For the last eighty years, international relations in the UK has been a bit like organised religion: not something you had to think very much about.  The parameters were pretty much set: we knew who the good guys were; we knew who the bad guys were.  Never the twain shall meet.

However, a new Trump administration in the White House throws something of a spanner in the works of diplomatic complacency.  The Special Relationship looks about as special as it did in 1775.  Trump’s recent statements regarding Greenland and the Panama Canal, even if they are nothing more than irresponsible posturing, give a worrying green light to other country’s expansionist ambitions: Russia and Ukraine; China and Taiwan.  When the moral high ground is so hard won, it seems reckless to throw it away in such a cavalier fashion.

Whenever I think of the UK allied to a future Trump-led US, I can’t help but recall a Mitchell and Webb comedy sketch and popular social media meme, where David Mitchell, dressed as a Nazi soldier in WW2, looks at the skull emblem on his uniform and asks Robert Webb in sudden horror-struck realisation:

“Hans… are we the baddies?”

© Beery Sue

Beery Sue is always on the side of the angels.