The Spectator podcast is brought to you by Barry Brothers and Rudd.

Hello and welcome to The Spectator podcast. I'm Lara Prendergast and on this week's episode,

we'll be considering President Trump's growing military presence. We'll also be dissecting the

problem of radical Islam in our prisons. And finally, we'll be discussing what makes a perfect marmalade.

On to our first topic, Trump's Wars. In this week's issue, Andrew Basevic, Ahmed Rashid, David Frum and James Fusithe, all discuss Trump's military ambitions.

Andrew joins me now, along with Heather Williams, a defense expert, and General Sir Richard Barron's.

So, Andrew, we were promised an isolationist, weren't we? What's changed?

Well, I don't think we should have taken that promise seriously.

When Trump was a candidate and attempted to express his view of the world and of America's role in the world, it seems to me that

his were all over the map. It's certainly true that the phrase America First became his

signature, as it were, but I think it would be wrong to believe that what we heard from Trump had any real relevance to what Trump was going

to do. Now, what he is doing, I think, does not reflect any particular blueprint. I think

what we're seeing is an administration that is making it up as it goes along. That doesn't have a strategy

and has a president who tends to act on impulse rather than any considered point of view.

Richard, what do you make of Trump's military proposal so far?

Well, I think I absolutely agree with the professor's view that there is a sense of a very

new administration, perhaps surprised itself to be in power, and feeling its way into its

responsibilities and feeling its way into foreign policy, and to some degree unwilling to

take the council of what it regards as elites or officials in the US government and elsewhere. And it's too early to call it

definitively in terms of outcomes, but as seen from this side of the Atlantic, it creates huge

uncertainty about the nature of our world and the nature of US leadership and our world. And what

does that mean for our collective security and prosperity in the medium term?

...