump at the White House

Is lunching with Trump at the White House an item in the diary to look forward to or not? Well it depends who is the invitee and under what circumstances the invitation might have been sent. Today, there are two invitees to the Trump lunch table: Jim Mattis, Defence Secretary, and Rex Tillerson, still Secretary of State but only by his fingertips. The conversation is going to be tricky because Tillerson now knows, thanks to the indiscreet White House officials who spoke anonymously to The New York Times, that Trump is considering sacking him and replacing him at the State Department with Mike Pompeo, the bullish CIA director. Does he raise the small matter of his future, does he ask Mattis to raise it or does he keep quiet and pretend he is perfectly safe in his job? And if he does raise it, does he do so immediately or wait till the main course or dessert arrives on the table? Not an easy series of questions to answer. It will depend on how bold Tillerson feels. Let us hypothesise the luncheon chat: Trump: "Rex, lovely to see you. Jim, always a pleasure, do sit down. No, not there, Rex, that's my seat!" Tillerson: "Mr President, I wondered if there was something I might ask you before we start our lunch?" Trump:" Later, Rex, later. I know the chef has the soup ready to go." Tillerson: "Of course, Mr President, the soup will be nice." Trump: "Jim, what do you think about the Rocket Man after his latest missile launch? Shall we bomb him into a pile of rubbish?" Mattis: "Well, Mr President, perhaps not yet, the intelligence community is looking into the latest launch and will report back." Tillerson: "Mr President, if I might just say...." Trump: "Ah here's the soup. Tuck in." Various slurping sounds as the three men spoon up the parsnip/carrot and chicken soup. Trump: "I would love to give that Little Rocket Man the fright of his miserable life. What can we do, Jim, tell me what we can get away without screwing up my relationship with Xi (President Xi Zinping)." Mattis: "Well, Mr President, as you know, we have the capability to hit North Korea with overwhelming force." Tillerson: "Mr President, I really don't...." Trump: "What do you think of the soup, Rex?" Tillerson: "Eh, very nice, thank you, but about the Rocket Man..." Trump: "I bet right now he's stuffing his big fat belly with foie gras and lobster, what do you think, Rex?" Tillerson: "Eh, the time difference is...." Trump: "Let's have the main course. It's going to be roast cod, yummy!!" Tillerson: "Before it arrives, Mr President, I thought I ought to raise the issue that's in the New York Times today." Trump: "All fake news, Rex, just fake news." Tillerson: "But..." Mattis glances at Tillerson and tries discreetly to shake his head. Trump notices. Trump: "I never read the New York Times, it's all fake news." The cod arrives. Trump grabs his knife and fork and shovels a pile of fish into his mouth. Tillerson: "So there's no truth that you're...." Trump: "Tell me, Jim, do you think Rocket Man is afraid of me?" Mattis: "I'm sure, Mr President, that the North Korean leader is fully aware of the huge military capabilities we have." Trump: "Rex, what do you think?" Tillerson has a mouthfull of cod, pees and mashed potato and splutters and coughs as he attempts to hide his surprise at being asked a question. Tillerson: "Uuuurgh, uuurgh, ha!" Trump looks at him and nods his head as if in agreement. When the dessert arrives, Tillerson plucks up his courage to ask the Big Question: "Mr President, I really do need to know, am I going to stay at State?" Trump: "Rex, what state are you talking about?" Tillerson: "I meant..." Trump: "You should state what you mean." Mattis: "I think what Rex is trying to ask, Mr President, is whether...." Trump: "Enough talking, enjoy your doughnut." Tillerson: "But..." Trump: "Doughnut!" End of conversation and end of lunch.

