‘New sheriff’ Donald Trump plans to flatten ISIS and flatter Putin, by Toby Harnden.

Donald Trump is to reverse American policy towards Russia and in the Middle East by publicly embracing Vladimir Putin as a trusted ally and repairing US ties with autocratic Sunni Arab regimes alarmed by Barack Obama’s accommodation with Shi’ite Iran.

Details of the incoming president’s controversial plans have been revealed to The Sunday Times by senior members of his foreign policy team, who promised a “night and day” difference with the policies of the outgoing administration.

Mr Trump would usher in a “new era of American leadership” and launch a series of “high-profile military actions” against Isis to telegraph to Islamic radicals that there was a “new sheriff in town” after what he described as eight years of weakness, vacillation and mixed signals, one adviser said.

The key to victory, members of Mr Trump’s inner circle believe, is “American leadership but Arab execution” — essentially the opposite of what they view as the approach taken by Mr Obama, who was drawn into the Middle East quagmire while, as one of his advisers famously characterised it, “leading from behind”. …

Finally. It’s principally a battle of culture, morals, and ideals, and Trump is willing to fight at this level.

The Trump adviser stressed, however, that killing terrorists would be “only 25 per cent of the job”. The most important task was to undermine their moral authority.

Trump outlined this strategy in August in a speech he gave in Youngstown, Ohio, which is now seen as his national security blueprint. “Military, cyber and financial warfare will all be essential in dismantling Islamic terrorism,” Mr Trump said.

He added: “But we must use ideological warfare as well. Just as we won the Cold War, in part, by exposing the evils of communism and the virtues of free markets, so too must we take on the ideology of radical Islam.”

Obama, an ex-Muslim himself, couldn’t even say the words: “radical Islam.”

hat-tip Stephen Neil