Hello and welcome to The Spectator's Americano podcast, a series of discussions about American

politics and the Trump presidency in 2017. I'm Freddie Gray and I'm deputy editor of The Spectator.

I'm joined today by Andrew Basevich, who is a historian and author of America's War for the Greater Middle East,

a military history. And we're going to be talking about Trump's Syria strike. Andy, you seem to have

been dangerously prescient in your cover this week, Trump's wars, as it is on the front page of the

spectator. No sooner did we go on newsstands than Donald Trump has launched a strike on Syria.

What do you make of this latest move?

Well, I think it's a confirmation that we have a president who is impulsive, who does not operate in accordance with any sort of a defined worldview.

You know, people, people were concerned that he was an isolationist, that, you know,

that the references to America first somehow suggested that he was going to entirely withdraw from the world.

I never saw that this attack on Syria without any sanctioned by the United States Congress

suggests anything but isolationism.

Yes. Certainly a lot of world leaders seem to be supporting him. There seems to be a funny situation

happening where Trump has lost, judging from reactions on social media, a lot of his key supporters,

a lot of Trumpists seem to be very angry about this intervention, whereas a lot of what you might

call the political class welcome it as a sign that Donald Trump is going to be more active on the

international arena than Barack Obama was.

Well, I mean, I can't comment on what people abroad are saying, but it does seem to be the

case that if we could call it a foreign policy establishment here in the United States,

which tends to define American leadership in terms of a willingness to employ U.S. military power,

they are mightily heartened by this action.

Secretary of State Tillerson has announced that the United States is committed to

...