Trump dons superpower clothes

It's amazing what a few Tomahawk cruise missiles can do for a president's self-esteem and reputation around the world. Everyone has had to sit up and take notice. Trump's action has rewritten the front pages of every American newspaper and every national newspaper published from Beijing to Mogadishu, and, particularly in Moscow. Would Hillary Clinton have authorised an attack on Syria after the chemical weapons outrage? If she was president, I think she probably would have done. She always had a tougher, more hawkish attitude when she was secretary of state than the president she served. But no one had much idea whether Trump was going to be interested in getting involved in other people's wars. Now, everyone knows that Trump is prepared to go military when the circumstances demand it. Does that make the world a safer or more dangerous place? It's impossible to say at this stage. The launch of 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles will not resolve the crises in Syria. The chances are, they will make it worse, because Putin will be wanting to seek revenge against the man he thought was going to be his friend. Putin is not going to let go of Bashar Assad. He is his ally. He needs Assad in power to maintain a strong Russian presence in the Middle East. He has bases in Syria. He wants to keep them. Much will depend on Trump's new mood. Authorising Tomahawks, the easiest option for him, will have given him a taste of the sort of power which he will never have experienced as a top businessman. He will undoubtedly launch more Tomahawks if Assad dares to use chemical weapons again. He might even launch airstrikes to ground Syrian fighter aircraft. But the Washington component, always a little hesitant under President Obama, is now a definite feature in everyone's mind. Whether that will turn out to be a positive ingredient in Syria and elsewhere, it is difficult to predict. Putin must have had a nightmare few days. He is probably an angry man. And that's very unlikely to be good news for the rest of us.

Trump did it!

This could be the moment when we and the rest of the globe start to think differently about Donald Trump. He made a decision, he wanted instant action and then he went back to dinner with President Xi Zinping at his Florida resort. All wrapped up nicely, thank you. I just cannot imagine Obama doing that. First, he wouldn't have wanted to do anything to disrupt dinner with the Chinese president, second he would have wanted more time to make a decision, and third, he would probably have delayed taking action until he had sought the advice of allies and possibly formed a coalition to strike Syria. That may be unfair, but I always recall talking to a high-up official in Obama's National Security Council who told me: "The worst thing about Obama for us was that he just couldn't make a decision. He had all the options in front of him but he couldn't decide which one to go for." To be totally fair to Obama, he did make up his mind about Osama bin Laden. He chose potentially the most dangerous option which was to send in a Seal team to kill him at his compound in Abbottabad in Pakistan, even though the intelligence on his whereabouts was less than 80 per cent. He rejected the US Air Force option which was to send a B2 stealth bomber to destroy the compound. But over Afghanistan, Obama prevaricated for months before he eventually decided to send a surge of troops there, although not on the scale the military wanted. Trump has now made four military decisions: he approved a stepping up attacks on terrorists in Yemen and Somalia, he agreed to more aggression and greater flexibility for commanders to attack Isis in Iraq and Syria, he gave the go ahead for the special forces attack on an al-Qaeda compound in Yemen in January which didn't go so well, leading to many civilian deaths, and then he said an almost instant yes to bombing Assad's airbase from where chemical weapon strikes had been launched. No delay, just: "Go for it." Now that sort of presidential decision-making isn't necessarily going to work each time and could even lead to disaster. But the fact is, strong leadership in whatever field, whether military, economic, strategic or domestic, has to be better than weak leadership, especially when it involves the world's only superpower and the West's leading nation. Everyone, from Putin to Kim Jong-un to Xi Zinping to the ayatollahs in Iran will take notice. I suspect there are two people in Washington who will be doing high-fives right now: General Jim Mattis, the Defense Secretary, and Lieutenant-General HR McMaster, the National Security Adviser. They both will have known of the importance of striking at Assad this time. That would have been their advice. Trump agreed without demur.

Lines lines lines

Please Mr Trump, no red lines unless you mean it. Obama tried it once the last time Assad was throwing chemical bombs around, and his red line was pretty well the end of Obama as an international leader and the beginning of Assad's next phase in his extraordinary survival game. Now, after the latest appalling bombing with sarin nerve agent, killing up to 100 people, Trump has used the same dodgy word. Well at least he didn't say Assad had passed a red line. He just said Assad had crossed many lines. But what does it actually mean? Can the US really go in and start bombing Assad or his army? Russia, Hezbollah, Iran would go mad. it would just make the complicated mess in Syria even more disastrous. But Assad has to be stopped somehow. What will Trump come up with? Putin and his cronies will do nothing except continue claiming that it was the rebels who did it. No one, not even Xi Zinping I shouldn't wonder, believes that story. It's time Assad was taught a serious lesson. Will Trump bomb the Syrian airbase thought to be the one from where the regime aircraft took off? Will he shoot down Syrian air force fighters? This is a dangerous moment. But if he does decide to attack Assad in some way, irrespective of what the UN Security Council wants, it will be a tumultuous moment for the new president. It will send a huge warning signal to Putin and an even bigger warning signal to Kim Jong-un. And, by the way, bombing Assad will do Trump no harm at all. It will be him telling the world that he's not Obama. When he talks of a line, or lines, I suspect he really means it. We thought Obama really meant it when he issued his red line ultimatum to Assad, but he backed off. I somehow think Trump will not back down. The US could be bombing Assad before the weekend, maybe even tonight. Perhaps, after all the indecision and weakness of the Obama administration, it is Trump's moment. It won't help to bring peace to Syria but it will punish Assad for waging war against his own people and make life difficult for Putin. That would be a pretty good result.

