It's more than thirty years ago that the brusque American Secretary of State George Shultz told David Lange in a hotel corridor in Manila that the United States and New Zealand were no longer allies.

In the intervening years Shultz's successors have variously described us as very, very, very good friends and as a rock in the road but never allies.

But now we're firmly back to being allies again as evidenced by the heads up the Government was given, a couple of hours in advance of Donald Trump giving the order to launch almost 60 Tomahawk missiles at an airbase in Syria.

With Trump in charge though, wouldn't if feel more comfortable being a rock on the road?

The attack on Syria was a major change of heart for Trump who'd up until then railed against it, telling Barack Obama, before he became President, that any attack should be signed off by Congress.

But on seeing the photographs from the chemical attack in Syria, The President used emotional language that's not usually associated with that office, saying even beautiful babies were murdered in the barbaric attack before he launched the attack of his own.

So he acted on impulse which should be something of a worry. He did alert Russia who had soldiers on the ground at the airbase, which should be of major concern given that they were where the chemical attack was apparently launched from. What role did they have in the attack?

And Donald Trump's outpouring about the horrible deaths suffered by those in the chemical attack and how all attempts to bring Bashar al Assad to heel have dramatically failed with the refugee crisis continuing to deepen is right on the mark. In the one breath though he feels for the desperation of Syrians but in the next refuses to take them as refugees, once describing them as Trojan horses and telling Germany's Angela Merkel she should be ashamed of herself for opening her immigration gates to them.

But Donald Trump is consistently inconsistent and conventionality isn't part of his vocabulary.

The attack, coming as it did as The President was dining with his Chinese counterpart, not at the White House but at his mansion Mar-a-Lago in Florida, certainly would have made that conversation an interesting one given that China has backed the Assad regime.

Trump was right about one thing, we live in a very troubled world and that doesn't look like changing anytime soon.