Tillerson OUT Pompeo IN

It looks like the much-rumoured ousting of Rex Tillerson as secretary of state is now high on Trump's mind. He wants Mike Pompeo, his trusted like-minded outspoken CIA director to take over at State. The State Department is located in Washington's Foggy Bottom district, but Trump thinks Tillerson's brain has been much too foggy of late, particularly over Iran and North Korea, so he has fallen out of favour. Pompeo, on the other hand, wlll not let Trump down. He knows what his master wants and he agrees with him anyway on all the key issues. There will be nothing very diplomatic about Pompeo when he confronts Iran over the nuclear deal and Kim Jong-un over his nuclear weapons. Pompeo gave a brilliant insight into his way of thinking in the summer during an interview he gave at the Aspen security forum in Colorado. He was asked why he felt dubious about the Obama nuclear deal with Iran which was signed by all the five major nuclear powers plus Germany. In exchange for restricting its nuclear programme over the next ten years, Iran was promised a phased lifting of the heavyweight sanctions which had helped to cripple the country's economy. Pompeo revealed, presumbaly based on classified CIA intelligence, that Iran was cheating and getting away with it, despite a tough verification programme agreed with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as part of the nuclear deal. This is what he said: "I kind of think of Iranian compliance with the nuclear deal like a bad tenant. How many of you have had a bad tenant? You now, they don't pay the rent, you call them and then they send a cheque and it doesn't clear and they send another one. And then the next day there's this old tired sofa in the front yard and you tell them to take it away and you know they drag it to the back. This is Iranian compliance today. Grudging, minimalist, temporary with no intention of doing really what the agreement was designed to do, it was designed to foster stability and have Iran become a reentrant to the Western world, and the agreement simply hasn't achieved that." He went on to say he didn't know what would force Iran to honour the agreement in the proper manner. "But I can tell you what won't, is continued appeasement, continued failure to acknowledge when they do things wrong and forcing them into compliance." So, with Pompeo at the State Department, there would be a new tough approach with Tehran. Trump has already refused to certify the deal the last time he was supposed to put his initials to the continuing agreement, despite Tillerson's recommendation that he should. Pompeo in the background obviously told the president to step back. The rest of the world community condemned Trump. But if Pompeo is moved to State, then Tehran is going to face a much tougher secretary than Tillerson who was persuaded by his counterparts in Moscow, Beijing and London that the deal was good and that Iran was NOT cheating. Pompeo believes Tehran IS cheating and getting away with it, and is making more gas centrifuges for uranium enrichment than the deal allows, is stalling over allowing IAEA inspectors into the military/nuclear complex at Parchin and is generating more heavy water tonnage than is laid down in the deal - all signs that Iran is slowly pushing ahead with its nuclear programme under the noses of the IAEA, AND getting sanctions lifted. Incidentally, the plan is for Senator Tom Cotton to go to the CIA as Pompeo's replacement. Cotton and Pompeo are birds of the same feather. They were the ones who discovered, by accident, that there were secret annexes at the end of the nuclear deal, relating to the powers and limits of the verification programme which not even Obama had seen. The secret annexes were for the eyes only of the IAEA and Tehran. How scary is that? With Pompeo and Cotton in top positions, the Iran nuclear deal is going to be changed to suit Trump, whatever the likes of Boris Johnson in London says.

