Trump the war hawk

DONALD Trump’s sudden taste for military action is the most significant and potentially frightening of his U-turns.

This is the man who became US President after he criticised rival Hillary Clinton’s interventions and vowed to stop fighting the world.

His order to drop the most devastating non-nuclear bomb in America’s arsenal on Afghanistan is further evidence, after the US missile attack on Syria and raids in Iraq and Yemen, of the struggling Republican flexing his muscles.

Alarmingly, it is compounded by his son Eric – meant to be looking after the family’s commercial empire while daddy’s in the White House – warning that North Korea might be next.

Trump Snr accused predecessor Barack Obama of authorising military interventions to distract attention from political problems in America but is himself now emerging as a war hawk.

The world has watched in horror as independent expert evidence mounts that Syrian tyrant Bashar al-Assad’s bloody regime is responsible for a child-murdering chemical war crime – predictably dismissed by the international pariah as “100% fabrication”.

But equally the world will be concerned that Trump is an unstable, irrational President and holds its breath at what he might do next.