CAN anyone remember when the UK last had a coherent foreign policy? It seems like an age ago. For nine months now, Boris Johnson has been Foreign Secretary and in that time has revealed himself to be a complete nonentity as far as diplomacy goes.

No surprises, there some might joke, but right now we live in an especially dangerous and unpredictable world. If ever there was a time for a clear-headed and cogent foreign policy then this is it.

Last December, Mr Johnson made a speech at Chatham House. It was, he said at the time, the first in a series of speeches that would set out his UK foreign policy approach. Looking back on the content of that speech, the early warning signs of his erratic, self-indulgent and vacuous style were all there that day. Far from concentrating on the likes of the UK’s future relations with France, Germany or Russia, Mr Johnson chose instead to focus much of his speech on the future of the world’s elephant population. Now, much as I care about elephants, it’s not really what one might have expected to hear. Since then his contribution to foreign policy matters hasn’t got much better.

Good diplomats are a canny and hard-headed lot. By and large those who have encountered Mr Johnson remain unimpressed by the Foreign Secretary’s Latin quips and jolly-wheeze approach to the serious business at hand. It just doesn’t cut the cloth, and that much was obvious this week when he entirely failed to get other G7 countries to agree tough new sanctions against Russia over the Syria chemical attack.

This too, coming after he pulled out of a long-planned trip to Moscow in the wake of the US retaliatory missile-strike on a Syrian airfield. Had Mr Johnson’s trip gone ahead, incredibly, it would have been the first by a British foreign secretary in five years.

In itself this is a terrible indictment of the state of British diplomacy, albeit that the actions of a certain Vladimir Putin had something do to with British reluctance to visit. This, though, is not the moment for Mr Johnson to back off from engaging in dialogue with Russia. Right now as the world seems increasingly gripped by war-war, the more jaw-jaw there is the better.

In choosing to make Russia its prime antagonist, the UK is only falling into line behind the foreign policy U-turn made by the Trump administration. Hardly surprising then that Mr Johnson has faced accusations from some quarters of being President Trump’s “poodle”. Frankly, it’s hard to interpret it any other way.

This apparent failure of Mr Johnson to possess an independent foreign policy strategy and make decisions accordingly is bad enough. But when the UK Government seems content to hitch its wagons to Washington’s own current version of what passes there for foreign policy strategy, then it’s really time to worry. I say this because right now the inescapable fact is that far from being “isolationist” as Mr Trump insisted the US would be should he become president, the evidence on the ground now points the other way.

The perceptive analyst and writer, Ahmed Rashid, whose book Descent into Chaos, chronicles Western mistakes and the rise of Islamist extremism, knows a thing or two about foreign policy failures. It was he who recently pointed out that what we are witnessing right now, is a dramatic escalation in the militarisation of US foreign policy in the Middle East, Africa and Afghanistan.

Most of this is not registering on the international radar and ringing the alarm bells that it should, as until now it has gone on largely unannounced and has been incremental. US air raids are increasing in Yemen, Iraq and Syria, with civilian casualties often bearing the brunt. US troop build ups are happening too and not just in the shape of “advisers” and special forces support as we are constantly being told.

Some 400 US troops are en route to Syria to set up an artillery base to retake the city of Raqqa held by Islamic State (IS) fighters. Another 1,000 may soon be sent to Kuwait as a reserve force. Another 400 have gone to Iraq and some 8,000 will go to Afghanistan. As Ahmed Rashid rightly says, quite an active policy for someone like Mr Trump who claimed during his election campaign to have no interest in such overseas military adventures and campaigns.

That much of all this is taking place without due consultation with Nato or other US allies or without debate in the US Congress is also a cause for deep concern. Meanwhile Britain stays schtum and simply falls into line, our “special relationship” with the US pushing us into potentially dangerous territory.

If there is a touch of déjà vu about this, then that’s because we have been here before. Think Blair, Bush and Iraq, and look what happened then.

As Brexit too beckons, and we lose one bulwark of diplomatic stability in Europe, might it be a case of the UK Government leaning even more heavily on Mr Trump’s administration for diplomatic ‘support’? Perish the thought.

If the Trump presidency, far from being isolationist, is taking us increasingly in the direction of reckless foreign policy adventures and possibly war, then one of the most terrifying things is that nowhere is this emphasis balanced by moves towards peacemaking.

There has not been a peep out of Washington about this regarding the Middle East, and indeed Mr Trump – along with the UK – has only succeeded of late in further alienating Moscow.

Right now the mindset at the White House, far from trying to stay out of wars, has moved swiftly to focus on who to bomb and how hard.

The sense that Washington has got into this without a plan or much grip on the problem is only highlighted by the dire performances of US Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, and press secretary, Sean Spicer.

If Mr Trump has indeed shifted to a military-first strategy then Britain must not allow itself to become sucked into that vortex. Surely the lessons of Iraq and Libya mean we ought to know better by now.

It’s imperative that the UK starts putting some clear blue water between itself and the Trump administration on a number of foreign policy fronts before it is too late.