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Yes, European leaders need to be robust in responding to the American approach to Greenland, but the Governor of California telling the rest of the world not to truckle and bow to the man with the flamethrower is rich. If anyone needs to take a robust line with America’s Chief Magistrate it's the elected representatives of the American people. Gavin Newsom does a good line in snotty posts on Xitter, but if he can't deal with American politics, and needs Europe to put air defence batteries on Greenland to deal with American SOF insertions, his chances of becoming President much less succeeding as President aren't impressive.

Meantime, Ukrainians freeze, the USS Abraham Lincoln is steaming towards the Iranians who needed it last week. US policy process isn’t focused; the rest of the world’s can be.

I apologised to the producer for nearly swearing.

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Completely setting aside the question how you impose a tariff selectively on some EU members (a lot of French wine is going to be entering the USA from Irish ports), and setting aside whether EU states will use the so-called ‘Trade Bazooka’ against America, and setting a side whether King Charles is taking a Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George to Washington with him, and setting aside what more price rises will mean to the American economy, what is the effect of raising tariffs on European goods? Money flowing to China, that's what.

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Is the Executive Committee of the Gaza Board of Peace the same as the Founding Executive Committee of the Gaza Board of Peace? Did the White House run the list of names for the Peace Board past the Israelis before announcing the list? If not, why not? Did Steve Witkoff figure that Bibi Netanyahu’s people wouldn’t notice, or was he trying to bounce Israel into accepting yet another version of Hamas rebuilding in Gaza?

Actually I don’t answer most of those questions.

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With US resources stretched into the previously quiet Caribbean, and Administration attention focused, oddly, on pulling NATO to bits over Greenland; the Iranian protesters weren’t going to get any help. They will take little comfort in the knowledge that the Secretary of Tehran’s Supreme National Security Council is now subject to US sanctions. The Iranian government have received the signal that they’re still untouchable within their own borders (as long as they leave the Israelis be). Sanctions will continue to grind down the Iranian economy, but nobody is offering the Iranian government a deal to stop pursuing their vision of a new Persian Empire.

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I started my day talking about Iran in the pre-dawn. I expected to be asleep by now, and you can see how bloodshot my eyeballs are, but I paused to answer a question from a journalist. I'll leave you to figure out what the question was, but here's what I told him.

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Almost the first thing I ever did on social media was live tweet a lecture by Joe Nye. His concept of 'soft power' was in almost every way brilliant. The name, however is rubbish. It invites us to imagine that enduring cultural power is ineffective, unreliable, or incompatible with combat power. This is the time of year when I come to Windsor Castle. I focus my mind on leadership, and I can't forget the tower up at the top of the hill, which used to house the core of a heavy cavalry unit that controlled the river crossing. There are two barracks in Windsor for modern British Army units: the Coldstream Guards in Victoria Barracks and the Welsh Guards and a squadron of Household Cavalry in Combermere Barracks. The combat power in those lines are integrated with the enduring power of the king. There's nothing soft about that.

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It’s really an excuse to talk about Mao Zedong’s method for waging revolutionary war, which is important because it’s proven effective over the last 100 years or so. Mao used it, Ho used it (which is how I got the name for this short-short podcast series, General Offensive! General Uprising!), and a book about the British Army mocked us for still teaching it in the 1990s as though it should have become unfashionable by then. After watching a first-rate army kicking Hamas to pieces at tremendous cost between 2023 and 2025, it’s significant that Hamas is still operating.

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This connects to American operations in Venezuela a few days ago; and it connects to the ever-so-slightly surprising American focus on Greenland. I know some of my American friends view the hemispheric sphere of influence as a stepping stone to a future in which the US and China are two superpowers. It will be interesting to see whether you can get there from here.

Coming video comments: Why I keep saying that Hamas are Maoists, and why it was a bad idea to call soft power ‘soft power’; because it’s not about squeezable softness.

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