Trump's changing the 'special relationship'

AS a postwar baby who grew up in the 1960s and 70s my view of the United States of America is - or at least was - clear and unequivocal.

- PHILIP BOWERN

They were the good guys. The stories I read and the TV dramas and films I watched showed how the US came to Britain's aid in the Second World War.

As I grew up and started taking an interest in the news I learned that America provided the defensive might that shielded Europe from the threats posed by the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War.

Many remember that grinding standoff between the superpowers of West and East as a time of trepidation with the fear of nuclear annihilation hanging over us. Yet if I reflect on those days, my overriding memory is of an America on "our" side - a nation that shared our values and had our backs. Even the war in Vietnam, hugely controversial back in the United States, looked to my early teenage eyes like another example of the US standing up against a threat from those with a very different world view to ours in the West.

The America of today prompts rather different emotions.

President Donald Trump's attack on the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, and the arrest of that country's leader, Nicholas Maduro, might on the face of it be categorised in the same way as previous US foreign policy interventions.

But a combination of Donald Trump's expressed expansionist views and the complete disregard of any attempt by the US to obtain the approval of allies for the action, puts it in a very different category.