Katty Kay

Shipping experts are already telling every reporter who will call them, we are not going to go through just because the president tells us it's okay to go through.

We're not going to go through the straits because our ships are too expensive.

They're worth too much money for us.

We need a naval escort.

And the president doesn't want to do a naval escort.

His initial thinking was we're going to announce a naval escort.

Then he watered it down, and now it's this sort of central command idea of a call center, basically, where you can call in and find out where the best lane is.

But I think there is a risk with that that this either just fizzles out, this big announcement that he had over the weekend of a kind of, we're going to have this Operation Freedom, or if it carries on, there is a serious risk of some kind of escalation.

The multilateral thing, you've been saying for a while, they need to get the Chinese on board.

It's possible that they bring the Chinese on board.

It's also possible that the Chinese are sitting back because they still have some reserves at the moment.

They've been able to weather this better than some people thought they would at the beginning.

They have reserves for longer.

Do the Chinese get involved in the way that the president does?

If the Chinese do get involved in the long term, is that actually great for America anyway?

I think you're right about Suez.

This is not Suez.

The difference with Suez is that the British Empire was basically replaced by the American Empire.

It was the Americans saying, don't do this because we're the new kid in town.

The Chinese have not yet come along and said, okay, leave this one to us.