Trump and the empty chairs

The empty chair routine, of course, has been done before. Donald Trump used the image of two empty chairs when he tried to explain why he was so disgusted that two veteran Democrats, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, House Democratic leader, and Senator Chuck Schumer, Senate Minority leader, boycotted a meeting at the White House which the president had called to discuss his proposed tax reforms. It was a colourful moment which summed up not just Trump's extreme irritation at being spurned by the two most senior Democrats but also the state of relations between the two parties. Those two empty chairs said more about Trump's problems in Congress than almost anything. The other most notable empty chair image was given to us courtesy of Hollywood legend Clint Eastwood. That was back in 2012 when Eastwood, one of my all-time favourite icons of the movie business, was making a hugely promoted address to the Republican National Convention. The empty chair was supposed to contain Barack Obama. It was intended to be a clever joke, with Eastwood chatting to the invisible Obama to put across his view that the "sitting" president did not deserve a second term. Most people thought it was a ghastly embarrassment. Another guy who thought an empty chair would make a good theatrical device was William Shakespeare, or as one of my American friends one said to me, "Bill Shakespeare". In Macbeth, there is one empty chair at the banquet given by Macbeth in Act III. The missing guest is his old friend, Banquo, who had just been murdered by Macbeth's henchmen. The chair, of course, for those who know the play, is suddenly filled by Banquo's bloodstained ghost whom only Macbeth can see. Take it from me for those who haven't seen the play performed, it's considerably more dramatic a moment than when Eastwood addressed the empty chair at the convention. Trump's two empty chairs idea was pretty effective although it only helped to underline the predicament he is facing in everything he is trying to do. There is not a whisper of compromise in Congress right now. It's a dire situation. Extra extra! Just a quick comment on the latest big cheese American broadcaster to lose his job over sexual harassment allegations. Matt Lauer has been sacked by NBC because a female colleague came forward with a detailed description of his conduct which the high-ups at NBC considered was sufficiently awful to send him packing. The list of big names being accused of "inappropriate conduct" is getting longer by the week. The fall of Charlie Rose of CBS was a huge surprise to those of us who enjoyed his interview style but knew nothing of his bizarre personal behaviour. Matt Lauer is also an excellent interviewer and presenter and we don't yet know what he is supposed to have done wrong. But where will it end? When Charlie Rose was outed as an alleged female abuser, Matt Lauer appeared on NBC and asked searching questions of people on his programme about the dramatic end of Rose's previously distinguished career. Did he by any chance have any sneaking fear at the back of his mind as he asked the questions about whether he too might be found out and exposed? And how many other high-profile American presenters are even now carrying on their broadcasting jobs in a state of permanent suspense and dread?

Could we face nuclear war?

Admiral Mike Mullen, former chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff and a very pleasant fellow, has admitted that he is really worried there could be a nuclear war. It's the sort of comment which sends shivers down one's spine. Mullen is retired but it wasn't long ago that he knew all the secrets in the Pentagon and still knows to this day what sort of contingency planning the Defense Department has done in the event of an imminent nuclear attack. In other words, he knows his stuff. He admitted in an interview that the potential for a nuclear war was scary. He was talking about North Korea, envisaging a scenario in which Kim Jong-un, having acquired long-range nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles, might feel tempted to use them. He must have thought this through and felt impelled to make his views known. I was Pentagon Correspondent for The Times in Washington when Admiral Mullen was the military chief for the Obama administration, and most of my fellow Pentagon Press Corps colleagues liked and respected him. He was approachable and very quotable. But does that make him right when he says he believes a nuclear war is more possible than it was some years ago? Theoretically his fears are sound. There is no question that a North Korea armed with intercontinental-range nuclear ballistic missiles will make the world a far more dangerous place. But will it be like the Cold War or something totally different? Will the mutual assured destruction in the hands of Trump and Kim Jong-un prevent war, as in the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s, or invite war? I suspect what is in the back of Mullen's mind are his cncerns about the temperament of President Trump and what he might do if facing a nuclear-armed Kim Jong-un. Mullen was an Obama man, and it doesn't sound, from his interview, that he could ever contemplate being a Trump man. He was even critical of General John Kelly for being what he thought was overly supportive of Trump in his capacity as White House chief of staff. He also imagined that if an order was ever given for US nuclear weapons to be launched it was very likely that such orders WOULD be obeyed, a view running slightly counter to the recent stories when current senior military commanders said an order to launch a nuclear weapon would only be carried out if it was considered to be legal and proportionate. So Mullen's worries appear to be as much about Trump as they are about Kim Jong-un. All very scary!!!

