Irwin Stelzer

​So the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the US Army will not be a day that will live infamy. Nor will it be one many Americans will recall with pleasure, in part because it coincided with the birthday of President Trump, a man who generates some sort of veneration from his MAGA supporters and a reaction known as TDS, Trump Derangement Syndrome, from others. No vaccination is known that will prevent the onset of either disease, leaving those immune to both looking for a candidate. The President’s decision to order out this parade enabled him to join the rather exclusive club of Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un, men he says he ‘respects’, ‘likes’ and calls ‘a great leader’, respectively.

Fox News’s Brit Hume, one of America’s most respected political analysts, and a man more given to wry scepticism than to partisanship or hyperbole, described Donald Trump’s speech to Congress as: ‘the most boisterous, the longest, the most partisan speech I’ve heard a President give… to a joint session of congress… and I go back maybe about 50 years on this. I also think it may have been the most effective. If you ever doubted that Donald Trump is the colossus of our time and our nation, this night and this speech should have put that to rest…’ There is no quarrelling with Hume about length. At one hour and 40 minutes, Trump’s speech broke Bill Clinton’s record of one hour, 28 minutes and 40 seconds. Or about partisanship.

Keir Starmer did almost everything right. He headed for lunch with the President, leaving the British Embassy’s Jaguars and Land Rovers in the garage. Instead, he relied on a made-in-America (probably) Chevy Suburban, presumably part of the Secret Service’s fleet of bullet-proof gas guzzlers. That might take Trump’s mind off the fact that the UK exports £8 billion worth of cars to the US every year, making America the main destination of UK car exports. But it won’t change Trump’s mind that reciprocity is the cornerstone of his tariff policy. America taxes imported cars at a 2.5 per cent rate; the UK imposes a 10 per cent import duty and 20 per cent VAT on imports of American cars.

This week, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is heading to Washington to establish himself as a ‘bridge’ between the US and the EU, and to breathe new life into the Anglo-American Special Relationship. There is much to discuss between the historic allies. Starmer has announced that a ‘security guarantee’ from America is the only way there can be ‘a lasting peace agreement … the only way to effectively deter Russia from attacking Ukraine again.’ Trump is negotiating an agreement with Putin, and leaving it to the Europeans to defend the continent while America attends to other business in the Pacific, Greenland, Panama, the Middle East and any other places Trump feels it is in the interest of America to assert its presence.

If you are still reeling from the shock and awe created by Donald Trump’s foreign policy since taking office, ‘You ain’t seen nothing yet,’ as Ronald Reagan once put it. Trump doesn’t just want to reset trading relations with every country in the world. He wants the world to change its foreign policies to suit the end of Pax Americana – and its replacement with a muscular foreign policy that relies very little, if at all, on the kindness of strangers. It is not Trump who is surrendering to Putin, but Europe Start with the war in Ukraine.

Because Americans love Britain, and because we are a presumptuous lot, we often advise the United Kingdom on its foreign policy. And not only the UK, but Europe. Successive US administrations have urged European nations to form a United States of Europe as an answer to the question attributed to Henry Kissinger: ‘Who do I call if I want to call Europe?’ The latest such unrequested advice was offered to your Prime Minister by no less a foreign-policy maven — see his successes in Libya, Middle East, China, Crimea — than Barack Obama. The outgoing president informed David Cameron that his administration wants to see ‘a strong United Kingdom in a strong European Union’.

Because Americans love Britain, and because we are a presumptuous lot, we often advise the United Kingdom on its foreign policy. And not only the UK, but Europe. Successive US administrations have urged European nations to form a United States of Europe as an answer to the question attributed to Henry Kissinger: ‘Who do I call if I want to call Europe?’ The latest such unrequested advice was offered to your Prime Minister by no less a foreign-policy maven — see his successes in Libya, Middle East, China, Crimea — than Barack Obama. The outgoing president informed David Cameron that his administration wants to see ‘a strong United Kingdom in a strong European Union’.

He came, he saw and, to the surprise of many in Washington, David Cameron conquered. Those who have been exposed to his personal charm were less surprised. For them, the surprise — perhaps they should have known better than to be surprised —- came from his willingness to resort to evasion. Faced with a specific question about his attitude towards Israel, the Prime Minister gave the usual answer about a two-state solution, the need for negotiations, etc. A few days later, before a Muslim rather than an American audience, he decided that Gaza is a prison, without mentioning that Hamas is the jailer, and that there are few prisons in which the inmates launch rockets at neighbouring countries.