America avoids the Fiscal Cliff, as Britain and Europe tumble over it.

America didn't go over the fiscal cliff. That's good news, right? Well, the stock market seemed to think so: the FTSE rose over 6,000 for the first time in eighteen months. And it was surely a good thing to see investors here, and in the rest of the world, celebrating an increase in taxes for the rich - or at any rate those earning over $450,000 a year.

This was a victory for President Obama, of that there is no doubt. Refusing to blink as the Tea Party Republicans took America to the brink, he managed to avoid any big cuts - at least for now - in federal spending on tax credits to the low paid or welfare to the long-term unemployed, who stood to have their benefits cut completely. The US is a slightly fairer country as a result. The Republicans have been left divided and confused, with the budgetary super-hawk, Paul Ryan, voting with Obama.

But isn't it just a little odd that hedge fund managers and other stock market money men here should find this all so positive? Presumably, they believe that these measures, the avoidance of deep spending cuts, mean that the world economy is now in better shape. But that isn't the economic logic they have been applying on this side of the pond. In the UK, the Coalition decided to go over its own voluntary fiscal cliff in 2010 when the Chancellor, George Osborne, announced that he was going to put through the deepest spending cuts in half a century and eliminate the deficit in five years. 'Cheers!', said the stockmarket suits. 'Just we need to put the country on course for recovery'. Unfortunately, the UK economy went into a triple dip recession which looks like lasting well into 2013. So, why is a fiscal cliff good here but not in America?

In Europe, they went even further over the cliff and plunged Mediterranean countries like Spain, Greece and Portugal into crushing economic depressions. Why? The US is in just as serious a debt hole as the eurozone. America has a £16.4 trillion debt, and its annual deficit – the amount the governmen has to borrow each year – is nearly 9% of GDP. That's higher than ANY eurozone country's deficit and 3 times the 3% ceiling in the EU “stability pact”. Yet, the ECB and the German bankers were yesterday also celebrating the fact that America had decided not to do what they've been doing. Perhaps they could learn something.

Obama goes to war. It's only a matter of time.

He wasn't as good as he should have been; he won't be as good as he could be; but I still can't help feeling a sense of mild relief that Barack Obama is back in the Oval Office. When he takes that three a.m call, a man whose rhyming nickname is “no drama” seems our best bet not to do something stupid in an emergency. Like invade a Muslim country in pursuit of non-existent weapons of mass destruction.

Mind you, I don't think this confidence in Obama's pacific tendencies is entirely rational. Mitt Romney was not a neanderthal Republican – he even said that America “can't kill its way out of the middle east”. And, historically, it tends to be political leaders of the left who get caught in unwinnable wars - Kennedy, Johnson, Tony Blair . Republicans don't feel quite the same need to prove their military machismo. Ronald Reagan shocked his Republican Party in 1986 when he agreed with Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjaviik to eliminate nuclear weapons within ten years. It didn't happen, but that's another story.

Why talk of war? Because Obama is almost certainly going to be involved in one, whether he likes it or not. The Syrian civil war is unlikely to be contained; Iran is being targeted by Israel; Japan and China are rattling sabres over disputed islands in the South China Sea. Nor has al Qaeda departed the historical stage following the assassination of its nominal leader, Osama bin Laden. His revenge-seeking followers only need to get lucky once against the Great Satan and we would be back to 9/11.   And of course there are all the unknown unknowns – the unexpected conflicts that could arise almost anywhere as the world economy continues to falter. We cannot rule out trouble on the fringes of Europe - in Turkey, perhaps, or between one of the former communist regimes of eastern Europe and an increasingly authoritarian Russia.