Barack Obama glides through his day with a kind of effortless fluency.

When David Cameron lost the vote in the Commons, I wanted to see what Barack Obama would do.

He made a 10-minute statement, apparently unscripted. ‘Ten days ago the world watched in horror….as children were gassed to death by their own government..’

After a “walk in the rose garden” with his security advisor, having given it careful thought, he would consult Congress. There is a picture of them, strolling together.

“I am asking Congress to send a message to the world.”

Then he went for a round of golf with Joe Biden.

He was fully entitled to take action, he said, but he had decided to “seek authorisation” from Congress.

He said he had been influenced by what happened in the UK, when David Cameron gave the Commons a choice on whether or not to support air strikes.

Secretary of State, John Kerry, on a visit to London, was asked what Assad had to do to avert US attacks. He said the Syrian president could hand over all his chemical weapons to the international community…”but he isn’t about to do it…”.

The Russians apparently responded to the remark, saying they were ready to help. Within a week Sergei Lavrov and Kerry had negotiated an agreement under which Assad would allow all Syria’s chemical weapons to be destroyed, supervised by an international observer team. There is a picture of them with interpreters, at a small table on the patio of a hotel in Geneva, Switzerland, finalising the agreement.

I would love to know how the conversation between Vladimir Putin and Bashar al Assad went. As for Kerry, he later implied his remark was a come-on, a wheeze to get Putin to respond.

I think it is more likely that they had agreed in principle what was going to happen.

Why did Assad have such a large chemical arsenal? Because he feared a nuclear attack from neighbouring Israel, apparently. It was Syria’s “poor man’s bomb”.

Smart move by Putin. It gives him a new role on the international stage, not just engaged in local wars on the edge of the former Soviet empire, but brokering a deal that addresses something the whole world cares about.

There will be no “Arab Spring” in Syria. It looked at first like an opportunity. But the groups that supported democratic change are now inextricably mixed with Islamists, Sunnis fighting a Shia regimes, Kurds fighting ISIS…

Messy, bloody, horrible.