So Barack Obama thinks Britain in 2011 left Libya in chaos – and besides it does not pull its weight in the world. Britain thinks that a bit rich, given the shambles America left in Iraq. Then both sides say sorry. They did not mean to be rude.

Thus do we wander across the ethical wasteland of the west’s wars of intervention. We blame and we name-call. We turn deaf ears to the cries of those whose lives we have destroyed. Then we kiss and make up – to each other.

David Cameron was distracted during Libya crisis, says Barack Obama Read more

Obama was right first time round about Libya’s civil war. He wanted to keep out. As he recalls to the Atlantic magazine, Libya was “not so at the core of US interests that it makes sense for us to unilaterally strike against the Gaddafi regime”. He cooperated with Britain and France, but on the assumption that David Cameron would clear up the resulting mess. That did not happen because Cameron had won his Falklands war and could go home crowing.

Obama is here describing all the recent “wars of choice”.

America had no “core interest” in Afghanistan or Iraq, any more than Britain had in Libya. When a state attacks another state and destroys its law and order, morally it owns the mess. There is no such thing as imperialism-lite. Remove one fount of authority and you must replace and sustain another, as Europe has done at vast expense in Bosnia and Kosovo.

America and Britain both attacked countries in the Middle East largely to satisfy the machismo and domestic standing of two men, George Bush and Tony Blair. The result has been mass killing, destruction and migration on a scale not seen, at least outside Africa, since the second world war. In this despicable saga, Cameron’s Libyan venture was a sideshow, though one that has destabilised north Africa and may yet turn it into another Islamic State caliphate. It is his Iraq.

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As for Obama’s charge that Britain and other countries are not pulling their weight and are “free riders” on American defence spending, that too deserves short shrift. British and French military expenditure is proportionately among the highest in the world, mostly blown on archaic weapons and archaic forms of war. Western warmongering over the past two decades has had nothing to do with the existential defence of territory. “Defence” has become attack, keeping alive the military-industrial lobbies and lumbering military establishments that depend on it.

Meanwhile the bonds between America and Britain will continue to strengthen. They do so, against all the odds, because they grow from one culture and one outlook on life. That mercifully has nothing to do with politicians.