AND NO DIFFERENT THAN W:

As he rose to power, Obama promised two simple things. Firstly, that he would extricate the US from costly Middle Eastern interventions, and second that he would reshape, or at least raise questions about, American 'grand strategy' in the post-Cold War era. He also, of course, promised to close down Gitmo. He either completely failed in these projects or, at best, only partially achieved them.

He was deeply sceptical about the Libyan intervention, but was badgered into it by David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy, and by the moral crusader Samantha Power. He was also the president under whom Europe was given a pretty severe telling-off. It came from Bob Gates, Obama's first defence secretary, who warned Europe that if it ignored America's advice on political and foreign-policy matters then there would be populist problems on the continent. Some in Obama's administration understood that Middle America felt exasperated at their nation still paying for European security, when so much public money in Europe is spent on the welfare state, migration problems, research funding for strange post-modern pursuits, and so on.

In his questioning of America's 'grand strategy', Obama became increasingly reluctant to get embroiled in foreign conflicts. The implosion of North Africa during the Arab Spring and the unravelling of Syria left him anxious and indecisive. This is not to say there wasn't American intervention -- there was, politically and militarily, not least through drone strikes and air attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Syria. But it was a strategy, if strategy is the right word, of what we might call buckpassing and bloodletting. In Obama's mind, the best grand strategy was to let, and sometimes encourage, regional actors to duke it out in a cordoned-off Middle East. Under Obama, America came to play the curiously contradictory role of both intervener in and confused spectator of foreign affairs, especially in volatile regions like the Middle East and North Africa.

And Trump? He isn't that different.

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