America’s new visa policies are shocking, everyone agrees on that. Even Donald Trump’s administration calls its US entry vetting ‘extreme’. But before everyone calls Trump a fascist again, before everyone reaches once more for the Hitler and the Nazis comparisons, consider this: Trump’s ‘America First’ nationalism is defensive, not aggressive. It may be clumsy, it may be offensive, and it will of course be unfair on lots of immigrants. But it is not war-mongering. In this respect, Trump is very different to the post 9-11 George W Bush. He is also different to Barack Obama, who wanted peace but whose internationalism inevitably dragged him into more disastrous conflicts.
Poor Theresa May is getting a hard time for having dealt with the devil by visiting Trump last week. But one of the most cheering aspects the ‘renewed’ UK-US Special Relationship is that both May and Trump agree that western interventions in the Muslim world have failed, and are not the way forward.
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