Kushner put in his place

There's no real contest when a retired four star Marine Corps general is set against a flippertijibett young businessman even if the latter is the son-in-law of the president of the United States. Sure enough, after months of trying to sort out the chain of command in the White House, General John Kelly, chief of staff, has reigned in Jared Kushner and basically told him what he can and can't do in terms of representing the Trump administration. There was a period when Kushner seemed to have his fingers in every pie, whether it was Russia or China or the Middle East or Afghanistan. He could see or chat to his father-in-law whenever he wanted and generally ruled the roost, as it were. He was Chief Chicken!! Under the previous chief of staff he got away with it. But Kelly really has stamped his authority on the White House, and Kushner, being an official loose cannon, definitely did not fit into his way of doing things. He must have got fed up with Kushner waltzing into the Oval Office and bending Trump's ear the whole time. He had the same trouble with Steve Bannon when he was running all over the shop as Trump's chief strategist. There's nothing a four star general hates more than chaotic management. Generals like firm lines that are all joined up in proper mathematical fashion. There's no room for freelancers and that's how Kelly would have viewed Kushner and Bannon. Powerful and influential freelancers getting in the way of sound judgments and strict management. Trump, like all US presidents, needs structure, even though Donald T probably doesn't believe in structured administration. Just look at his Tweets. I'm sure Kushner will continue to have a key advisory role, but it will now be firmly constrained within the Kelly management format. It's quite a victory on Kelly's part. The chain of command has been set in concrete and woe betide anyone who tries to slip into the Oval Office without Kelly's permission! Kushner has struck up a good relationship with the Saudi Crown Prince and I expect that channel will be exploited to best advantage, so the Trump son-in-law will still have his uses. But he now knows who is boss, and I'm not talking about Father-in-Law Trump.

Saudi crown prince speaks his mind

Some new leaders make waves as soon as they take over. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia isn't strictly speaking the new Saudi leader, he's just the heir apparent to King Abdullah, but since being appointed he has certainly taken on the mantle of the man in charge. But he's already showing the same tendency as his friend Donald Trump to mouth off about other leaders. He has called Ayatollah Ali Khameini, Iran's supreme spiritual leader, the "new Hitler". Personally I don't think it helps for someone with huge power such as the Crown Prince to call the leader of another country, albeit a hated and feared one, the new Hitler. It's stupid, totally counter-productive and unimaginitive. Just like Trump calling Kim Jong-un the Little Rocket Man, it doesn't actually serve a purpose in the great scheme of things other than to annoy the person being insulted. Neither bin Salman nor Trump advanced the search for peaceful relations by their gratuitous comments. The Crown Prince is a man to watch on the world stage. He is clearly intent on not only stirring up Saudi Arabia - not a bad thing - but also playing a big power role in global, particularly Middle Eastern politics. Judging by what he has done so far - for example, bombing the Houthi militia out of existence in Yemen, with widespread collateral damage (killing civilians), and ordering the arrest of 200 fellow princes and others who have been milking the Saudi economy - he seems to be in a hurry to make a splash wherever he goes and whatever he does. If that brings desperately needed genuine reforms to Saudi Arabia, then his leadership will be positive. But there must be better ways of dealing with the threat posed by Iran than calling the supreme leader a new Hitler.

The Crocodile takes over

On the face of it, the last person you would want to succeed Robert Mugabe as president of Zimbabwe is his former vice president, Emmerson Mnangagwa. You only have to read an account of his personal involvement in the slaughter of innocents during the rebellion against whites in the country to realise that he has a past reputation for ruthlessness. He is no kindergarten school teacher. He was Mugabe's enforcer. So why is everyone cheering and waving flags and talking of a new beginning? This is not a new beginning, it's just the old ways painted in a different light. Unless Mnangagwa has seen the error of his ways and has transformed his personality and approach to life, Zimbabwe is not going to be blessed with a political Messiah. The Crocodile, as he likes to be called, is no liberal. But, hopefully, given the chance to rule the country and to do something that will actually benefit its citizens, he will use his enforcer techniques in a more benign way. Perhaps he will create thousands of jobs. Perhaps he will go on a charm offensive and persuade other countries to invest in Zimbabwe. Perhaps he will not order the jailing of opposition leaders. Perhaps he will seek unity, as he promised in his take-over speech. But I say, beware The Crocodile. Let's wait for next year's elections and see how fair and lawful they are. Now he has power, I can't see Mnangagwa relinquishing it to a soft opposition leader if he fails to win the right number of votes. Of course, if he waves a magic wand and improves the lives of Zimbabweans between now and the election, he may well win and be president for a long time. But if he shows any sign that he remains at heart a Mugabe enforcer of notorious brutality, democracy is not going to flower in one of the most beautiful countries in Africa.

