The US must embrace its role as the world’s chief diplomat
AFTER a series of foreign policy U-turns, there is now talk of a ‘new’ Donald Trump, one more inclined to use military power than the Trump of the 2016 US presidential campaign. That earlier Trump seemed to regard US military action in Syria as pointless and dangerous. He called for the US to ensconce itself behind new walls.
Now, suddenly, the Trump administration has launched a missile attack on one of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s air bases, hinted at taking military action against North Korea, and dropped the “mother of all bombs” on an Islamic State redoubt in Afghanistan. All of this was accompanied by tweets from the president declaring that the US would pursue its own solutions to key issues if other countries did not help.
