In 2013, Obama sees peace. Cameron sees war.

Barack Obama has just delivered an upbeat inauguration address, proclaiming that a “a decade of war is ending”. Just a few moments earlier David Cameron gave MPs a blood-sweat-toil-and-tears speech, preparing us all for a “generational” struggle against African jihadis. So what’s up? Freddy Gray spells it out in a brilliant and timely analysis: Britain and America’s global interest are diverging. Obama is now, in effect, a Pacific president rather than an Atlantic president (as almost all of his others have been). Hawaii-born, Indonesia-schooled, he has always grown up seeing the world in a slightly different way. And he just doesn’t see these African tribes as so big a deal, certainly not an existential threat that Cameron appears to speak about.

So let’s compare the speeches. For Cameron, there are storm clouds hurtling through the sky:

“We must frustrate the terrorists with our security, we must beat them militarily, we must address the poisonous narrative they feed on; we must close down the ungoverned space in which they thrive; and we must deal with the grievances they use to garner support.