Assad wins

Isis may have been defeated in Syria but what about Syria itself? The situation is totally different from the political landscape in Iraq where Isis has also been vanquished. In Baghdad there is a recognised government and prime minister and the country is, relatively speaking, unified, although the Kurds, having played such a huge role in the defeat of Isis, have been thwarted from achieving their goal of an expanded independence in northern Iraq. Syria is still a political mess, with Bashar Assad "in power" in Damascus. But there is also a glorious hotch-potch of rival opposition groups who began this whole war in Syria to oust Assad, and then got caught up in the anti-Isis campaign. They will want their slice of the Syrian cake. The group formerly known as the Nusra Front with its affiliation to al-Qaeda, will also be eager to hang on to what they have managed to grab and occupy in the last four years. Putin reckons he has sorted out Syria's future, after his deal-making summit with the leaders of Iran and Turkey the other day, but who is he kidding? And what is Trump going to do to make sure that all the investment, military and financial which the US has ploughed into Syria over the last few years is not going to be wasted? Whatever happens, it seems likely that Assad will survive. He is looking increasingly confident these days, and with three such influential and powerful countries backing him, it's not surprising. Asad is not going to talk to the Americans. Why should he when he's got Putin, President Erdogan of Turkey and President Rouhani of Iran at his side? So, despite the appalling war crimes committed in the civil war, despite the Syrian regime's use of chemical weapons to kill and injure civilians, Assad remains supreme. He's not going anywhere. I predict that Trump will go along with this, allowing Assad to stay in power but with the promise of elections at some time in the future and involvement in the reconstruction of Syrian cities blasted by bombs, artillery and suicide explosions. He will hope that a slice of the reconstruction action will help Washington to retain some influence. But I seriously doubt there will ever be a photograph in the future showing Trump, Putin, Erdogan and Rouhani all shaking hands and smiling to the cameras after an historic four-part agreement for Syria's future.

Bosnia monster gets his due

General Ratko Mladic was a monster, a military leader of unbridled brutality who was the cause of thousands of deaths during the three-way ethnic war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. At last his trial at the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague is over and he has been sentenced to life imprisonment. He was ejected from the court for screaming at the judge, professing his innocence. There is no one less innocent on this Earth than Mladic. There were no good guys in the war, the Bosnian Muslims, Croats and Serbs all hated each other and killed out of revenge for deeds committed three hundred years ago. It was mass slaughter and rape for more than three years. Mladic, with his rock-like face, was the worst of the bunch. He never differentiated between his "military" opponents and civilians. The latter were legitimate targets, in his view, for his artillery and sniper teams and mortar rockets and machineguns. The Bosnian Serbs did not commit every war crime during the civil war. The Croats, for example, fired shells on Bosnian Muslim families in East Mostar for two years, reducing the ancient district of the city of Mostar to ruins. Muslims killed Croats and Serbs, Croats killed Muslims and sometimes Serbs, Serbs killed Croats and Muslims. It was mayhem. Mladic stood out as the monster of monsters. He was the one who masterminded the killing of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the town of Srebrenica because he wanted that whole area to be exclusively Serb. I covered the Bosnia war as The Times defence correspondent, along with other excellent colleagues, and can say without exaggeration that it was the most dangerous time in my life. I went on to cover the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Sierra Leone. But none of them came anywhere near as life-threatening to me personally. Every day was dangerous. The press and media in general were targets as much as anyone else. Having MEDIA spread all over your flak jacket and vehicle was almost asking for trouble. There was no such thing as a safe journey whether you were in Muslim, Croat or Serb-held territory. I was shot at and mortared by the lot. Nevertheless, the one ethnic group you never wanted to come across when driving around a corner was the Serbs. They were always better armed and more likely to open fire first and see who you are second. I once was a passenger in a BBC TV armoured vehicle driven by my comrade Malcolm Brabant, a doughty war correspondent for the Beeb. He drove around a corner near the Serb-held town of Turbe and straight into an ambush of Serb tanks and armoured vehicles, their gun barrels pointing at us. Without a moment's hesitation, Malcolm performed the fastest U-turn his vehicle would allow and accelerated back round the corner. I think the U-turn took the Serbs by surprise because they didn't fire a shot. Ratko Mladic will spend the rest of his miserable life where he deserves to be, in jail.