Xi Zinping briefing part three

A confused Chinese President sits down for his third briefing in three days. President: "Look my plane leaves in two hours. What is it now?" First adviser: "Mr President, you can relax, I've just had that nice Mr Kushner on the phone and he says your meeting is not going to be about making any decisions, it's just supposed to be about airing our views." President: "Airing? What does that mean?" Second adviser: "It's what you put into balloons to make them fly, Mr President." President: "We're going to be flying balloons?" Third adviser: "Well, probably more like kites." President: "Flying kites or balloons, which is it?" Fourth adviser: "Whatever you want, Mr President. But you don't have to bring either the balloon or the kite down. Just fly it." President: "You're talking in riddles." Fifth adviser: "Exactly, Mr President. That's what you have to do with Trump. Talk in riddles. We Chinese are supposed to be very good at that." President: "Are you sure that's what Mr Kushner had in mind, balloons and kites?" Sixth adviser: "Oh yes, Mr President. Just float your ideas and have a nice chat but don't shake hands with Trump on anything." President: "What about his obsession with trade and Kim Jong-un?" Seventh adviser: "Just be enigmatic." President: "But I'm always enigmatic." Eighth adviser: "Well of course you are, Mr President, it's part of the natural Chinese way." President: "Shall I tell him to stop sending aircraft carriers into the South China Sea and warn him that if he gets too close to one our islands there, we'll blast it with one of our ballistic missiles?" Ninth adviser: "No, Mr President, just balloons and kites, no carriers." President: "But I'm fed up with those American carriers coming into our sea and lauding it around like they own the place." Tenth: "None of us like it, Mr President, but if we have a war in the South China Sea, we think that the Americans would win." President: "What!!! You told me last week we were invincible." Eleventh adviser: "Yes, but I read a report this morning which quoted a former American Pacific Command commander saying that China would definitely lose a war with the US." President: "But that's just rhetorical rubbish." Twelfth adviser: "Maybe, but I think we should err on the side of caution." President: "So just balloons and kites?" Thirteenth adviser: "That's correct, Mr President, balloons and kites. And enjoy the swim." President: "What if he offers a golf match?" Fourteenth adviser: "Say no." President: "Why?" Fifteenth adviser: "You've never played golf, Mr President." President: "True, I guess that is a bit of a handicap." Uproarious laughter from the 15 advisers.

Brexit - the least of our problems

Sorry Theresa May, sorry Donald Tusk and all the others involved in Brexit and the future of Europe etc, but this is small beer compared to what else is going on in the world. North Korea and its demotic leader Kim Jong-un are trying to wind up the world into a frenzy with their madcap nuclear weapon and ballistic missile programmes, Trump is vowing to go it alone in dealing with Pyongyang - heaven help us what that means - Putin and Assad are engaged in trying to kill as many Syrian rebels as possible before Isis is driven from Raqqa, using chemical weapons - well one or other gave the order that killed dozens of men, women and children early today - and hunger in Sudan is destroying a whole nation. The world is going murderously crazy. It's a time when all right-minded people and nations should stick together. And we, the still just United Kingdom, are breaking away from Europe and going it alone. It is total utter madness. The negotiations haven't even started and already there's bickering, snide remarks, hostility, rebuffs, enmity. Tusk always looks like he has a bad taste in his mouth. Theresa is doing her best to put together something she opposed not that long ago, but as of today I can see it all going horribly wrong. We'll end up with a messy, messy, very expensive divorce that does no one any good. When we all need to be holding hands to stand up to Isis and Kim Jong-un and Putin and Assad, we're flapping around, stamping our feet like spoiled brats and trying to split Europe from top to bottom. I like Boris, our foreign secretary, always have done, but does he really honestly believe that breaking away from Europe is in the UK's best interest? Does he? Do you, Boris? I don't think Theresa does. The only one who seems to be fanatically pleased with the whole idea is Michael Gove, and I know he has a good brain. So what's he thinking? Does he sleep well at night? Does he not know that this country is doing the most outrageously stupid thing? We need unity, we need friends, we need our European family of nations. We need strong allies. And what is Brexit doing? Making all our friends and allies in Europe pissed off with us. But Brexit is way down the list of things going wrong right now. In Pyongyang, Kim is plotting to end the world, and probably laughing at all the Brexiteers.

