The foreign policy of the Deep State was on display in The Oz this morning: Trump’s strategic mess will take years to repair. If we go back to 2017 or thereabouts, my memory is of North Korea starting on a program of nuclear weapons development along with developing the delivery systems to make their existence a genuine threat. This was the historic result of American weakness in dealing with both North Korea and China. So what does the writer – a former senior CIA analyst, who served as national intelligence officer for East Asia, chief of station in Asia and the CIA’s director of public affairs – have to say?

Not only did Trump pursue a love affair with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un and remain smitten with Russian President Vladimir Putin, he also badmouthed America’s European allies when he was not undermining them outright.

Has the news also not reached the CIA that Russia is no longer a communist country attempting to subvert our political and economic system, but has been replaced by Communist China as our largest foreign policy problem of the moment. And goodness, Trump “badmouthed” Europe for not contributing what they had actually promised to pay for their own defence.

Did anyone ever actually worry about what side of the international divide Donald Trump was on? As for Biden, his own personal history, along with that of his son, ought to be a genuine concern for the future. Confronting Chinese aggression in the Pacific is unlikely to be high on his agenda. Articles such as this only add to my worries about the future since it reminds me just exactly what Trump was getting at in referring to the Deep State.