Spurred by resounding 'special election' wins, US President Donald Trump has sent environmentalists, economists and the solar industry diving in three directions with the announcement of building the wall along the Mexican border with solar panels. Belying his seventy years of age he was almost like a child when he smugly said "it was my idea" reminiscent of the punch line of production house of a popular TV soap in the eighties that had a child say, "I made it".
Whereas previously analysts had chuckled at Mr. Trump's idea of that big a wall and getting Mexico to pay for it, they will now be wary of commenting from the hip. According to one expert in solar energy speaking on BBC 'it is doable'. For the cynics, it will also pay for itself through the energy that will be generated. It would appear in one stroke Mr. Trump has taken away Mexico's headache, thrown a curved ball at Democrats just waiting for him to ask Congress for money and sent environmentalists, critical of his decision to walk away from the Climate Change agreement spinning. Renewable energy, the 'wall' all in one go. No wonder he sounded smug. He can afford to.
This comes swiftly on the back of two large defence deals, ironically with the two main protagonists of a Middle-East harakiri of sorts. Selling arms and aircraft to both Saudi Arabia and Qatar and getting them at each other's throats couldn't have been done so well other than by the 'deal maker'. Again, in one stroke he has got a group of countries to actually accuse Qatar of supporting terrorism without doing it himself, thereby not jeopardising the American base in the sultanate. And while Qatar fumes, it still has £ 35 billion that it wants to invest in the United States. Quixotic as it may sound, the solar wall is a good investment. In a way he has also fallen back on his assessment that middle-eastern dictators, tyrannical as they may be are better alternatives than senseless, un-winnable wars with migration nightmares to follow.
Emmanuel Macron, France's new President, currently slipping over major resignations in his cabinet, has made it clear that till a credible successor to President Bashar Al Assad emerges, the 'Assad must go' project is on hold. It plays beautifully into Vladimir Putin's strategy and reinforces the belief that President Obama's policies, aka Hillary Clinton, were essentially off-target. Mr. Trump now doesn't have to eat humble pie on behalf of his country and the accusations that the US and the UK were partly responsible for allowing space for IS. Even so Rex Tillerson is a worried Secretary of State as he seeks quick resolution of the crisis in the form of a list of issues on the table to discuss.
The swiftness and thoroughness with which diplomatic, border, aviation and other ties were cut suggests these have been thought through. That the Qatarese had no inkling of any of this smells of a cloak that can only have been delivered by Israel given there's no secret of communication channels between the Saudis and Israelis. Part of that most certainly seems to have been the exchange of sabre rattling between the US and North Korea. For all the missiles sent skywards no further sanctions have been imposed on the DPRK-that is rather convenient. One of the social media sarcasms following Mr. Trump's victory was 'think of four years of entertainment'. It may well end being summed-up by Frank Sinatra's stirring number 'I did it my way'.
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