World

Readers of Spectator’s USA’s mothership, the venerable yet sprightly London Spectator, will know that one of the secrets of the Spectator’s endurance and popularity is the promiscuity—ideological, of course—of its columnists.Turn the page from Matthew Parris to Rod Liddle, and you undergo a whiplash of the most bracing kind. Parris is an ex-Conservative MP who, if not one of the ‘wets’ that Margaret Thatcher dismissed for ideological ploppiness, is certainly well irrigated with metropolitan manners. Rod Liddle, having worked at the BBC and being a member of the Labour Party, is on a Genghis Khan-like rampage against political correctness, Islamism and the decline of pop music.

The Trump administration may be heading into an infinity war. Europe is gearing up to retaliate against American on the trade front. China is indicating that it will refuse to negotiate on several key Trump trade demands. The Iran deal may be ripped up on May 12. And national security adviser John Bolton seems intent on sabotaging any negotiations with North Korea, something he did in the George W. Bush administration when he helped to terminate the 1994 nuclear deal that the Clinton administration had negotiated with the North.This past weekend, Bolton proclaimed that North Korea should follow the precedent of Libya when it comes to denuclearization.

Uh-oh. President Trump is wading into diplomatic waters in North Korea that he may have trouble navigating. Yesterday, he proudly revealed that talks with North Korea have been taking place at the “highest levels.” He also gave his blessing to the prospect of a peace treaty between the two Koreas, which currently only enjoy an armistice. But Trump also indicated that he wants to try and keep his options open: “It'll be taking place probably in early June, or a little before that, assuming things go well. It's possible things won't go well, and we won't have the meetings and we'll just continue to go along this very strong path that we've taken. But we'll see.

“President Trump ordered the expulsion of 60 Russian officials from the United States and ordered the closure of the Russian consulate in Seattle, the White House announced Monday” was how NPR started its report on the surprise story that started the week in Washington, and most outlets followed suit. In this way, the press emphasised the White House’s preferred narrative of the news. Donald Trump hasn’t uttered a word on Twitter, his favorite medium of communication, about the attempted assassination in Britain of a former Russian spy with a Soviet-era nerve agent. Neither did he bring it up during his phone call to Vladimir Putin last week, in which he congratulated the Russian president on his recent reelection.

It seems like only yesterday Donald Trump was buttering up Vladimir Putin. His congratulations on Putin’s victory and failure to mention the nerve agent attack in Salisbury sent the foreign policy establishment in Washington into high dudgeon. Now the administration has expelled 60 Russian diplomats and shuttered the Russian consulate in Seattle. This is only, top administration officials say, ‘the first step.’ The government could also go on to release nasty details about the financial holding that Putin has squirrelled away abroad, a move, incidentally, that could provoke retaliation against Trump by the Kremlin. What gives?

The hysteria from the Left over Donald Trump’s appointment of John Bolton as National Security Advisor to replace Lt. General H. R. McMaster has been partly hilarious, partly alarming to behold. From The Guardian in this country to The New York Times, CNN, Slate, Salon, and beyond in the United States, we are presented with a scarecrow figure who makes Jack D. Ripper in Dr. Strangelove look like Albert Schweitzer after a nap. 'Yes', screamed an editorial in The New York Times, 'John Bolton Really Is That Dangerous'. Bolton is a 'hawk’s hawk', an 'extreme ideologue' and 'warmonger' whose appointment 'scares people' and 'puts us on a path to war'.