No end to sex harassment cases

Charlie Rose, one of the great American talk show hosts, always watchable, is the latest to be caught up in the sex harassment scandal. What is being claimed is almost beyond credible, especially the allegation that he walked around naked in front of female colleagues! Did he really do that? He must have been mad! The "past" is a dangerous word. Now 75, I'm sure Rose behaves impeccably but his past has found him out. But before he can make a proper account of himself, and certainly before any proof is provided, he's suspended and tarnished for ever. It's punishment by media. The women making the allegations went to the Washington Post and they published their claims. And, bang, he's finished. It's a brutal world. No mercy. But that's the way it is. Anyone in a high-profle position, whether it be in politics, business, media or Hollywood who has said anything or done anything in the past which can be catergorised as sexual harassment is going to be pilloried and shamed. If they're genuine cases, especially if they involve serial offences, then the action being taken is justified. If they are minor, one-off cases, then the individual involved should be treated with more mercy and not have his career ruined. But right now, there is a hunt underway (I won't use the cliche word witchhunt because it seems rather inappropriate since it's men being hunted not women). I guess there are going to be many many more cases dredged up over the coming months before it runs out of steam. The most positive result out of this scandal would be for bosses everywhere to enforce a new code for all their employees, men and women. As part of their contract for employment new recruits should be made aware that harassment of any kind, whether physical or verbal, is prohibited. The US and British military went through all this a long time ago. The old tradition of the screaming parade ground sergeant-major instilling discipline into fresh recruits is now frowned upon. And when cases arise, as they have done recently in the US, where an instructor is facing court martial for abusing a Muslim trainee who subsequently jumped from a balcony to his death, military commanders are quick to take action. If the allegations against Charlie Rose are true, he is lucky to have survived this long as America's premier talk show host.

Mugabe and his president for life dream

Being president for life is, for some people - very few people - an obsession. After leading the war campaign to overthrow white rule in Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe always felt he was entitled to be president for life. And if he hadn't abused the system so much and hadn't allowed his wife and her cronies to feed off the country's dwindling finances, he might have made it. But having been president for 37 years, an absolute ruler, you could see from his rambling, longwinded speeches, often very critical of Britain, that he was in his dotage and no longer capable of running a country, let alone his wife. He's still hanging on, but it won't be for long. The trouble is, what does a president of 37 years standing do in retirement? It must need a counsellor of unbelievable tact and cunning to explain to such a man that he is no longer in charge and must start reading all those thrillers he meant to read while he was running the country. I often wonder what President Putin will do when he eventually relinquinshes power, although I bet he sees himself as president for life, just like Mugabe. By the time his term is up, he will no doubt find some clever legislative clause to allow him to stay on. He did it before. Can you imagine Russia without Putin in power? I can't. The same goes for Angela Merkel. She has been around for so long that it is difficult to envisage her being ousted and going into retirement. She's in real trouble because her coalition partners are no longer happy being her coalition partners. So she will have such a small minority backing her as leader that she may have to call another election. Theresa May must be looking with grim foreboding at what is happening in Berlin. Now Theresa obviously would never have considered being UK leader for life. She couldn't anyway under our political system. But she certainy wants to hang on for as long as possible. That thing about power does become obsessional. There's nothing worse in politics than being in opposition. Mugabe is going through the withdrawal symptoms right now, hanging on for dear life because he can't bear the thought of someone else coming in to replace him. Putin just won't let it happen, full stop!! Trump, dear God, has, theoretically, another seven years to go, and Angela Merkel could be out on her ear if there is another election athough somehow I think she will survive. Her country needs her. Mind you, that's what Margaret Thatcher thought and then all those nasty Tory grandees stabbed her in the back, and she was finished, shedding a very visible tear at the back of her official car as she left Downing Street as ex-Prime Minister. Perhaps it all ends in tears, whoever you are. Take note, Mugabe, Putin et al.

