It was only the day before yesterday that the rich democracies imagined a post-cold war global order fashioned in their own image. Now they are running away from the world. There were to be three pillars to the new order. As a benign hegemon, the US would underwrite the international peace and advance the spread of liberal democracy.
Europe would export its model of postmodern integration to its near neighbourhood and beyond — remember those predictions that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations would soon be like the EU? A declining Russia would join China and the rising powers of the east and south in recognising their national advantage in becoming stakeholders in a western-designed system.
That was then. The US is still by a margin the pre-eminent power but, whether Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump wins the presidency in November, the domestic political impulse is to pull back from the world.