Xi Zinping briefing part two

Xi Zinping was all primed for his visit to the Florida resort to see Trump when the US president produced a shocker, what could only be described as a challenge to Beijing. In his interview with Lionel Barber, the very clever editor of the Financial Times, Trump declared that he was prepared to go unilateral in stopping North Korea's nuclear programme, whatever China did or didn't do. The ugly phrase, military option, was sent into the ether. So the Chinese president had to go back for another briefing from his advisers. No talk of swimming trunks this time. President: "So, now what are we going to do? We can't have Trump parading around in our neck of the woods, slinging missiles about and causing mayhem. We have to stop him." First adviser: "Well, Mr President, all you have to do is tell Trump North Korea is a serious business but that whatever threat they may pose, Beijing will sort it out." President: "But I don't think Trump will believe me." Second adviser: "You have to convince him, Sir." President: "But there isn't anything we want to do against our brethren in the Hermit Kingdom. We do a lot of trade with them." Third adviser: "Yes, we do, but we have to convince Trump that we and only we can resolve the North Korea issue." President: "Yes but what does that mean?" Fourth adviser: "It doesn't matter what it means, all you have to do is tell Trump China is a mighty nation and we're in charge. No one else can deal with Kim Jong-un." President: "But we can't handle Kim either. I spoke to him this morning and he slammed the phone down." Fifth adviser: "Yes, he's a petulant young man. He eats too much Western food, all those deliveries of lobster and prawns. Can't be good for him." President: "Hmmm, wish I could have lobster and prawns every day." Sixth adviser: "Did you see what that terrible man Senator John McCain said the other day about Kim?" President: "No, I never listen to Senator McCain." Seventh adviser: "He called him a crazy fat kid." President: "Ho ho ho, that's very funny." Eighth adviser: "Mr President, this is our dear ally, it's not a laughing matter." President: "Well, whatever he is, he's not in the mood to be told to stop playing with his nuclear weapons." Ninth adviser: "I'm sorry, Mr President, but you have to tell Trump to drop any thought of military action. It would be a disaster for all of us. Another Korea war and you know what happened then." President: "Perhaps I should cancel my trip to Florida." Tenth adviser: "No, Mr President, that wouldn't look good. Perhaps, despite our advice yesterday, you should take your swimming trunks, and smile at least twice. Trump might be fooled then into thinking you're going to do something about beloved Kim." President leaves to pack.

Xi Zinping prepares for Trump

Ornate room with chandeliers in President Xi Jinping's office in Beijing. President enters, his advisers stand up and bow, and they all sit down. President: "So, first of all I'm meeting Trump at this ridiculous Florida resort of his, not the White House. What is the significance of this, is it a snub, how do I react, do I smile or look angry, what do I wear and shall I take my swimming trunks?" First adviser:" Definitely no swimming trunks, Mr President. Naturally you are a very good swimmer but a photograph of you and Trump in the sea together could be dangerous. He could try and push you under the water and the headlines will say, 'Trump wins in South China Sea struggle'." President:"Hm, yes good advice. But do I wear a suit or put on that ghastly baseball shirt Obama gave me?" Second adviser: "I don't think that would be appropriate, Mr President. Trump will wear a blue suit and orange tie, and maybe a red cap." President: "Shall I wear a cap? I have 23 in my cupboard, from Bush and Obama." Third adviser:"No, sir, you don't look good in caps. Or rather, what I meant to say was that the dignity of your eminence will be undermined by the wearing of an American baseball or football cap." President: "Anything else?" Fourth adviser: "Mr President, I think you should smile only one, perhaps when you part after the meeting to show that you have won all the arguments." President: "Good thinking. Anything else?" Fifth adviser: "We're wondering whether you should shake hands or ignore him when he offers his hand." President: "But protocol says I should shake his hand." Sixth adviser: "Protocol, schmotocol, these days we don't worry about that. Trump refused to shake Merkel's hand. That looked good, we think." President: "But if I don't shake his hand, that could be interpreted in many different ways." Seventh adviser: "Yes, sir, but we think the interpretations will be good for us, sorry, for you, and bad for Trump." President: "So, let me sum up. No baseball cap, no swimming trunks, no Obama shirt, one smile, no handshake...have I left anything out?" Eighth adviser: "Oh, just one thing, don't even listen when he mentions the islands in the South China Sea, ignore his trade appeals and tell him you will deal with North Korea but don't say how." President: "Right. And any advice about meeting at this dreadful Florida place?" Ninth adviser: "Just enjoy it, Mr President, the lobster is supposed to be fantastic."