Brexit dilemma

There have been non-stop complaints about what is going on with Brexit. No one, not it seems even the British government negotiators, knows how it's all going to end up. Are we going to be half in and half out, in other words staying in the single market and the EU customs union but exiting everything else - is there anything else? - or is going to be a total break-up with no trade deal or will it be a decent trade deal but not in the single market, and who knows about the free movement of labour and the future of EU citizens in the UK and British citizens living and working in the EU? That about sums up the ignorance. We haven't a clue what life is going to be like after March 2019 - deadline month for leaving the EU - and it's no wonder everyone, not just the politicians, is beginning to get seriously fed up. Can you imagine being someone who runs a business with a lot of European sales or links? How is he or she going to plan for the future when the future is so uncertain? The UK Government's position is: leave it to us, we're in the midst of negotiations and we can't reveal our hand. Well, ok, if you're playing poker you keep your hand to your chest and only display what you have when you've got what you want, your rivals have either throw in their hand or have begun to look vaguely suicidal and you have calculated what huge sum you're going to win by bluffing all the way to the very end. But this is not a game of cards. This is about our lives, our way of life and the lives of our children. We cannot remain in total ignorance of what the politicians are up to. If Theresa May indicates she is prepared to pay out, say, £40 billion to the EU as an exit fee should we not have a say in that? What will it mean for our eoonomy? That is more than our total annual defence spending for example! Where will the money come from? And why do we need to feel obliged to pay the EU all that money? As I have made clear before, I voted Remain, so I'm not happy about anything to do with leaving the EU, but as this country seems set on doing just that, I don't want the EU bureaucrats to screw us and our economy. We will still be part of Europe even when we leave the EU, so let's get this new arrangement sorted out fast, without all this pussyfooting around and disagreeable whispering. Do a deal that will make sense for this country and for Europe as a whole. It can't be that difficult.

Zimbabwe's bizarre coup

Well, this has got to be the strangest coup of all time. Mugabe ousted, military chiefs take over, tanks on the streets, the old dictator forced into house arrest (very nice house, mind you), and then, suddenly up pops Robert M in his finest suit attending a college graduation as if he was still the president and nothing had happened. All very bizarre and kind of creepy. The military I'm sure never left his side throughout the ceremony, but Mugabe seemed quite happy. I noticed that the day before, he was reported to have "chuckled" during a meeting with the miitary top bods and visiting South African delegates. You don't generally chuckle before your execution, so I guess there's not going to be any Mugabe blood shed. Nothing like the moment when Colonel Gaddafi was overthrown for example when he was summarily lynched. So, all very pleasant in Harare at this stage. But Mugabe must have got the message surely? The man called Crocodile is beathing down his neck and at some point he will have to step aside and spend the rest of his days looking at his medals, presumably without his beloved wife, Grace, who seems unlikely to be able to make a triumphant return. Mr Crocodile will see to that. When he takes over, assuming he does and not the poor long-suffering Opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, old Crocodile is not going to want Mugabe wandering the streets looking for trouble, let alone Grace, his hated rival. But in the meantime, perhaps Mugabe has a few other longstanding engagements which he would like to fulfil during this strange hiatus, such as opening a new school that hasn't actually been built or visiting a tractor factory. Does Zimbabwe have tractor factories? Probably not. The house "sort of arrest" of old Mugabe mirrors the bizarre arrests that have taken place in Saudi Arabia courtesy of the new Crown Prince. A whole host of princes, government ministers, officials and members of the military detained for questioning in the Crown Prince's huge corruption investigation are not chained to the walls of a dungeon but have been housed in the five-star luxury Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Riyadh where room service is legendary. So the wealthy Saudi princes, including one of the richest men on the planet, billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Al Saud, share one thing in common with Robert Mugabe. They have all been ousted one way or the other but they are still enjoying the sort of standard of living to which they have for long been accustomed. But, despite Mugabe's little visit to the graduation ceremony, none of them are free men. Their future will depend, on the one hand, on the whim of The Crocodile, and on the other, the very smooth and very rich Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Mugabe might wish he was currently living at the Ritz-Carlton in Riyadh.

Putin comes to Maduro's aid

There are some stories which make me boil. President Putin agreeing to go to the aid of President Maduro of a once great country called Venezuela is one of those stories. Maduro, not a man with much economic brain sense who has successfully turned a wealthy country into a bankrupt state with no hope because of his idiotic and corrupt management, desperately needed someone to help him out with cash. So along comes Putin, ever ready to prop up anyone who claims to like him, or more likely, ever ready to help a country that offers Russia a military base or port. Maduro will now survive because Putin has agreed to reschedule Venezuela's debts so it can stagger on for another year or so. The people of Venezuela will still be living in in a twilight world, unable to buy the food they need, unable to sell their homes because they are worthless and unable to leave the country for a better life elsewhere because they can't take out their life savings with them. This country DOES need help but not if Maduro and his cronies are still in power. Putin, if he had been a better man, would have said to Maduro: "We'll help you with your debts if you do something about the economy and look after your people and be a democrat instead of a dictator." But that's about as likely as Trump saying sorry to Hillary Clinton and inviting her to dinner at the White House.

Mugabe ousted

While most Zimbabweans and leaders around the world - or some of them - breathe with relief at the ousting of the dreadful Robert Mugabe, there has to be an element of fear and concern amidst all the cheering and clapping. Military coups seldom run smoothly, and the risk of a slaughter of opponents to the coup has to be high. I love the semantics used by the coup plotters - not a coup but a bloodless correction. When the military use such terminology, watch out for some brutal correction ahead. When General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi ousted democratically-elected President Mohamed Morsi as president of Egypt in 2013, no one called it a coup, especially not the United States which never liked Morsi. That was also a sort of correction because Sisi and his military chums hated the Muslim Brotherhood taking over the country and judged that Morsi and his cronies were bad for the security and happiness of the nation. So, off with his head. Well, not quite, he was imprisoned and charged with causing the deaths of protestors. There were mass jailings of Muslim Brotherhood members. In subsequent violent protests against the "coup", hundreds of people were killed. Some correction! No military coups are gentle affairs. So we'll have to see how General Constantino Chiwenga, the Zimbabwean army chief, conducts himself and his troops in the next few days, and more importantly, what steps are taken by Emmerson Mnangagwa, the fomer vice-president who was sacked by Mugabe, provoking the military takeover. He seems to have returned from his brief flight from the country and the number one person on his list to sort out will no doubt be Grace Mugabe, the hated shoe and handbag-buying wife of Robert Mugabe who fancied herself as the next leader of Zimbabwe and had gathered a tight bunch of devotees around her. Grace has now fled but Mnangagwa, a big bloke nicknamed the Crocodile - presumably not for affectionate reasons - looks like the type of man who will want to iron out any political wrinkles as he takes over power. What will The Crocodile do with Robert Mugabe? Let him retire in luxury or put him into an old people's home for correction?